Acts
15 – "The Apostles Forbade Christians From Keeping the Torah"
by Michael Bugg
Nowhere in Acts do the Emissaries of the
Master "forbid" Gentiles to keep any element of the Torah. On the
contrary, we see in their writings and actions the clear intent that
Gentiles would learn the Holy One's commandments. However, what we do
see is them forbidding the Jewish believers from pressing either
circumcision--conversion from one's native nationality to Jewishness--or
rigid adherance to the Torah as a prerequisite for either salvation
or fellowship. This was done not on the basis of a passing-away of the
Torah, but on the basis of God's clear promise that He would call
Gentiles--not just Jews or converted Jews--by His Name and the fact that
Abraham was saved by faith long before God commanded him to circumcise.
Therefore, on this basis and on the basis of the numerous places in the NT
where the Emissaries enjoined Gentile believers to obedience to God's
commands, we should understand the "Four Laws" to be a starting point, not a
finish line.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
And the apostles and
elders came together for to consider of this matter. . .
[Jacob (James)
said,] “Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among
the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they abstain
from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and
from blood. For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being
read in the synagogues every sabbath day.” (Acts 15:1-6, 19-21, NKJV)
First, note that at no point is the question even raised about Jewish
believers keeping the Torah: It was assumed as a given that they should (cf.
Acts 21:21-25)! The question was how to handle the influx of Gentile converts.
Dealing With the Common Interpretation:Was This the Starting Point or the Finish Line?
Let’s assume
for the moment that the classical interpretation of this passage, that the only
commands from the Torah that Gentile converts were expected to keep were the
four outlined here, is correct.This
immediately begs the question:Did
the Apostles envision these commands as the end-all, be-all of a Gentile
Christian’s walk, or did they merely intend these to be the initial
requirements for salvation and fellowship?The
data strongly favors the latter.
First, notice what is missing
from these four commands: the two most important:
“Rabbi, which of the mitzvoth (commandments) in the Torah
is the most important?”He
[Yeshua] told him, “‘You are to love
the LORD
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
strength.’This is the greatest
and most important mitzvah.And a second is similar to it, ‘You are to love your neighbor as
yourself.’ All of the Torah
and the Prophets are dependent on these two mitzvot.”
(Mat. 22:36-40)
That’s right, the two
foundational commandments on which all Scripture is built are not even brought up by the
Jerusalem
council!That tells us right
there that something other than the creation of a distinct list of commands for
Gentile believers is being discussed here.More
on that in a moment.
“Well, those are the moral
commands, which are universal,” one might argue.“Maybe they’re dealing with which ceremonial commands Gentile
believers are still under.”This
argument falls apart on two points.
First, other ceremonial
commands were indisputably required of Gentile believers and are universally
recognized as such:Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper, for example.It’s
interesting that these rituals (calling them “sacraments” doesn’t change
anything—a ritual is a ritual) which have been at the center of debate in the
Ekklesia for two millennia and which are considered a requirement for salvation
in many groups aren’t even mentioned
here.Furthermore, Paul
commands that the Passover Feast be kept in 1Co.
5:7-8 and told the Colossians not to be dissuaded from observing God’s
Appointed Times in Col.
2:15-17.Jacob tells the
sick to come to the elders for anointing with oil (Jas. 5:14, cf. Mark 6:13).
Second, the Scripture makes no
distinction between the “moral law” and the “ceremonial law”—it’s
all one Torah.It’s surely a moral
commandment to release the poor from their debts, yet that commandment is
intricately linked with the ceremonial observance of the Sabbatical year (Deu.
15).Indeed, since the moral
commandments tell us how to go about loving our neighbor, it stands to reason
that the ceremonial commandments, by which we “tie
them [God’s words] on
your hand as a sign, put them at the front of a headband around your forehead”
(Deu. 6:8, cf. Exo. 13:9) is part-and-parcel of the Prime Commandment, “Sh’ma,
Yisra’el! the LORD Eloheinu, the
LORD echad (Hear O
Israel
, the LORD our God, the LORD is One); and you are to love
the LORD
your God with all your heart, all your being and all your resources” (Deu.
