The Jerusalem Council Proceedings: Acts 15:5–21

Having briefly introduced the Jew-gentile issue as the subject of this segment of the story of Acts, Luke invests the bulk of the episode discussing the proceedings of the Jerusalem Council convened to address the matter. Luke’s account of the proceedings portrays several interested parties making contributions to the discussion and then James, the brother of Jesus, wrapping up the meeting with reflections on Scripture and a recommended course of action.

The Judaizers State Their Position (15:5)

After the representatives of the Antioch church are welcomed to Jerusalem and report on what God has been doing among the gentiles, the Judaizers present their opinion on what should be required of gentile believers in Jesus. While Luke does not call these people “Judaizers,” here in Jerusalem he notes that it is “some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees” (Acts 15:5). First-century Judaism had a variety of Pharisaic groups, but on the whole the general populace highly respected them as people devoted to the Scriptures; they were associated with the local synagogues, and their strictness was often marked with added human traditions to protect against accidentally transgressing scriptural guidelines. It is no surprise, then, to find Judaizers in the party of the Pharisees. And in spelling out the Judaizers’ strict opinion on gentile involvement in the church, Luke had earlier mentioned that they viewed circumcision as a necessary condition for salvation. Now he offers more detail heightening their view by reporting it (again) on the lips of the Judaizers themselves: “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses” (15:5; cf. v. 1).

The Apostles and Elders Convene the Meeting (15:6) 

After hearing the Judaizers’ opinion about requiring gentile believers to live like Jews, Luke offers the briefest of descriptions about what happened next: “The apostles and elders met to consider this question” (15:6) We know the twelve apostles were significant authorities in the community of believers (Acts 1), and Luke has already described the expansion of church leadership in Jerusalem beyond that of the apostles (Acts 6:1–6). Furthermore, given that first-century Jewish society operated with leaders referred to as elders (Greek: presbuteros; cf. 4:5, 8, 23; 6:12; 23:14; 24:1; 25:15; cf. 22:5), it made sense for the new church made up of Jewish believers in Jesus to operate in a similar fashion.15 Indeed, the Antioch church had previously sent Paul and Barnabas as their emissaries to the elders of the Jerusalem church with famine relief aid (11:30), and Luke has provided a glimpse of apostles and elders working together in the leadership of the Jerusalem church when Peter asked that James, the brother of Jesus, be informed about his release from prison (12:17). As it turns out, the apostle Peter and the elder James have important roles in the Jerusalem Council. With Paul and Barnabas and “some other believers” from Antioch (15:2), some of the believers from the party of the Pharisees (15:5), and the apostles and elders (15:6) meeting together, the Jerusalem Council appears to have been a sizable group (contra the Jerusalem visit of Galatians 2 that was held “privately,” and thus seeming to fit the visit of Acts 11:30; cf. Gal 2:2). That the Jerusalem Council was a larger public meeting inclusive of the whole Jerusalem church becomes clear in Acts 15:22, where a decision is reached by “the apostles and elders, with the whole church” (cf. “whole assembly” in 15:12).

Peter Testifies Regarding His Experience (15:7–11)

We are not told how long the Jerusalem Council meeting lasted; Luke simply indicates that there was “much discussion” (15:7). Peter then stands up to address the group in what turns out to be his last appearance in the story of Acts; and notably it is largely a rehearsal of his experience in a previous episode. Peter refers to the time when God had selected him to preach the gospel to gentiles, which Luke’s readers immediately recall as the Cornelius episode of Acts 10:1–48. Peter’s comment that “you know” about this prior event (15:7) harkens back to Acts 11:1–18, when he gave an account of the Cornelius episode to the Jerusalem church. As before, Peter continues to credit God with the inclusion of gentiles, offering as proof that God granted the Holy Spirit to gentile believers “just as he did to us” (15:8; cf. 10:44, 47; 11:15, 17). Peter’s conclusion on God’s salvation of the gentiles is: “He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith” (15:9).

