Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
Unless you are circumcised: the question forced
Acts 15:1-5
1 Some men came down from Judea and taught the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised after the custom of Moses, you can’t be saved.” · WEB
The crisis is not about custom but about salvation, and the church refuses to settle it locally.
Some men came down from Judea and taught the brothers, "Unless you are circumcised after the custom of Moses, you can't be saved." Everything turns on the last three words. This is not a proposal about how Gentile believers should live, nor a plea for cultural sensitivity in mixed congregations. It is a statement about the conditions of salvation, and as such it cannot be compromised on without changing what the gospel is.
The position also had a great deal going for it. Circumcision was commanded by God, not invented by men; it was given to Abraham before the law and described as an everlasting covenant. Anyone arguing the other way had to explain how a divine requirement of that standing could now be optional. The men from Judea were not obviously wrong, and the church did not treat them as obviously wrong.
Paul and Barnabas have no small discord and discussion with them. The phrase is the writer's characteristic understatement and it records a serious fight in the Antioch congregation. Two men who had just returned from watching God open a door of faith to the nations are being told the door does not exist.
What happens next is the decision that saved the church. They do not settle it at Antioch, where they would have won. They appoint a delegation to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question. Paul has a direct commission from Christ and could have asserted it; he goes to Jerusalem instead, because a ruling that only one congregation accepted would have divided the church into two bodies with two gospels within a decade.
The journey itself is quietly significant. They pass through Phoenicia and Samaria declaring the conversion of the Gentiles, and cause great joy to all the brothers. Before the debate opens, the delegation has taken the news through every church on the coast road and found it welcome. The controversy is genuine but it is not universal.
At Jerusalem they are received and reported everything that God had done with them — the same formula used at Antioch, and the same shift of subject: what God did, not what they achieved. Evidence is placed before the assembly before any argument is made.
Then the objection is stated in its formal shape, and the identity of the objectors matters: some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed. These are Christians. They accept that Jesus is the Messiah and that he rose; they are members of the Jerusalem church. And their demand has grown since verse one — not only circumcision now, but to command them to keep the law of Moses entire.
So the question before the council is sharp. Are Gentiles who believe in Jesus required to become Jews in order to be saved? Everything the rest of the New Testament says about grace hangs on the answer, and the men about to give it are Jews without exception.
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