The Gentile Pentecost (Acts 8-15)Sýnishorn

Circumcision: What is required?

‘Unless you are circumcised according to the law of Moses, you cannot be saved’ (Acts 15:2).

Some people were teaching: It’s good to see these Gentiles becoming disciples of Jesus but they need to become ‘proper’ disciples by being circumcised and becoming Jews, (and by implication follow all the Mosaic law)?

Circumcision in the Old Covenant showed that you were a member of the Old Covenant just as Baptism is the public demonstration that a person believes in Jesus.

So to put it differently, the big question was does a person have to become a Jew (by being circumcised), in order to become a Christian? ‘The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses’ (Acts 15:5).

In Acts 15, for the very first time, all the key people in the church get together to decide the issue.

Their answer was an emphatic; NO!

Believers in Jesus do not need to be circumcised.

This was their answer; ‘It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality’(Acts 15:28-29).

The two rulings about abstaining from blood and the meat of strangled animals seems to be a concession to the most orthodox Jewish disciples, (and neither of these is ever mentioned again in scripture).

The ruling about food sacrificed to idols has to do with idolatry.

So, while male disciples of Jesus do not need to be circumcised, there are two things that all Jesus’ disciples must abstain from; sexual immorality and idolatry. Paul elaborates both of these in detail in 1 Corinthians 5-10. To transgress sexually damages you and other people which is why disciples must abstain from sexual immorality. To transgress spiritually will damage your spiritual life with Jesus which is why disciples must abstain from idolatry.

Paul gets to the heart of the issue when he writes; ‘You my brothers and sisters were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, rather ‘Serve one another in love. For the entire law is summed up in a single command; Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Galatians 5:13-14).

But circumcision is no longer an issue. It’s secondary, it simply doesn’t matter either way!