Paul 19

 

 Acts 15:13

And after they had held their peace, James answered saying: Men and brethren hearken unto me

Once again, I bring you back to that crucial event in church history, that intense - and no doubt dramatic - meeting we have come to know as the Council of Jerusalem.  The Council where the elders of the infant Church, in AD 49 deliberated on their future direction.  They were faced with a fundamental choice; should they continue as a Jewish sect or should they open themselves up to the wider world, beyond the realms of Judaism and the constraints of the Mosaic Law?  Should they remain a small closed group or take that step to become a faith for everyone, for both Jew and Gentile?

 

Earlier in chapter 15 we heard from the Apostle Peter, and then from Paul and Barnabas speaking to that assembly in Jerusalem, giving reasons as to why, in their opinion, the church should not impose the obligations of the Jewish law, circumcision and dietary requirement, on those Gentiles who wanted to become disciples of Christ.

With hindsight, we know how this question was finally settled, and how the seeds of the Church were sown.  But before we consider the debate further – and – I think given the fierce arguments and strength of feelings aroused we should perhaps say it was more of a ‘dispute’ rather than just a ‘question’, before we move on then, I’d like to draw your attention to an interesting detail in today’s short text. 

And after they had held their peace, James answered saying: Men and brethren hearken unto me

Acts 15:13

James answered them. 

If we read further on, we learn that James is the Council’s presiding elder; he is acting in a leadership capacity. ‘Men and brothers,’ he says ‘hearken unto me’.  These words are not a desperate plea from somebody on the fringe of that meeting, but rather the authoritative words of someone who is centre stage and very much in command of the proceedings. 

So, who is this James?

We can rule out the apostle who was known as ‘James the brother of John’.  That James was one of the 12 disciples and we know that he suffered an early martyrdom in Jerusalem in AD 44.  His death is recorded in the Acts of the apostles 12:1-2

Now about that time Herod the King stretched forth his hand to vex certain of the Church.  And he killed James the brother of John.

This verse goes on to tell us that Herod’s actions pleased those Jews who opposed the followers of Christ and, with this endorsement, Herod went on to arrest the apostle Peter as well.

So, to be clear, we not talking about James-the-brother-of-John.

Rather, we are talking about James, the brother of Jesus. Yes, Jesus had a brother – in fact not just one brother because, according to Mark’s gospel he had several brothers, and sisters as well. The text from the Gospel of Mark 6:3, reads:

Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Josiah and Judas and Simon?  And are not his sisters here with us and they were affected at him.

This is interesting because here we do get a sense of the family dynamics, a sort of close-up of what Jesus had to face throughout his ministry.  These words from the Gospel of Mark: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James …”

We get this disbelief from those who think they know him.  Well surely, they do know him, being brought up in the same village in Nazareth.  They know this young man, a familiar figure - Jesus the carpenter, no more than thirty years old, and now holding forth in a very radical way in the local synagogue.  Who does he think he is?

William Barclay tells us of a similar occurrence in the East End of London in the 1920’s.  He writes: 

There were people who were deeply offended when Will Crooks become Mayor of London – in a crowd one day a lady said, with great disgust “They’ve made that common fellow, Crooks, Mayor, and he’s no better than a working man.  Hearing her comments, a man in the crowd, Will Crooks himself – turned round and raised his hat.  “Quite right, Madam”, he said “I am no better than a working man!”

Barclay went on to write:

The people of Nazareth despised Jesus because he was a working man.  To us that is the glory, because it means that God, when he came to earth, claimed no exemption.  He took upon himself the common life with all its common troubles.

Years ago, when I went to Salvation Army Sunday School, I knew a man called David, who was originally from a Roman Catholic family.  He had had a reputation for being a bit of a hard man, worked on building sites and had been fond of the drink.  But then his life changed: Christ came into his life and he joined the Salvation Army.  Soon afterwards he visited his parents’ house wearing his army uniform, only to be rejected and told not to come to the house again.  You see, we often read things in the Bible but we cannot see the context or the relevance it may have for us.

Jesus also has some words about the relationship between a Christian and his family.  Words that, on first reading, appear to be very harsh.  In Matthew 10:37 we read:

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me

On the face of it, it seems a shocking thing to say, like encouraging someone to wilfully walk away from their family and their children and to disown or to show disrespect to their parents.  But we have to remember that Jesus was a faithful Jew who knew and followed the law:

Honour thy father and mother that thy days be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.  Exodus 20:12

What Jesus it talking about here is a new level of commitment.  It’s a point he makes over and over again.  Just as David had to choose whether to hold with his new-found faith and lose his family, or to quit the Salvation Army and return home, we have to make our own choices.  Where do our priorities lie?

What Jesus presents us with in that verse from Matthew is not a guilt trip but a real assessment of what is required of a disciple.

Family, wealth, power – we have tough choices. 

We read that a rich man has less chance of entering the Kingdom of Heaven than a camel has of passing through the eye of a needle (Matt 19:24).  And then in Paul’s letter to Timothy, there is the clarification that it is not having money but loving money that is the root of all evil (Tim 6:10). 

