Ask Your Preacher
Congregations' Conference
Monday, October 28, 2019If churches are meant to be local and autonomous, why did the apostles have a regional council in Acts 15 (Council of Jerusalem) to resolve a doctrinal issue? If a local church interpreted the Bible and concluded Gentile members needed to be circumcised, why should they have been corrected by other church leaders?
Sincerely,
Can’t We All Just Work Together?
Dear Can’t We All Just Work Together,
The apostles held a council in Jerusalem because the false teachers came from Jerusalem. The men that were falsely teaching that you had to be circumcised to be saved were from Judea (Acts 15:1). They had traveled up to a Gentile congregation, and Paul and Barnabas were debating them (Acts 15:2). The council was held in Jerusalem to decide whether these teachers that were from the Jerusalem congregation were right to be spreading the doctrine of circumcision (Acts 15:4-6). The apostles were involved in the issue because they were in charge of all the teaching for the church (Rom 1:5), and the Jerusalem elders were involved (Acts 15:4) because they had a responsibility to dictate the teaching that was emanating from their congregation.
Ultimately, as long as the church had the apostles, there was a physical unifying leadership over all congregations, but the apostles knew they wouldn’t be around forever and tried to prepare every congregation to function independently without them (Acts 14:23). SB