The Acts of the Apostles, the history of the early church, by Luke the physician - Acts 15:1-5 comments: false doctrine confronted

 

Acts 15:1 ¶  And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved. 2  When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question. 3  And being brought on their way by the church,they passed through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren. 4  And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them. 5  But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.

 

If you have difficulty understanding why these Judean Christians were trying to put the Gentiles under the Law then compare it to a preacher trying to put his congregation back under the Law with himself as a kind of modern-day Moses that must be obeyed without question if one is to obey God. It happens all the time, especially in Baptist Fundamentalism.

 

Paul is not going to tolerate this in his teaching;

 

Galatians 5:1 ¶  Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. 2  Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. 3  For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. 4  Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

 

Which means that Paul must have learned something from the time between the following passage to the writing of the letter to the Galatians.

 

Acts 16: 1 ¶  Then came he to Derbe and Lystra: and, behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman, which was a Jewess, and believed; but his father was a Greek: 2  Which was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium.3  Him would Paul have to go forth with him; and took and circumcised him because of the Jews which were in those quarters: for they knew all that his father was a Greek.

 

Verse 5 goes to show us that the early predominantly Jewish church still contained the various sects of the Jewish religion. So, there was a lot of confusion to be sorted out. This may be why the famous TV preacher in Texas preached that Jews don’t get saved the way Gentiles do, which is, of course, a heresy and a lie.