After reflecting on the clarity of God’s intention to include gentiles in the faith, Peter now switches to the issue of how the church is to behave going forward. He asks a sharp question: “Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear?” (15:10). The phrase “why do you try to test God” may well recall for the Jerusalem church the time Peter had asked a similar question of Sapphira: “How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord,” a question followed by the Lord’s sobering and swift act of punishment (5:9–11). Peter’s final statement is an emphatic answer to his own question: “No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are” (15:11). Answering one’s own question in an argument was a known rhetorical device in ancient presentations and is a common feature in Paul’s writing, especially on this topic (e.g., Gal 3:19; Rom 3:1–30; 6:1–4, 15–18; 7:7, 13; cf. Rom 8:31–39; 9:14). In comparing Jewish and gentile salvation experiences, Peter’s comment contains another rhetorical turn of phrase in that he appears to put the gentiles in the position of the standard to be measured against: “we are saved, just as they are.” Readers of Acts know Peter had himself struggled to accept this conclusion (see esp. Acts 10:9–16), and Paul indicates that Peter had struggled with applying this lesson to life (see Gal 2:11–13). But by the time of the Jerusalem Council, Peter is confirmed in his conviction that gentiles need not become full-fledged Jews to be considered full-fledged members of the church.

Barnabas and Paul Testify Regarding Their Experience (15:12)

After Peter’s declaration, the large crowd falls silent and is listening to Barnabas and Paul reporting on their missionary travels in Cyprus and Asia Minor. Earlier Luke had explicitly stated that the Lord “confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them [Paul and Barnabas] to perform miraculous signs and wonders” (Acts 14:3), and now in Acts 15:12, describing their report at the Jerusalem Council, Luke uses the same two terms—“signs and wonders”—perhaps to stress the authenticating role of those supernatural events as confirmation of the need to fully include the gentiles. The reader already knows the position of Paul and Barnabas on the question at hand, and Luke does not recount their words; nonetheless, he mentions that they report on their experiences to those in Jerusalem. Even as Peter’s remarks were about his experience of God’s direction and work through his ministry, so also Barnabas and Paul appear to focus on their experience of God’s work “through them” (15:12).

James Calls Their Attention to Scripture (15:13–18)
When Barnabas and Paul finish their report, James speaks up. We had last heard about this half-brother of Jesus in Acts 12:17, where he already seems to have a position of leadership in the Jerusalem church. Though he was initially among Jesus’s skeptical family members (Mark 3:21; John 7:5), a personal visit from the resurrected Lord (1 Cor 15:7) may well have secured his faith in Jesus as the Messiah. He had a reputation for living by Scripture—a reputation that earns him the nickname “James the Just” (see sidebar)—and was already the author of the earliest of the NT letters (Jas 1:1; ca. AD 44–48).20 Scot McKnight notes that the style of James’s speech in Acts 15 matches the style of the NT epistle of James (see sidebar). It is not surprising that the Scripture-oriented James the Just moves the Council discussion from its focus on experiencing God’s work in history to listening to God’s word in Scripture.

With an appeal for the crowd to listen to him (15:13), James refers to Peter’s experience with gentile conversions—and by implication, that of Barnabas and Paul as well—as God’s caring intervention in the life of the church (15:14) and something Scripture had already anticipated: “The words of the prophets are in agreement with this” (15:15). Indeed, God’s intention to include the gentiles (or “nations”) in his people is an oft-repeated theme in the Hebrew Scriptures (see sidebar). As a sample of such a prophecy, James offers a paraphrase of Amos 9:11–12 (see sidebar). This passage anticipates the restoration of David’s kingdom, and when that happens, gentiles were to be more directly included in the people of God. Jesus, as the Davidic Messiah (cf. Acts 2:29–36; 13:22–23), has inaugurated this anticipated restoration of the Davidic kingdom, so the extension of the kingdom to include gentiles—as gentiles and not by becoming Jewish first—is now underway. Gentiles join the restored kingdom the same way the Jews do: by putting their faith in Jesus the King.

