“When they arrived in Jerusalem, Barnabas and Paul were welcomed by the whole church, including the apostles and elders. They reported everything God had done through them. But then some of the believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and insisted, “The Gentile converts must be circumcised and required to follow the law of Moses.” So the apostles and elders met together to resolve this issue. At the meeting, after a long discussion, Peter stood and addressed them as follows: “Brothers, you all know that God chose me from among you some time ago to preach to the Gentiles so that they could hear the Good News and believe. God knows people’s hearts, and he confirmed that he accepts Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he cleansed their hearts through faith. So why are you now challenging God by burdening the Gentile believers with a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors were able to bear? We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of the Lord Jesus.”” ‭‭Acts of the Apostles‬ ‭15‬:‭4‬-‭11‬ ‭NLT‬‬ From the beginning, let me make it clear that the law was meant strictly for the nation of Isreal. We the Gentiles were never meant to live by the law or the Ten Commandments. Even Jesus when he came distilled the entire Ten Commandments down to two, “love the LORD thy God with all your heart” and “love your neighbour as yourself”. Therefore the core of Jesus message was love for God and love for people. At God’s command and instructions, Barnabas and Paul were set aside to for the work of preaching the Good News to nations. At Antioch, some people began preaching that new converts who were Gentiles had to be circumcised in accordance with the law of Moses. Barnabas and Paul disputed this assertion. The he topic must have been extremely important to the church at Antioch that that they requested that Barnabas and Paul go back to Jerusalem to meet with the Apostles there and have the issue resolved and then report back to them. When they returned to Jerusalem, there were new converts who had previously been part of the Pharisee sect that were advocating for the same thing, that new Christian converts should be circumcised in accordance with the law of Moses. Being circumcised or obeying the Ten Commandments seem like common sense things to do. However, I think that at the root of it though, there are a lot of people who think that loving God and loving people is not “weighty” enough for an awesome and great God who created the heavens and the earth. They believe that we need to put doctrinal weights on ourselves and that having a relationship with God is just too easy and must be filled with hard things to do. They therefore come up with doctrines that add unnecessary weight on themselves and that look for others whom they can place these yokes on and make miserable with their doctrines as they are miserable by their own doctrines. God wants a relationship with us and is not integrated in placing weights we can’t carry on us. The Bible says if we obey one part of the law, then we must obey all and if we fail in one then we’ve failed in all. God has done away with the law by Jesus dying on the cross. We shouldn’t be in a hurry or tripping over ourselves to bring it back. If you like, please share. Get your copy of LOST, BUT FOUND at https://tinyurl.com/yyr9p85k #book #booktok #booktoker