Debate & Doctrinal Clarity
To the ends of the earth - Acts 15:1-21 (ESV) - Pastor Tim Kroeker
GALATIANS 1:9
“If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.”
In the history of the church, there have been some important councils, official gatherings of church leaders from all over the Christian world. There was the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, where they debated the deity of Christ. Then there was the First Council of Constantinople in AD 381, where they discussed the nature of the Holy Spirit.
As important as those councils were, the first was perhaps the most significant of all. In Acts 15, we read about the Jerusalem Council. Church leaders gathered to debate a fundamental doctrinal question. What must a person do to be saved?
Men had come from Judea to the church in Antioch, saying that they had to be circumcised and follow the Law of Moses. These false teachers were disturbing the faith and disrupting the unity of this predominantly Gentile church. Therefore, Paul and Barnabas fiercely defended the gospel of grace.
Because this false teaching threatened to derail the progress of the gospel into the Gentile world and because it had originated in Jerusalem, the church at Antioch sent a delegation there. The apostles and the elders gathered to consider this dispute. After much debate, the apostle Peter spoke about his own experience when he witnessed the conversion of Cornelius. Then James, the head elder of the church in Jerusalem, argued the same from Scripture. The result was that the Church wholeheartedly agreed with Paul and Barnabas.
Church councils don’t determine truth; they affirm it. The early church dealt with false teachers by coming together to debate, discuss, and defend salvation by grace through faith in Jesus apart from any works of the law. Doctrine is worth debating. Cling uncompromisingly to salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
