Sunday, June 22, 2014
Acts 15: 1-12
Today’s passage concerns the dispute within the early church in which the church’s leadership was reported to have accepted the Gentiles into the church without demanding that they be circumcised. This is an important concession because according Acts a number of individuals were taking issue with the position of Paul and Barnabas, and maintained that Gentile converts would not be saved if they failed to be circumcised as dictated by the Jewish legal tradition or “the custom of Moses”. This episode in the early church’s history demonstrates that the church was moving in a direction that would allow more peoples of various ethnic and social origins to be included in a growing church. We might meditate on this implication when today’s church faces issues of exclusivity and inclusivity.
- Terry Rothwell
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