Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

17, 18. Paul is gladly received by the apostles and brethren, proceeding at once to James, the
pastor of the mother church, where, in presence of the apostles, elders and brethren, he relates the
mighty works of God among the Gentiles.
NON-ESSENTIALITY OF ECCLESIASTICAL ORDINANCES.
20. “And hearing, they continued to glorify God and said to him, You see, brother, how many
myriads there are among the Jews of those having believed, and all these are zealots of the law.”
From this verse we are assured that the Christian Jews punctiliously kept the law of Moses,
circumcising their children, offering animal sacrifices and performing many other ordinances
peculiar to the Levitical ritual. It took the Roman armies, A.D. 73, who captured the city and
destroyed the temple, a million of people, selling a million more into slavery and thus bringing an
end to the Jewish dispensation, to stop the Christian Jews from their pertinacious observance of the
Mosaic institution, thus precipitating them, pursuant to the warning of Jesus, to fly away from
Jerusalem in order to save their lives. Then they gave up the Mosaic ritual, which they had carried
fifteen hundred years, while the apostles and elders decreed perfect relief to all the Gentiles from all
the rites and ceremonies of the Mosiac law, requiring of them nothing but entire sanctification,
experimental and practical; they at the same time allowed the Jews perfect liberty to keep the law
of Moses. Now remember that these Jews and Gentiles were precisely equal and perfectly free in the
very same organizations of the gospel church, the one to observe the vast and operose ritual of
Moses, a hundred times more burdensome than Baptist immersion and foot-washing, at the same
time extending to the Gentiles perfect spiritual freedom to omit all ecclesiastical ceremonies and go
ahead with a purely spiritual worship. Why was this? The unity of God’s people focalizes in the
baptism of the Holy Ghost, which brings all into one body (1 Corinthians 12:13). When you have
this, you are saved to the uttermost. Hence it makes no difference whether you practice any, few or
many church rites. It is perfectly consistent for the sanctified Quaker, utterly unencumbered by carnal
ordinances, and the trine-immersion, foot-washing, kissing, sanctified Dunker to worship together
in very same church in perfect harmony and Christian fellowship. The division of God’s people over
non-essentials is a trick of the devil to get their eye off the Savior so he can side-track them into hell.
If Jesus does not baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire, your religion will all prove a failure and
break down this side of heaven. When you have the Savior’s baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire,
then you enjoy perfect freedom of conscience relative to church rites and ceremonies, as here you
see the very same apostles who laid no obstruction on the observance of the vast and burdensome
rites and ceremonies of Judaism on the part of the Christian Jews, magnanimously relieved the
Gentiles of the entire curriculum, only requiring of them the spirituality and the essence, which is
likewise indispensable to Jew and Gentile.
21-26. They very judiciously advised Paul to adopt a procedure in connection with four Jewish
brethren, who at that time had on them temporary Nazaritish vows, to fall in with them, becoming
a Mosaic Nazarite for the time being [an institution peculiar to Jews only], thus rendering himself
conspicuous before all the people for his literal observance of the Mosaic law. Here we have Paul’s
example, going unhesitatingly into religious ceremonies which were utterly null and void, merely
to gratify the Jews, lest they might receive spiritual detriment by his example, illustrating the fact
that while Paul preached to the Gentiles perfect spiritual freedom from ecclesiastical ritualism, when
among the Jews he practiced it himself. These Apostolical decrees to the Gentiles (ver. 25) to abstain