Christian Liberty and the Council of Jerusalem

"And then it pleased the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, namely, Judas, who was also named Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren. And they wrote this letter to them. The apostles, the elders, and the brethren, to the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, greetings." [00:00:05]

"Since we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls, saying you must be circumcised and keep the law, to whom we gave no such commandment, it seemed good to us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." [00:00:51]

"For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell." [00:01:31]

"When we look at the decision of the Council of Jerusalem, and see the final conclusions that were reached and that were mentioned in this pastoral letter that was sent back to Asia Minor, to Antioch, and Syria, and so on, with Paul and Barnabas and their comrades. It would seem to be a very simple and forthright decision that was reached." [00:02:38]

"The first thing that they are told to abstain from are things offered to idols. Now most commentators, if not all, agree that was in view here was the problem of the eating of meat that had been offered as sacrifices at pagan altars. The pagan had their altars to the various false gods, and so in their ritual ceremonies they would take food stuffs, particularly meat, and put them there in front of the statue or the idol and they would go through a ritual saying so much mumbo-jumbo." [00:04:37]

"Paul says it’s not a sin, but if you think it is, in your weakness it is a sin. And he said to those who had the liberty to treat it as adiaphora that they should be sensitive to the weaker brother, and that sensitivity meant not to eat that meat that was offered to idols and grind it in the face of people who had conscientious objections to it." [00:11:28]

"Sometimes when councils come together they enact legislation. Sometimes they come together and give advice. And there is a difference between prudence and law. And what the early church is saying is that this time, this critical moment when the Gentiles are just now being brought into full communion with the church and they come with this baggage of eating meat offered to idols, which is incendiary as far as their Jewish brethren are concerned, until we get that thing calmed down and settled down and sorted out, the best piece of wisdom is to abstain." [00:12:31]

"Calvin, on the other hand, who certainly shared Luther’s passion for justification by faith alone, was even more impassioned by the problem of idolatry. Calvin’s chief concern was not simply for the reformation of doctrine but for the reformation of worship. And he wrote to the church in the sixteenth century about the use of art, about the use of images in the church." [00:17:00]

"Calvin was aware of the second commandment, and when he was discussing the second commandment he knew that in the old covenant that God forbad the use of images that would reflect the deity of God or the use of images as means of worship in any way. Such activity would be, indeed, idolatry. But he was also aware that in the Old Testament itself the same God who prohibited the use of images commanded the artistic shaping of the cherubim to guard the mercy seat in the temple." [00:17:39]

"Here’s what Calvin taught in the sixteenth century. He said under God and under the Word of God the use of artistic representations of historical events and historical personages is quite legitimate. Let me pause here for a second. Go to any great museum in the world. Go to the Louvre in Paris, go to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, go to the National Gallery in Washington, go to the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York, and you will see that a very high percentage of the greatest artworks in Western history are religious art done for the glory of God." [00:19:22]

"Paul was not concerned only temporarily for the people coming out of paganism to refrain from fornication. Later on in the epistles we hear the apostle say this. “Listen carefully, young people. Don’t let fornication even once be named among you, as befitting saints.” Not situational ethics, not a question of prudence, but a question of insulting the holiness of God." [00:24:21]

"That’s what the Gentiles had been doing. They had an immoral culture, and so the Council of Jerusalem said that has to stop when you come into the church. That has to stop when you become a Christian. That is something that we have to take a stand for, so that it never is even once named among us as befitting saints." [00:28:30]