Soyeong
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While this all sounds good, it doesn't align with the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. as follows...
Acts 15
1Some men came down from Judea and began teaching the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2And when Paul and Barnabas had great dissension and debate with them, the brethren determined that Paul and Barnabas and some others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders concerning this issue. 3Therefore, being sent on their way by the church, they were passing through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and were bringing great joy to all the brethren. 4When they arrived at Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. 5But some of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed stood up, saying, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to direct them to observe the Law of Moses.”
6The apostles and the elders came together to look into this matter. 7After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and believe. 8“And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; 9and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. 10“Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? 11“But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are.”
And this was the written letter that was sent back to the believers...
it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials:
29that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. Farewell.”
There was clearly no directive to observe the Law of Moses in the written reply.
It is agreed however that He indwells the believer and the Law of the Spirit is active in our hearts.
This demands more specific obedience to Jesus in the details of life - much more than studying a written Law would ever do.
So the bar has been raised - we will have to agree to disagree.
In Acts 15:1, they were wanting to require all Gentiles to become circumcised in order to become saved, however, that was never the purpose for why God commanded circumcision, so the problem was that circumcision was being used for a man-made purpose that went above a beyond the purpose for which God commanded it. So the Jerusalem Council upheld the Mosaic Law by correctly ruling against that requirement, and ruling against requiring something that God never commanded should not be mistaken as being a ruling against obeying what God has commanded as if the Jerusalem Council had the authority to countermand God.
In Isaiah 45:17, it says that all Israel will be saved, and in Matthew 15:24, Jesus said that he came only for the lost sheep of Israel, so it was not entirely unreasonable for an Israelite to think that Gentiles needed to become circumcised in order to become Jews in order to became an Israelite in order to become saved or to think that they were born into Israel, so they were saved simply because they were circumcised, but even Jews needed to obey and be born again. This is where Paul criticized Israelites, such as in Romans 2, for considering themselves to have a higher status than Gentiles because they were circumcised while they were dishonoring God among the Gentiles by not obeying the Mosaic Law. In Romans 2:25-26, circumcision has value if we obey the Mosaic Law, but if we break the law, then it becomes uncircumcision, but if an uncircumcised man keeps it, then he is regarded as circumcised. In Acts 15:7, God chose that by his mouth Gentiles should hear the word of the Gospel and believe. Gentiles In Acts 15:14-17, Simeon related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for His name and saw that as part of Gentiles being included as part of the restoration of Israel in fulfillment of prophecy, so they did not need to become circumcised in order to become Jews in order to become part of Israel in order to become saved because they were already part of Israel because they had been called by God's name because they had heard and believed the Gospel. So it was by grace through faith that Gentiles will be saved in the same means as Jews (Acts 15:11).
In Deuteronomy 30:11-14, it says that God's law is not too difficult to obey, so take your pick:
1.) God is right in Deuteronomy 30:11-14 and the Jerusalem Council is wrong in Acts 15:10.
2.) God is wrong in Deuteronomy 30:11-14 and the Jerusalem Council is right in Acts 15:10.
3.) They are both right, but are not speaking about the same thing.
As I pointed out in my first paragraph, they were discussing whether Gentiles were required to do something that went above and beyond what the Mosaic Law required, so my pick is #3.
Either the four laws lists in Acts 15:19-21 are an exhaustive list of everything that would ever be required of a mature Gentile believe, or they are not, but the moment you say that there are other laws that are included, then you can no longer use it at a list that limits which laws Gentiles are required to obey. To use an analogy, when an employer hires a new employee, then they don't start by making them memorize everything that they will ever need to know about how to do their job up front, but rather in order to avoid making things too difficult for them they start off by teaching them the basics with the understanding that they will continue to learn the rest over time. In the same way, they did not want to make things too difficult for new believers coming to Christin, so they started them off with the basics that would allow for a clean break from paganism with the understanding that they would continue to learn the how to do the rest over time, which they excused in verse 21 by saying that Gentiles would to learn about Moses every Sabbath in the synagogues.
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