Since the time of Matthew 28, God wanted all nations to become disciples (Matthew 28:19). But that spiritual truth only played out at a human level later, at the time of Acts 10. God worked special miracles to convince Peter and others that Cornelius and his group, as believers, should be baptized into Christ (Acts 10:44-48 cf. Acts 2:38; Romans 6:3-4). Even then, some believers felt that Gentiles were unacceptable unless they first became Jewish in certain ways. They told the Gentile converts, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). They insisted, “It is necessary to circumcise them [the Gentiles] and to order them to keep the law of Moses” (Acts 15:5).
Here was a critical matter. Was the church to follow the old ways of Moses, or the new ways of Christ? At the important meeting of Acts 15, Peter told how God had accepted Cornelius. He argued, “Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the necks of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?” (Acts 15:10).
“Why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the necks of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?”
Acts 15 also records the Holy Spirit’s message from this meeting:
For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you [Gentiles] no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. (Acts 15:28-29 cf. Acts 21:25)
Notice that the issue of Acts 15 was about what is necessary, what should be required (15:1, 5, 10, 28). Notice also that Christians were not commanded to keep the main items for which the law was famous, such as circumcision, the Sabbath, the temple worship or the festivals. Here is another important point: Nothing strictly Jewish was placed on the Gentiles. The rules against idolatry, sexual immorality and blood went back long before Moses (for example, Genesis 9:3-4). So nothing unique to the Old Covenant was bound on God’s people.