6:4-5, cf. Mark 12:29-30).To try to
separate the two is to say that the Prime Commandment is no longer in effect,
but the second most important commandment is.
On
the contrary, since we see that there were many other commands that the Gentiles
were expected to follow, as evidenced in the epistles, we should understand that
these four commands, if indeed they were the only commands of the Torah required
as a prerequisite to acceptance and
fellowship, were intended as a starting point, not the finishing line.
Salvation by Works?
In this view, the Apostles were dealing with walking a tightrope:If they emphasized Torah-observance and in any way made it a prerequisite
to fellowship, then they would a) send out the message that salvation is by
faith plus works, and b) put an enormous stumbling-block in the way of those who
wanted to come to God. Let's look at those two issues separately a moment.
Issue A is intimately tied to the racial issue which we deal with more
thoroughly below, but it was also tied to avoiding making belief in the Messiah
Yeshua just another mystery religion. Every mystery cult had their "path to
salvation" where if you did x, y, and z exactly right you could supposedly
ascend. Christianity was the only religion which said that not only did God
simply want your trust and love, but which said that if you tried to earn the
gift that was freely offered, you were insulting your Benefactor.
Issue B was just as much a problem: The fact was that many Gentiles simply
could not keep the whole Torah as a matter of practicality. A slave could not
insist on taking the Sabbath off, for example, nor could even many free men.
Being circumcised was considered self-mutilation by the Greeks; imagine if you
tried to join a church and they insisted that you had to cut off your right ear!
Therefore, if they made Torah-observance a matter of fellowship, many who would
otherwise want to repent and come to God would be discouraged.
Salvation by Faith; Growth by the Scriptures
Therefore, they came to a most merciful and graceful decision: They set the
bar for fellowship low. They insisted only that new converts "abstain from
pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from
blood." Each of these four items is directly tied to the pagan practices of
the day: Idolatry, temple prostitution, strangled sacrifices, and drinking blood
were all regular practices which, if the new believer avoided them, would
prevent him from participating in the pagan culture of the first century.
As it turns out,
there is a parallel in the Talmud to the stance the Apostles took:
Then how do I interpret the verse, “That I may take the house
of Israel in their own heart” (Eze. 14: 5)?
Said R. Aha bar Jacob, “That is written
with reference to idolatry. For a master
has said, ‘The sin of idolatry is so weighty that one who denies idolatry is
as though he had confessed to the entirety of the whole Torah.’”
(b. Talmud, Qiddushin 40a)
Likewise, Princeton scholar Dr. Davies writes that the
non-Messianic Judaism of the Apostles' day had developed a whole body of
literature
to popularize the good life among the heathen. It
described the way of life that all men should lead, seeking by means of saws
and aphorisms, narratives and rules, to guide men into the right way.
Judaism . . . recognized that mankind as a while could not accept the Torah
in its fullness but in the derek 'eretz ["Way of the Land"]
literature it offered to all a way that they could follow, a signpost to the
desirable goal. It was, of course, hoped that the knowledge of
derek eretz would whet the appetite of a convert for the whole Torah
later on. (Paul 132f)
This seems to be very much the stance that the Jerusalem Council
took: Separate the Gentiles from idolatry and bring them into the worship of the
One, True God through the Messiah, and it would be as if they kept all of the
Torah--that is, by faith they would be considered as righteous as if they kept
the whole Torah.
Some propose that these items were meant to be the only requirements on
Gentile Christians forever, but if so, by what right did Paul tell the
brethren to stay away from theft and contentiousness or to honor their parents
and send monetary support to
Jerusalem? Why did Jacob command support of the poor and not favoring the rich? None
of these items were on the list!
