The Liberty That Binds Text: Acts 15:22-29
Introduction: The Crisis of Unity
The book of Acts is the story of the Holy Spirit blowing the doors of the kingdom wide open. What began in an upper room in Jerusalem is now spilling out into the Gentile world, and as you might expect, this is causing some growing pains. The central conflict of the early church was not primarily about fending off persecution from the outside, though there was plenty of that. The most dangerous threat was a theological one from the inside. The question was this: Does a Gentile have to become a Jew in order to become a Christian? Does a man have to enter the covenant of Abraham through Moses before he can enter it through Christ?
A faction from Judea, men from the sect of the Pharisees who had believed, came down to Antioch and began teaching the brothers that "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved." This was no small kerfuffle. This was a direct assault on the gospel of grace. It was an attempt to put the new wine of the kingdom back into the old, brittle wineskins of the Mosaic covenant. Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, and so the church at Antioch sent them up to Jerusalem to settle the matter with the apostles and elders. That meeting, the Jerusalem Council, is what we have been looking at.
And after much debate, after testimony from Peter, Paul, and Barnabas about what God was doing among the Gentiles, James, the brother of the Lord, renders the verdict. The verdict is a decisive no. The Gentiles do not need to be circumcised. They do not need to come under the yoke of the ceremonial law. They are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, exactly the same way the Jews are. This was a landmark decision, a theological Magna Carta for the Gentile world.
But a verdict is one thing; communicating and implementing it is another. Our text today deals with the pastoral wisdom of the Jerusalem church in handling this delicate and potentially explosive situation. They don't just issue a dry, theological decree. They send a high level delegation with a carefully worded letter. They understand that true church unity is not achieved by theological abstractions alone, but by relational wisdom, mutual respect, and a shared submission to the Holy Spirit. They are dealing with a clash of cultures, a collision of worlds, and they do so with a remarkable blend of doctrinal firmness and pastoral sensitivity. This is a lesson in ecclesiastical statesmanship that the modern church desperately needs to relearn.
The Text
Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them, Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brothers, to send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, and they sent this letter by them, "The apostles and the brothers who are elders, to the brothers in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia who are from the Gentiles, greetings. Since we have heard that some of us, to whom we gave no instruction, have gone out and disturbed you with their words, unsettling your souls, it seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to select men to send to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we have sent Judas and Silas, and they themselves will report the same things by word of mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from sexual immorality, from which if you keep yourselves, you will do well. Farewell.”
(Acts 15:22-29 LSB)
Conciliar Wisdom and Personal Touch (vv. 22-23)
The first thing to notice is the unified and personal way the council acts.
"Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them, Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brothers, to send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas..." (Acts 15:22)
The decision is not just from the apostles and elders. It is "with the whole church." This is not a top-down, hierarchical decree from a detached magisterium. This is the body of Christ moving together. True biblical authority is never a matter of raw power, but of mature consensus under the Word and Spirit. The leadership leads, but they bring the congregation along with them. This is corporate sanity. They understand that a decision this momentous needs the buy-in of the whole community.
And they don't just send a memo. They send men, "leading men among the brothers." They send Judas Barsabbas and Silas, along with Paul and Barnabas. This is crucial. A letter can be misinterpreted, argued with, or dismissed. But a personal testimony from trusted leaders is much harder to ignore. By sending their own men from Jerusalem, they are showing solidarity with Paul and Barnabas and giving their full endorsement to the message. They are saying, "These men speak for us." Silas, of course, will go on to become a key partner in Paul's missionary journeys. This is how the church's leadership bench is built, in the midst of doctrinal conflict and mission.
The letter itself is addressed with familial warmth: "The apostles and the brothers who are elders, to the brothers in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia who are from the Gentiles, greetings." They are not "subjects" or "laity." They are brothers. This is the language of covenant, of family. The whole affair is handled as a family dispute, and the resolution is a family affair.
Disavowing the Troublemakers (vv. 24-27)
The council begins by clearly and publicly disowning the Judaizers.
"Since we have heard that some of us, to whom we gave no instruction, have gone out and disturbed you with their words, unsettling your souls, it seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to select men to send to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Acts 15:24-26)
Notice the frankness. "Some of us... have gone out and disturbed you." They take ownership of the problem. These men came from their church, but they did so without authorization: "to whom we gave no instruction." This is a public rebuke. The Jerusalem church is making it clear that these legalists were rogue agents. They were not representing the apostles. Their teaching was not just wrong; it was spiritually destructive. It "disturbed" and "unsettled" the souls of the Gentile believers. This is what legalism always does. It replaces the peace of the gospel with the anxiety of performance. It replaces the assurance of grace with the constant dread of not measuring up.
