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The Story of Redemption
They asserted, with great assurance, that none could be saved without
being circumcised and keeping the entire ceremonial law.
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This was an important question, and one which affected the
church in a very great degree. Paul and Barnabas met it with prompt-
ness, and opposed introducing the subject to the Gentiles. They
were opposed in this by the believing Jews of Antioch, who favored
the position of those from Judea. The matter resulted in much dis-
cussion and want of harmony in the church, until finally the church
at Antioch, apprehending that a division among them would occur
from any further discussion of the question, decided to send Paul
and Barnabas, together with some responsible men of Antioch, to
Jerusalem, to lay the matter before the apostles and elders. There
they were to meet delegates from the different churches, and those
who had come to attend the approaching annual festivals. Mean-
while all controversy was to cease, until a final decision should be
made by the responsible men of the church. This decision was then
to be universally accepted by the various churches throughout the
country.
Upon arriving at Jerusalem the delegates from Antioch related
before the assembly of the churches the success that had attended
the ministry with them, and the confusion that had resulted from
the fact that certain converted Pharisees declared that the Gentile
converts must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses in order to
be saved.
The Jews had prided themselves upon their divinely appointed
services; and they concluded that as God once specified the Hebrew
manner of worship, it was impossible that He should ever authorize
a change in any of its specifications. They decided that Christianity
must connect itself with the Jewish laws and ceremonies. They were
slow to discern to the end of that which had been abolished by the
death of Christ, and to perceive that all their sacrificial offerings had
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but prefigured the death of the Son of God, in which type had met
its antitype, rendering valueless the divinely appointed ceremonies
and sacrifices of the Jewish religion.
Paul had prided himself upon his Pharisaical strictness; but after
the revelation of Christ to him on the road to Damascus the mission
of the Saviour and his own work in the conversion of the Gentiles
were plain to his mind, and he fully comprehended the difference