Please explain Acts 15:10,28. Does this refer to or imply the abolition of the law? – T.L.S.
“It is impossible to give a good exposition of these texts without a consideration of the entire chapter. But, briefly, the certain men who went down from Judea taught justification, or salvation, by ceremonies or works. “Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.” Verse 1. Now it is evident that just as soon as man trusts to anything apart from Christ for salvation, he makes Christ of no effect; and as only Christ can save from sin, by choosing the something else he turns from Christ to all his sins.
Signs of the Times, July 30, 1896
Circumcision of itself is nothing either way (1 Cor. 7:10), but if it is trusted in as a means of salvation, it makes the death of Christ in vain, and leaves the sinner under his yoke of sin. This is the yoke which the Jewish fathers vainly sought to remove by ordinances, traditions, and ceremonies without number, but which daily added to the yoke. So these Jewish teachers were blinding by their burdensome ordinances the gentiles in Christ. These works of self-righteousness the council declared should not be imposed upon the gentile converts. All that the true child of God needs is instruction, not prohibition.
There were instructions, seemingly ceremonial, yet having a moral bearing, upon which these gentile converts needed instruction; these the council mentions (verses 28, 29), abstention from meats offered to idols, lest they seem to be idolaters; from eating of blood, in which was the animal’s life; from things strangled, dying without bleeding, and from fornication. This did not imply that they were at liberty to worship idols, or profane God’s name, or break his Sabbath; over these duties there was no question. The only apostolic prohibitions were concerning things which outwardly might seem to be purely ceremonial, but which really had a moral bearing.”
