Acts 15:1

‘The Circumcision Difficulty, and the First Council of the Church, 1 - 36.

Acts 15:1 . And certain men which came down from Judea taught the brethren. The general aspects of this famous controversy are discussed in Excursus A, at the end of the chapter. The ‘certain men' are alluded to by St. Paul in the Galatian Epistle, Acts 2:4, in the following terms: ‘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.' They were probably, for the most part, Pharisees of an extreme sect who had embraced the gospel. Epiphanius and other early writers tell us that the leader of these men was Cerinthus, who excited the believers against Peter when he baptized the Roman centurion (see Acts 11:2-3).

Which came down from Judea. This party, which maintained that the Mosaic ceremonial was binding upon all Gentile as well as Jewish Christians, naturally had their headquarters in Jerusalem. In the ancient Hebrew capital it was difficult to separate the Church from the temple. We find most of the Christian leaders, who first taught that the Gentiles were free from the yoke of the Mosaic law, made Antioch, and later Ephesus and Alexandria, their residence.

Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved. These Jewish teachers proclaimed a certain doctrine in a distinct and formal manner; they did not confine themselves to the expression of certain scruples; they asserted positively that Gentile Christians could not possibly be saved unless they submitted to the various rules and ordinances of the Mosaic law, of which circumcision was the initial ceremony, thus denying the sufficiency of faith in Christ as the condition of pardon and reconciliation. But the hearts of the Antioch teachers were deeply penetrated by the great truth that ‘we are saved not by the law but by grace.'