The real question is this – what are your priorities, what really motivates you?

In the sermon on the mount Jesus says:

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.  Matt 6:21. 

What do we treasure?  What do we value most deeply?  Like human beings everywhere we have basic physical needs, but once these are met, what do we need, not just to survive, but to truly live?  Jesus tells us that we ‘cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’.

  

Jesus offers us a true freedom when he tells us to pray for the little we need for today – our daily bread – and not to worry about tomorrow.  Use today, he says, to seek the Kingdom of God, to hear the word of God, and all the other things will be added unto you.

So yes, we strive to live the spiritual life, to be people of the Spirit, and also to keep body and soul together and make our way through this world.  And many of the toughest choices we have to make will involve other people.  Jesus never asks us to live without other people, but rather to make our absolute priority our commitment to God.  He gives us a great example this in practice, how he himself gave priority to God over even his own family.  

I’m not saying he rejected his family; he continued to love them and to honour his mother, but God came first.  The story comes in Mark’s gospel.  Jesus is preaching in a house, and has been absolutely besieged, mobbed by the crowds of people who wanted to hear him or to be healed by him.  He is told, unexpectedly, that his mother and his brothers and sisters are outside.  They are clearly very concerned for his welfare. In fact, they thought he might be insane – the phrase in the bible was that he was “beside himself.” We can read about this in the Gospel of Mark 3:31-35.

And the multitude stood about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee.  And he answered them saying, Who is my mother or my brethren?  And he looked round about on them which sat about him and said, behold my mother and my brethren.  For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother and my sister and mother.

So here again we touch on Jesus’ relationship with his family. It’s complicated but Jesus puts it like this. 

He reminds us that:

A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country and among his own kin and in his own house. Mark 6:4

And in the Gospel of John 1:11 we are told “He came to his own and his own received him not. 

No wonder he could say: 

Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay his head.  Luke 9:58

You see, we are often told that ‘blood is thicker than water’ and, that being the case, we would expect that Jesus would find a solid base of support in his own family.  But the scriptural evidence shows this was not so.

‘The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,’ said Jesus.  Even amongst his closest kith and kin he received no comfort, no respite, in fact, far from it.  In many ways it was an experience of disbelief, anxiety and even contempt.  When he plans to go into Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles – an annual autumn festival, his brothers, who would be aware of the dangers this would involve, cynically encourage him, saying:

Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples may see thy work that thou doest.  John 7:1-3

In a way, they are saying “OK, have it your own way, but don’t say we didn’t warn you!”  His brothers had no confidence in him or his message. The Gospel of John is clear about this.

Those brothers, who had known him all their lives and had been brought up with him in the same household.  Once again, Jesus’ words “A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country and among his own kin and in his own house’.

So, back to our text from the Acts of the Apostles 15:13, here we have the brother of Jesus, James, at the Council of Jerusalem, any time between 15 – 25 years after the crucifixion, here we have James his brother, very much in command of the situation, saying “Men and brethren, hearken unto me.  Listen to me! 

I mean, you would have thought that it would have been Peter, the leader of the original twelve apostles who would have been the ruling adjudicator.  But no, it was James, the brother of the Lord.  What a change!  What a transformation.

How do we deal with such contradictions, such sudden about turns from a position of denial, even contempt and disbelief to total belief and the preparedness to proclaim those beliefs to the world? 

Jesus’ message had not changed, but James and the rest of the family had been unable to see its truth – familiarity had bred, if not contempt, a certain amount of deafness and blindness.

Perhaps the truth is sometimes so blindingly obvious that we cannot see it.

Paul in his Letter to the Romans wrote that the spiritual aspects of God are not visible, but that God has made himself visible to us all through his creation.

And yet, people can still be blind to God.  Remember how Jesus was asked by his disciple Philip to show him the Father – and Jesus said, ‘Philip you’ve been with me for such a long time.  How can you ask me ‘show me the Father?’  Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.’

‘Men and brethren hearken unto me’, said James.  James at the Council of Jerusalem speaks with authority.  This James, who, in many ways knows Jesus more intimately than anyone there, knows the human side of Jesus in an ordinary Jewish family.  He knows too how Jesus had patiently endured the disbelief of his sisters and brothers, and yet still continued to love them. James knows too the agony of losing a brother, and the devastation to his family that followed Jesus’ execution on the cross.

And then, after the death and the resurrection there came about for James, that great reconciliation, that truly wonderful revelation as described by Paul (1Cor 15:3-7)

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received.  Know that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.  And that he was buried and that he rose again on the third day according to scripture.  And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve.  After that he was seen by about five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that he was seen of James, then of all the apostles.

I hope that what I have said and the illustrations taken from scripture have been helpful to you, giving some context to the Council of Jerusalem and to the circumstances surrounding James’ eventual role in the early church and to his spirit-led decision, which guided and laid the foundations of our faith today. For this, we give thanks to God. Amen.

 

Paul 18

 

Acts 15:12

Then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them.