Therefore, it is understood by those of us on the Messianic side that the
four commandments were never meant as an end, but as a starting-point. By
separating the Gentile believers from idolatry (and this would have its own
social consequences), they would become "clean" enough to enter the
synagogues as God-fearers to worship and learn about the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob alongside their Messianic Jewish brethren. This is why Jacob
concludes with, "For Moses of old
time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every
sabbath day" (v. 21).
The idea was that since the Holy Spirit was being given freely to the
Gentiles who believed, that the Apostles would trust the Spirit to finish what
He had started in His own time. However, even within that expectation, we see
the Apostles exhorting the churches, giving specific commands, and even passing
judgment on those who sinned, so it was not expected to be an automatic or
smooth process. But it was one that they ultimately trusted in God to bring to
completeness.
A new believer once asked me
the other week about the relationship between faith and works and how he could
know he was saved.I told him,
“You know you are saved because you have trusted Yeshua for the work He has
done, not what you have done.Like
Israel
, you have already been delivered from
Egypt
by God’s grace and now you are at
Mt.
Sinai
to learn what He wants to teach you.You’ve
been given a new heart, a new inmost being that earnestly desires to obey God.So when you read His Word, don’t look at it as a set of commands that
you’re in trouble if you don’t memorize and keep them all; look at them as
the words of your beloved Father, who is teaching you bit by bit and day by day
to be more like him.”
One of the three major events
which resulted in me becoming a Messianic was enjoying a Passover dinner given
by Rabbi Scott Sekulow at the Southern Baptist church I was then a member of.I was amazed at how every element pointed to Christ, and I couldn’t
figure out why we as Christians weren’t regularly celebrating this feast.It had nothing to do with feeling “under the law,” or fearing that if
I didn’t keep it I was in trouble.Rather,
God in His Spirit spoke to me through the Passover, and blessed me through it.Around the world, millions of Christians are starting to discover the
same joy of keeping God’s Feastdays and discovering their Jewish roots.They didn’t do so because someone told them it was a requirement, but
because like the 1st Century Gentile believers, somebody preached
Moses to them in their synagogue (church), and the Spirit responded in them.I think the Apostles meant for the same to happen, so that learning about
God would be a joy instead of a crushing burden.
But There’s More!Ethnicity and Tradition and the
Jerusalem
Council
So far, we
have dealt only with the common interpretation of Acts 15 that the four commands
given here were the only parts of “the Law” that Gentile believers were (and
are) required to keep.We have seen
that even if that interpretation is largely correct, since the Apostles gave or
alluded to additional commands from the Torah which should be kept in their
epistles (as indeed Yeshua did in the Gospel accounts as well), that we can only
understand these commands to be the prerequisites
to salvation and fellowship, not the end-point of a new believer’s growth.
However, the context of the
passage tells us that there was something more going on, as does a comparison of
Scripture-to-Scripture.Indeed, we
find as we probe deeper that the issue before the Council was not
Torah-observance, but ethnicity—which is to say, cultural identity—and
tradition!
The First Key:Entering the Synagogues
Jacob's final statement is the
first key to truly understanding this passage.Here it is as rendered in the CJB:
“Therefore, my opinion
is that we should not put obstacles in the way of the Goyim who are turning to God.Instead,
we should write them a letter telling them to abstain from things polluted by
idols, from fornication, from what is strangled and from blood.For from the earliest times, Moshe has had in every city those who
proclaim him, with his words being read in the synagogues every Shabbat.”(Acts 15:19-21)
Here Jacob links the four
commandments that they imposed on the Gentiles with the preaching of
Moshe—that is, the Torah delivered by Moshe—in the synagogues.This has often been interpreted by commentators to mean, “After all,
we’ve heard the Law taught in the synagogues for fifteen centuries, and it
hasn’t done us any good, so why should we make the Gentile Christians obey
it?”However, this interpretation
is flawed.Remember that in this
time, the Ekklesia had not yet separated from the synagogue.Indeed, we see that Gentiles often swamped the synagogues to hear this
word of the Messiah who came to save the whole world (cf. Acts 13:42ff, 14:1ff).There was nowhere else for them to go to hear of the One True God, but
they were often opposed by those Jews who did not believe in Yeshua.
