Text: Acts 15:22-23
22Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and Silas, two men who were leaders among the brothers. 23With them they sent the following letter: The apostles and elders, your brothers, To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia: Greetings. (NIV)
taken from www.biblegateway.com
This is the first evidence of a letter sent from any of the apostles or church elders to a group of believers in the early church. It is interesting that they sent both a written letter and two men to confirm what was written about the issue of what was to be required of Gentile believers. No mention was made of circumcision, the key issue that caused the uproar in the first place.
It says the people were glad for its encouraging message. I'm sure they were encouraged that there were very few rules to follow in the message, but if you look at the message itself, it doesn't give very much information about how to live as a Christian -- not nearly as much as we have today from all the later letters of Paul. Here's the text of the letter:
24We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. 25So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— 26men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. 28It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: 29You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.
I think I'd be asking for more...so what do we need to do to be closer to Christ, to be more like him? How do we get closer to God? How do we go deeper in our faith? Could it be that those weren't the most important things to discuss?
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