Acts 15:5

5. The Judaizers did not hesitate to declare fully their own position. (5) "But some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed, rose up, saying, It was necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses." This party is here identified as converts from the old sect of the Pharisees. We have had no account hitherto of any large accessions to the Church from this party; but this incidental remark shows that some of these obstinate opposers of the truth had yielded, and were now occupying positions of influence in the congregation. Paul now once more meets some of his companions in the persecution of the disciples, not to harmonize with them, nor to dispute with them in the synagogues concerning the claims of Christ; but to contend, within the Church itself, against that same disposition to perpetuate the law which had made them formerly fight against the gospel. He had a bad opinion of some of them, which must have been well-founded, or he would not have given the public utterance to it which he did at a subsequent period. He styles them, in the Epistle to the Galatians, "False brethren, unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage." Having witnessed a rapid increase of the congregations under the pressure of the persecutions and disputations to which they had formerly resorted, these wily enemies of the truth determined at length to corrupt and destroy, under the guise of friendship, a cause whose progress they could not impede by open enmity. They well knew, what some of the brethren had failed to discover, that the doctrine of Christ would be rendered powerless if it could only be hampered by bondage to the law. Even to this day the mass of religious teachers have failed to learn this lesson, though the experience of ages has demonstrated its truth. The essential issue between Paul and the Pharisees had reference to the perpetuation of the law of Moses in the Church of Christ, and the same issue has been in debate, under various aspects, from that day to this. Paul defeated the attempt of these Judaizers to fasten circumcision on the Church; but subsequent Judaizers imposed infant immersion, and finally, infant sprinkling as a substitute. What the early Pharisees failed to accomplish in the face of apostolic opposition, the later Pharisees did accomplish under a thin disguise. The unsuccessful attempt of those Pharisees to "spy out the liberty which the disciples had in Christ Jesus, and bring them into bondage" under the law, has been successfully accomplished by these, in teaching men that the Church of Christ originated in Abraham's family, and that the Jewish tribes and the Christian congregations constitute but one identical Church. The Roman apostasy perpetuates the pompous ritual and daily sacrifice of the old temple; religious zealots slaughter Canaanites in the form of modern heretics; professed Christians go to war under the old battle-cry of "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon;" the Latter-day Saints emulate the Turks in the multiplication of wives; and for all these corruptions authority is found in the laws and customs of ancient Israel. The intelligent reader of the New Testament knows scarcely which of these errors is most repugnant to the truth; but must, like Paul, struggle with untiring energy and ceaseless vigilance to uproot them all from the minds of men.