Now note carefully what caused
the uproars that Paul and Bar-Nabba (Barnabas) faced as they tried to preach
the word of the Messiah:It wasn’t
their teaching that the Messiah had come in the person of Yeshua, but rather
that the Gentiles were flooding into the synagogues.Luke tells us that “when the Jews
who had not believed saw the crowds” in Antioch-Pisidia,
“they were filled with jealousy” (Acts 13:45), and it was this jealousy,
this desire to keep the synagogue “a Jewish thing” that provoked those who
were not persuaded that Yeshua was the Messiah to attack the Gospel.We see the same thing happening again in Iconium (14:5).
Therefore, we should
understand Jacob's closing remark to be connected to the uproar caused by
the Gentiles trying to enter the synagogues to learn about the God of Israel.We’ll return to this point in a moment.
The Second Key:Salvation by Ethnicity?
Since this is
the immediate context of the events leading up to the Jerusalem Council, we need
to factor it into our understanding of the source of the controversy and
Jacob's judgment.First, the
controversy:The original issue (in
15:1) was not over the Torah, but that some Judeans taught the Gentile brothers,
“You can’t be saved unless you undergo b’rit–milah (circumcision)
in the manner prescribed by Moshe.”Later,
some of the Messianic Pharisees added to this that they must also keep the Torah
(v. 5), but the first issue was a matter of ethnicity; that is, cultural
identity.
First, let us look at what
circumcision meant in the 1st Century.It was more than just the removal of the foreskin (though that in itself
was a barrier to the Greeks, as already mentioned); rather, “circumcision”
was synonymous with “being a Jew” (cf. Gal. 2:7ff, Col. 3:11).When a Gentile was circumcised as a proselyte, he ceased to be a Greek
(for example) and became a Jew.By
saying that one had to be circumcised as a prerequisite
for salvation, the Judaizers were saying that God only cared about the Jews.Such a view was actually contrary to the Torah itself, not just the New
Testament; Israel
was supposed to be a priestly nation (Exo. 19:6), ministering to the nations as
the Levitical cohenim ministered to
the tribes, and teaching them about the Eternal Father and His ways.Instead, by the 1st Century,
Israel
had built a wall around the
Temple
to keep the Gentiles from drawing near!
It is a common misperception
that Judaism teaches that one is saved by obeying the Torah—a misperception
that many Jews today believe.However,
the Mishnah teaches that a Jew’s place in the world-to-come is not on the
basis of his merits, but on being a member of God’s covenant people,
Israel
:
All Israelites have a share in the world to come, as it is
said, "your people also shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land
forever; the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be
glorified." (m. Sanhedron 11:1)
It was only natural then, that
when the Gentiles began flooding into the synagogues to hear about the Messiah
that a loving and holy God had sent to redeem them, the larger Jewish community,
to whom Yeshua’s Messiahship was still an open question, responded by saying
that these Gentiles could indeed be saved—if they entered Israel’s covenants by undergoing the rabbinical
ceremony of circumcision, giving up their identity as Gentiles and becoming
fully Jewish (Acts 15:1).
This was the original question
before the Jerusalem Council:It
wasn’t a question of whether Gentiles should obey God’s commands, but a
question of whether salvation was by faith in Yeshua HaMashiach regardless of
one’s genealogy, or whether salvation was by faith plus being Jewish!
When faced with this
controversy, the Jerusalem council opposed the Judaizers on two bases:First, the obvious work of the Holy Spirit, who for example did not wait
until Cornelius and his family proselytized to Jewishness but instead came upon
them in power while they were still Gentiles (Acts 10:44-48).And second, on the basis of a prophecy in Amos 9:11-12 which said that
there would be Gentiles, not just
converted Jews, called by God’s Name.This
prophecy was hardly alone in the Tanakh (the OT); for example, Isa. 11:10 says,
“And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse (the Messiah), who shall stand
as a banner to the people; for the Gentiles shall seek Him, and His resting
place shall be glorious.”The
apostles therefore understood that to force Gentiles to become Jews to receive
full fellowship was to deny God’s promises and deny the evidence of the
Spirit.