James’s use of Amos 9:11–12 (in Acts 15:16–18) has been the object of much scholarly discussion, particularly because it noticeably follows the LXX translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and contains lines from other prophets. While his citation centers on the words of Amos, to his credit James introduces his citation with the plural “prophets” (15:15), and his introductory “After this I will return” (15:16; cf. Jer 12:15), and his concluding “things known from long ago” (Acts 15:18; cf. Isa 45:21) come from prophetic passages on this same subject (see sidebar). This is perhaps not unlike our everyday conflated citations of Scripture passages introduced generically with “The Bible says, . . .” Furthermore, suggesting that the Hebrew and LXX texts of the Israelite Scriptures were both used in the Jerusalem Council discussion, W. Edward Glenny argues that James’s citation of Amos 9:11–12 from the LXX in Acts 15 is conflated with Jeremiah 12:16 and Zechariah 2:10–11 and that it is the Hebrew text of these latter passages that connect with Leviticus 17–18 from whence the apostolic decree takes its cue. The connection to Leviticus will be addressed shortly. It must be emphasized here that James is pointing the Jerusalem Council back to Scripture. Sometimes people allow their cultural prejudices or personal preferences to misguide their interpretation and application of Scripture. This seems to have been the problem for the Judaizers in their insistence that gentiles must become adherents to Judaism before coming to faith in Jesus. The Judaizers needed to be pointed back to Scripture to have their ideals recalibrated with the truth.

The Conclusion and the Apostolic Decree (15:19–21)

After referencing the teaching of Scripture on the question at hand, James draws a sensible conclusion. As James traces it, the logic of the Jerusalem Council notes two premises that lead to his deduction: (a) via the testimonies of Simon Peter and Barnabas and Paul, we can see God’s work in the world to include gentiles among his renewed people (Acts 15:14; cf. vv. 7–13); and (b) via the prophets like Amos, we can see in Scripture that God’s intentions have always been to include gentiles among his renewed people (15:15–18); therefore (c) Jews are to accept believing gentiles as full-fledged members of God’s renewed people, the church, without requiring them to become Jews first (15:19). In good team-building fashion, James professes this deduction as his own: “It is my judgment” (15:19), but he is confident that the logic is clear to the rest of the group.

As a leader of the church, James knows there will be some pragmatic issues to work out for the application of a decision even if it is an abundantly clear conclusion. So he immediately offers a way forward for applying the decision in the communities of the local churches. The Jews must support Christian community by not placing undue expectations on the gentile believers, but what then should believing gentiles do to support Christian community? James has a ready list of four things that he suggests should be put into writing: “Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood” (15:20). This list is approved by the apostolic leadership and the whole church (15:22) and becomes known as the “apostolic decree” (cf. 16:4 where the NIV has “the decisions” for the Greek ta dogmata, which is rendered “the decrees” in KJV and NET). Before trying to sort these out, it is helpful to look at the rationale James offers for the pragmatic guidelines he is suggesting.

James does not at all suggest that the reason believing gentiles must refrain from these four things—no matter how they might be defined—is so that they might secure their salvation; the gentiles under consideration are already believers who have turned to God (cf. 15:19) and who are saved “through the grace of our Lord Jesus” and not through their own deeds (cf. 15:11). Rather, James offers a pragmatic reason for this particular list of guidelines: “For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath” (15:21)—something other first-century Jewish writers also note (see sidebar). That is, because Jews have been far-flung all over the world in the diaspora, their scrupulous OT lifestyle concerns are easily known among gentiles everywhere. Thus, the prohibitions being suggested are nothing new or burdensome to the gentiles who come to faith in Christ With this general knowledge and for the sake of community in the church, the believing gentiles should be prepared to be sensitive to these particular lifestyle scruples of their Jewish brothers and sisters in Christ. This list of expected behaviors in churches of mixed Jew and gentile memberships would serve a pragmatic purpose of helping to unify the believers in Christ. Promotion of this kind of deference in worship gatherings will display the new identity of all the Christian believers united together. The apostolic decree thus seems to be a pragmatic compromise in the best sense of that term. But as we will soon see, the apostolic decree is also Scripture-motivated.