A Letter is Sent
Acts 15:22-35
22 Then the apostles and the elders, with the consent of the whole church, decided to choose men from among their members and to send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leaders among the brothers, 23 with the following letter: ‘The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the believers of Gentile origin in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. 24 Since we have heard that certain persons who have gone out from us, though with no instructions from us, have said things to disturb you and have unsettled your minds, 25 we have decided unanimously to choose representatives and send them to you, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, 26 who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. 28 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: 29 that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.’
30 So they were sent off and went down to Antioch. When they gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. 31 When its members read it, they rejoiced at the exhortation. 32 Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers. 33 After they had been there for some time, they were sent off in peace by the believers to those who had sent them. 35 But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, and there, with many others, they taught and proclaimed the word of the Lord.
This is putting into action what was decided in the Council: writing a letter and having Paul and Barnabas and others go to the Gentiles and read this letter to them. Just in case people would think that Paul and Barnabas were not telling the truth about the decision arrived at in Jerusalem – Judas and Silas who were part of the church in Jerusalem went along as well to confirm the words of the letter.
The letter did two things. First, it stated that this was the official position of the church – not what other people said it was. Rumour and false news are not new things, and this letter is making sure that people are clear about what is being said.
And second, it laid out the position the church had taken. The four things are again highlighted that would be signs of following the Jesus way – this time they are more streamlined in presentation: idols, blood, and sexual morality. As noted on Monday, in Roman and Greek temple sacrifice the strangling of animals was common. So, the “no blood” is in part related to no idol worship. And the sexual morality is again a piece of the Christian life that was deeply attractive to many within the culture of the day.
Vs. 30 and following give us a picture of how these words were received by the Gentiles. They were happy, “rejoiced at the exhortation”. Exhortation is a word that implies being told to do something, being instructed in the way to live. It may sound strange that the Gentiles believers were happy that they were given rules to obey. But often in life, when we know where the lines are, the behaviour expected of us, we feel much happy, relieved. When Judas and Silas leave, they are “sent off in peace”. That is, the Gentile Christians agreed to the pattern of life set out as being the pattern of life for Christians to live.
PRAYER:
God of grace and mercy, we thank you that in your great love you have given us rules to live by, patterns of life to follow, so that we might know the way we are live the life you have given us in your Son Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, Amen.