Chapter 19—Jew and Gentile
This chapter is based on
Acts 15:1-35
.
On reaching Antioch in Syria, from which place they had been
sent forth on their mission, Paul and Barnabas took advantage of an
early opportunity to assemble the believers and rehearse “all that God
had done with them, and how He had opened the door of faith unto the
Gentiles.”
Acts 14:27
. The church at Antioch was a large and growing
one. A center of missionary activity, it was one of the most important
of the groups of Christian believers. Its membership was made up of
many classes of people from among both Jews and Gentiles.
While the apostles united with the ministers and lay members
at Antioch in an earnest effort to win many souls to Christ, certain
Jewish believers from Judea “of the sect of the Pharisees” succeeded
in introducing a question that soon led to wide-spread controversy in
the church and brought consternation to the believing Gentiles. With
great assurance these Judaizing teachers asserted that in order to be
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saved, one must be circumcised and must keep the entire ceremonial
law.
Paul and Barnabas met this false doctrine with promptness and
opposed the introduction of the subject to the Gentiles. On the other
hand, many of the believing Jews of Antioch favored the position of
the brethren recently come from Judea.
The Jewish converts generally were not inclined to move as rapidly
as the providence of God opened the way. From the result of the apos-
tles’ labors among the Gentiles it was evident that the converts among
the latter people would far exceed the Jewish converts in number. The
Jews feared that if the restrictions and ceremonies of their law were not
made obligatory upon the Gentiles as a condition of church fellowship,
the national peculiarities of the Jews, which had hitherto kept them
distinct from all other people, would finally disappear from among
those who received the gospel message.
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