The Third Key:The “Yoke” of the Oral Torah
"But,"
one might object, "didn't the Apostles also call the Torah a yoke too heavy
to bear (Acts 15:10)?" Not at all! First, let us consider what the Torah
has to say about itself:
For thismitzvah which I am giving
you today is not too hard for you, it is not beyond your reach.It isn’t in the sky, so that you need to ask, ‘Who will go up into
the sky for us, bring it to us and make us hear it, so that we can obey it?’Likewise, it isn’t beyond the sea, so that you need to ask, ‘Who will
cross the sea for us, bring it to us and make us hear it, so that we can obey
it?’On
the contrary, the word is very close to you–– in your mouth, even in your
heart; therefore, you can do it! (Deu. 30:11-14)
In other words, there is
nothing about the Torah that is arduous or humanly impossible to keep—and in
that lies our just condemnation under God’s Law. If keeping His commandments
was impossible, then He wouldn’t hold us accountable for keeping them; but
having given us a Torah that we could keep, our true rebellious nature is made
manifest.
Yeshua Himself, though endorsing every last letter of the Torah and saying that
those who taught against keeping the least command would be the least in the
Kingdom of Heaven (note that the issue is teaching falsely, and that it clearly
isn't a salvational issue), said, "Come
to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in
heart, and you will find rest for your souls.For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." (Mat. 11:28-30,
NKJV)—this in contrast to the heavy burdens His contemporary rabbis were tying
to mens’ backs (23:4). He did not
regard the Torah—properly interpreted and applied—to be a burden.
No, this heavy yoke must be something else; and by simply carefully studying the
debates between Yeshua and the Pharisees, it's not hard to understand what it
was: Yeshua never once criticized a single commandment of the Torah, but
vehemently opposed adding commandments to the Torah so as to make it a burden or
pervert its meaning. For example, He condemned the Pharisees for judging others
on how (or if) they ceremonially washed their hands, or for gleaning a bit of
food on the Sabbath, or for allowing one to sidestep their oaths and their
obligation to care for (honor) their parents by way of legal loopholes. It was
the addition of literally thousands of extra-Torahic commands, too many for any
other than a scholar to even keep track of, which made the Torah a burden—and
it was that culture of legalism that the Apostles wished to protect the Gentile
converts from, not the Torah itself.
Tim Hegg (Writer
262-263, 264) explains:
The use of the term “yoke” in the Rabbinic literature is
well attested.The Midrashim speak
of the “yoke of the Torah,” as well as the “yoke of God” and “yoke of
the kingdom of heaven,” while Sifra and
the Mishnah include “yoke of the
commandments.”For the Sages, the
metaphor of the “yoke” was one of willful submission to the Torah and thus
ultimately to the rule of God.
But when the rulings of men became so intertwined with the
written Torah that for all practical purposes the two were one, to neglect the
traditions of the Sages was viewed as a neglect of Torah.Remember, one of the Sayings of the Fathers warns that interpretations of
the Torah that differed from received halachah
render a person unfit for the world-to-come.The implication is obvious: to throw off the traditions was to cast away
the “yoke of the commandments” and to mark oneself as a heretic.
. . . Yet Paul was unwilling to require the Gentiles to submit
to the many man-made laws of the rabbis in order to be received into the
community of believers.And his
decision to move in this direction was considered by some to be worthy of death.The “yoke” of tradition had sat across the neck of
Israel
for so long that it was impossible for many to ever envision a genuine faith in
God without it.And when it came to
the Gentiles it was impossible to consider receiving them apart from their
willing submission to the man-made ceremony of the proselyte.