In contrast to these unauthorized troublemakers, the council gives a glowing commendation of Barnabas and Paul. They are "our beloved," and they are "men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." This is a powerful endorsement. The Judaizers came with words, unsettling souls. Paul and Barnabas came with the gospel, risking their lives. The council is telling the church in Antioch to judge the messengers by their fruit and their scars. Who are you going to trust? The men who are adding burdens to your soul, or the men who are laying down their lives for the Lord?
And again, they emphasize the personal testimony of Judas and Silas who "will report the same things by word of mouth." The written word is confirmed by the living word of trusted witnesses. This is a pattern of biblical authority: the word and the witness together.
The Necessary Burdens (vv. 28-29)
Now we come to the heart of the decree, and it is a masterpiece of pastoral wisdom.
"For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from sexual immorality, from which if you keep yourselves, you will do well. Farewell.” (Acts 15:28-29)
First, look at the basis of their authority. "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us." This is an astonishing claim. They are asserting that their conciliar decision is in alignment with the will of the Holy Spirit. This is not arrogance. This is the confidence that comes from wrestling with the Scriptures in the community of the saints, under the guidance of the Spirit. The Spirit works through the appointed means of church government. When elders and apostles gather to seek the mind of Christ from the Word, they can have a holy confidence that their conclusions are not merely their own.
Their conclusion is to lay "no greater burden" on the Gentiles. The gospel is a release from burdens, not an imposition of them. But liberty is not license. They are free from the Mosaic ceremonial law, but they are not free from the law of Christ. So the council identifies four "essentials" that the Gentile believers must abstain from.
Why these four things? These are not arbitrary rules. They are prohibitions designed to address the specific challenges of Gentile-Jewish fellowship in the first century. They are boundary markers for the sake of love and unity. First, "things sacrificed to idols." In the pagan world, much of the meat sold in the marketplace had first been offered in a pagan temple. For a Jew, eating such meat was tantamount to idolatry. For a Gentile Christian, it could be a stumbling block, a temptation to slide back into their old pagan ways. Paul will deal with this issue at length in 1 Corinthians 8-10, but the principle here is clear: Christian liberty must be exercised in love, and we must be willing to restrict our freedom for the sake of our weaker brother.
Second and third, "from blood and from things strangled." This goes back to the Noahic covenant (Genesis 9:4), which predates the Mosaic law and applies to all humanity. The life is in the blood, and this prohibition was a fundamental part of Jewish dietary law. For Gentiles to disregard this would make table fellowship with their Jewish brothers and sisters impossible. It was a matter of basic cultural and religious respect.
Fourth, "from sexual immorality." The Greek word is porneia, which covers a whole range of sexual sin that was rampant and normalized in the Greco-Roman world: fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and temple prostitution. The Judaizers were wrong to insist on circumcision, but they were right to be concerned about the moral laxity of the Gentile world. The council makes it clear that grace is not a license to sin. Freedom in Christ is freedom from sin, not freedom to sin. This is a permanent, moral requirement of the law of God. It is not a temporary cultural concession; it is a universal ethical command.
These four prohibitions, then, are not a new legalism. They are the practical application of the law of love. Three of them are temporary, pastoral concessions for the sake of unity between two vastly different cultures. The fourth is a permanent moral absolute. The goal is fellowship. The goal is to enable Jews and Gentiles, who for centuries had been separated by a wall of hostility, to eat together, worship together, and live together as one new man in Christ.
Conclusion: The Gospel of Accommodating Love
This episode is a profound illustration of the nature of Christian liberty. Christian liberty is not the right to do whatever you want. It is the power to do what you ought. And what we ought to do is love our brother. The Judaizers had a gospel of subtraction; they wanted to subtract grace by adding law. The libertines then and now have a gospel of selfish addition; they want to add their own lusts to the gospel. But the apostolic gospel is a gospel of loving accommodation.
The strong must accommodate the weak. The one with greater knowledge must bend for the sake of the one with a weaker conscience. The Gentile believers were free in Christ, but they were called to use that freedom to serve their Jewish brothers, not to flaunt it. They were asked to lay down certain rights for the sake of a higher good, which was the unity of the body of Christ.
This principle is timeless. We live in a church and a world that is fractured along countless lines: political, cultural, racial, and preferential. The temptation is always to turn our preferences into principles, and our traditions into divine law. We erect fences where God has torn down walls. We bind consciences where Christ has set them free. Or, on the other side, we use our freedom as a club to beat those who don't see things our way, showing no regard for their conscience or their walk with the Lord.
The Jerusalem Council shows us a better way. It is the way of doctrinal fidelity coupled with pastoral charity. It is the way of laying down our rights for the sake of our brother. It is the way of recognizing what is essential and what is not. The essential thing is the gospel of grace. The essential thing is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything else must serve that great reality. When we make secondary things primary, we unsettle souls. But when we major on the majors, and show grace in the minors, we build a church where it can truly be said, "it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us." And that is a church that will do well.