Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 15:10

"Now therefore why make ye trial of God, that ye should put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?" — Acts 15:10 (ASV)

Why tempt you God.—To tempt God was to make the experiment whether His will, manifested in the acceptance of the Gentiles, or man’s will, resenting and resisting it, was the stronger of the two. Nothing but defeat and condemnation could be the issue of such a trial.

To put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples.—No words of St. Paul’s, in relation to the Law, could be stronger or clearer than these. They reproduced our Lord’s own language as to the heavy burdens of the Pharisaic traditions (Matthew 23:4) and His own easy yoke (Matthew 11:30). They were echoed by St. Paul when he warned the Galatians not to be entangled again in the yoke of bondage (Galatians 5:1).

The words that follow, on the one hand, express the experience of the Apostle himself in terms that are hardly less striking than those of St. Paul in Romans 7:7-8, though they deal with the Law in its positive rather than its moral aspects, and contain an implied appeal to the experience of his hearers. Was it worthwhile to “tempt God” by resisting His teaching in history in order to bring the Gentiles down to the level from which they themselves, Jews as they were, were thankful to have risen?