“But the Pharisees
specifically refer to the Law (v. 5),” one might object.This is true.However,
remember what the Law meant to the Pharisees, and indeed means to observant Jews
today:Not just the written Torah,
but their traditions, the “Oral Torah,” as well.Thus we see on the
JewFAQ
website, under the Rambam’s Thirteen Principles of Faith:“The Written Torah (first 5 books of the Bible) and Oral Torah
(teachings now contained in the Talmud and other writings) were given to
Moses.”To the Pharisees, the
Written and Oral Torah were inseparable, and one cannot keep one without keeping
the other.Thus we see them:
Accusing Yeshua of breaking the Sabbath by healing,
even though healing was not specifically prohibited on the Sabbath by the
Torah.
Accusing Yeshua’s disciples of breaking the Sabbath
for gleaning a snack from a field, even though this too is not specifically
prohibited by the Torah.
Accusing Yeshua’s disciples, and later the Master
Himself, of breaking a commandment by not ritually washing their hands
before a meal.
As we have already seen, the four commands the
Jerusalem
council decided upon don’t correspond to any other list in Scripture, and in
fact seem pointed at getting the Gentiles out of the pagan temples.But there’s another aspect to the specific list here that Hegg
explains.He points out that in the
initial list (v. 20) the definite article “the” appears before each of the
four items indicates that “[e]ach of the four must have been things that both
the Jewish community as well as the Gentiles were aware of and that could be
identified by single terms” (p. 272); the second list lacks the definite
articles so that “it consists of only four words connected by the word
‘and’” (p. 270), so as to make the list easier to memorize and pass on.He goes on to suggest that the different order of the second list was so
that “the two items that primarily identified the idol worship of the pagan
temples . . . became the ‘bookends’ to envelop the entire list” so that
“the four items given to the Gentiles are a unified whole identifying idol
worship in pagan temples” (p. 272).
Thus rather than listing four separate categories of
prohibited practices for the Gentiles, the four requirements describe a single
category—the pagan temples and their rituals.And though idolatry would naturally be considered outside the scope of a
believer’s life, what the Apostles are calling for was conformity to the
additional rabbinic halachah that
pertained to idolatry—the “fences” not found in Scripture but necessary in
this realm for inclusion into the Jewish community.
If the Mishnah give
us a picture of the 1st Century rabbinic viewpoint then we can see
that fences had been built to guarantee a clear separation between synagogual
community and the idolatry of the Hellenistic culture in which it existed.The Apostles were willing to lay this “burden” upon the believing
Gentiles in order to preserve them from any accusations of idolatry, something
that could have never been tolerated in the wider Jewish community.(p. 273)
This understanding matches the
contents of the list itself:While
fornication and ingesting blood are specifically prohibited by the Torah, eating
something strangled (provided that the blood is drained) and eating food that
had been sacrificed to idols are not.They
are logical inferences one can make from the Torah’s general prohibition
against idolatry (strangulation being one of the chief means by which animals
were sacrificed in Greek culture), but then, that’s what halakha
is supposed to be.
Conclusion
The Jerusalem Council's decisions have long been misunderstood by the Ekklesia
as a whole. We have seen that the Jerusalem Council never even considered
the idea that the Torah was no longer valid and binding on Jewish
believers. We have also seen that they were a) dealing only with the prerequisites
for salvation and fellowship by the Gentile believers and b) were most likely
dealing with the issue of how much rabbinical tradition was incumbent on the
Gentile believers, not with how much of the written Torah was valid. In
either case, we have seen that the issue was how best to bring the Gentiles into
the synagogues to learn about God from the Torah.
Ultimately,
the problem faced by the Jerusalem Council is not unlike that faced by many
congregations today: How exactly does one go about introducing new
believers to the faith? Their answer was a most gracious one that we can
learn from: Those professing the Messiah were required to distance
themselves from their former pagan lives in order to enter the synagogues--the
houses of worship and study--where they would hear the Word of God preached and
be encouraged to grow in the Spirit.
