Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 15:1

"And certain men came down from Judaea and taught the brethren, [saying], Except ye be circumcised after the custom of Moses, ye cannot be saved." — Acts 15:1 (ASV)

And certain men which came down from Judea.—We enter into the history of the first great controversy in the records of the Christian Church. It might have seemed as if the conversion of Cornelius had been accepted as deciding the question that we now find raised again (Acts 11:18). It would seem, however, that those who had raised objections to Peter’s conduct in that case were not content to accept the conclusion that he drew from it, and it is not difficult to imagine the train of thought that led them to take a different view.

To them, it may have seemed the exception that proved the rule. When signs and wonders were involved, they may have been content to accept an uncircumcised convert as a member of the Church, simply on the ground that God had dispensed with His own law in such cases. Or they may have urged that, although in such cases they did not require circumcision as a condition of admission, continuing in the uncircumcised state after baptism was a willful transgression that shut men out from the “salvation” that they were seeking.

Circumcision, they may have said, had been given as an everlasting covenant (Genesis 17:13) and had never been formally abrogated. Who were these new teachers, that they should change what God had thus established? It is clear that they came, claiming to speak in the name of James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, and though he distinctly repudiates having authorized them (Acts 15:24), yet if we suppose, as is probable, that his Epistle was written shortly before the Council, we can easily understand that they might rest their case on the words that he had used in it: whosoever shall keep the whole Law, and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all (James 2:10).

Here, they might say, was a point admittedly in the Law, and even prior to it. They were not prepared to draw the distinctions that we have learned to draw between the positive and the moral, the transient and the permanent, obligations of that Law. And it is to be noted that they did not merely make circumcision a condition of church communion; they carried their principles to their logical conclusion—as medieval dogmatism did in the case of baptism—and excluded the uncircumcised from all hope of salvation. (Compare the account of Ananias and Izates given in the Note on Acts 9:10.)