The debate reflected in Galatians grew so heated that the church at Antioch sent a group to Jerusalem to settle the issue. The apostles and others met to decide: could Gentiles be Christians without keeping Jewish laws? One side argued that the Law of Moses must be a fixed point. Peter, Barnabas and Paul simply testified to seeing God at work in the lives of Gentiles who
didn’t follow that law. In the end, James quoted Amos 9:11-12, and said it showed that God wanted Gentiles welcomed without lots of extra rules.

• The Jerusalem Council led to broad agreement more than “binding legislation.” Scholar N. T. Wright wrote of the decision: “This looks strongly like a way of saying something to the Gentile Christians out in the wider world while really saying something to the Pharisees back home: ‘Look, it’s all right. Admitting these Gentiles who have believed won’t mean a total collapse into idolatry and immorality. It needn’t result in chaos or church/synagogue disputes.’ It wouldn’t be the last time an agreed statement from a church body was designed more to send out signals than to become part of a code of law.” (Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10:25-27, later modified some of the guidelines about avoiding food offered to idols.) How could the spirit of the Jerusalem Council guide us today when we face issues on which Christians honestly differ?