I'm often drawn to the book of Acts of the Apostles, that New Testament book written by Luke, who also authored the Gospel of Luke. These two books are so connected that they're sometimes referred to as Luke-Acts. We could say the Bible itself tells the story of humanity's fallibility and our redemption by God’s grace through Jesus Christ. But the book of Acts is often said to be less about the acts of the apostles and more about the acts of the Holy Spirit, because without the Holy Spirit, there would be no story.

We read about the dramatic arrival of the Holy Spirit in the second chapter of Acts:

And there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting" (Acts 2:2).

A wind and tongues of flame rested on the heads of the disciples, who were so filled with the Holy Spirit that they began to speak in the languages of other nations.

Today, we return to a specific verse, Acts 15:12, where Paul and Barnabas give an account to the elders and disciples of the signs and wonders God had demonstrated through them among the Gentiles. This assembly, at the Jerusalem church in A.D. 49, met to consider a crucial question: should Gentiles be allowed to join the Christian church without converting to Judaism?

We must remember that the Jews, through the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were God’s chosen people, set apart from every other nation. It's no surprise that many Jewish believers in Christ still held onto this belief. We could call it the "doctrine of Jewish exclusivity."

Yet, Jesus himself had established a new covenant in his blood—a new relationship with God. Jesus said,

I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me (John 14:6).

Being a child of Abraham was no longer a guarantee of salvation. After the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Apostle Peter summed up the demands of this new covenant:

Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:38).

The Christian message that Paul and Barnabas preached speaks of mankind's helplessness against God’s omnipotence. We are saved by faith in God's grace through Christ, not by works, or by simply following the Mosaic Law. At the meeting in Jerusalem, later known as the Council of Jerusalem, Peter made this very point. He argued that requiring Gentiles to follow Jewish law was an unnecessary burden, one that couldn't save them. Peter declared,

Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? (Acts 15:10).

Even with these theological points established, a mystery remained: the miracles and wonders declared by Barnabas and Paul. As you can imagine, an intense, listening silence fell over that crowded room. The listeners were like a jury in a court of law, required to deliberate on the evidence presented to them. Just because the story of Acts is a mystery, it doesn’t mean it can’t be investigated.

Paul's account of his missionary journey must have been listened to intently and critically. The real question was: Was God truly with Paul and Barnabas? And did God really want the church to admit Gentiles who didn't live under the Mosaic Law and weren't circumcised? To the Pharisaic mind, this seemed inconceivable, even wrong. Yet, Paul claimed that God was with him, just as he later wrote in his Letter to the Romans,

 If God be for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31).

We know from our reading of Acts that Paul was chosen by God to be an apostle to the Gentiles. But those listeners in Jerusalem didn't have the benefit of our full biblical narrative. They were left to make up their own minds.

The Jewish and Christian claim is that we don’t worship a distant or disinterested deity. Our God is a living God who is actively concerned with the affairs of this world and the lives of men and women. If this weren't true, he wouldn't have raised up the prophets or sent his only begotten Son into this world of sin.

Let's consider the life of Jesus through the Gospel of John. His first recorded miracle was at the wedding at Cana, where he turned water into wine. It was an act of compassion, helping a young couple avoid embarrassment. But John gives us a more significant meaning to this story when he writes,

This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him (John 2:11).

At this wedding, Jesus manifested his divinity.

The key phrase here is, “And his disciples believed on him.” They must have believed in him before that miracle, but it surely strengthened their faith. Yet, in spite of all the evidence, some of them still struggled. Judas betrayed him, Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father, and Thomas would not at first believe that he was in the presence of the resurrected Christ. We, like them, are human beings who continually struggle, vacillating between doubt and faith. Even after Jesus calmed the Sea of Galilee, saving their lives, his disciples asked,

What manner of man is this! for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him (Luke 8:25).

There are moments of great conviction and times of doubt. Those who sat listening to Paul in Jerusalem truly wanted to know if it was God's will to admit Gentiles into the church. Were the signs and wonders displayed through Paul and Barnabas sufficient evidence that God's hand was at work?

We know from the Bible that the Spirit of God was present at creation, and that judges and prophets were filled with the Holy Spirit. At certain times, God has been more present, more apparent, and felt more than at other times. We can't invoke the Holy Spirit; we can only pray and submit to God. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, God's Spirit is like the wind that blows wherever it wants to. You can hear the wind, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going.

The most realistic thing we can say is that we are not in control. Often, it seems that in our lives, nothing really happens until God inexplicably turns up. When we talk about the Apostolic Age, we think of an explosive movement that led to the birth of the church, accompanied by signs and wonders.

Paul and Barnabas brought a difficult message to the church in Jerusalem, a message that had never been considered in a doctrinal way before. But life is a movement of constant change and surprise, just as the old hymn says, "God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform." We hear these stories of signs and wonders and might feel cheated that we've never seen anything so sacred or dramatic.

We are often like the disciples and elders listening to Paul and Barnabas, trying to piece it all together. But just for a moment, imagine you were on your way home from that meeting in Jerusalem, maybe still struggling with all your thoughts and the arguments you heard. I would hope that you might stop and look all around you, or perhaps look at that star-filled sky, and acknowledge the God of creation, the Father of all humanity, and say a prayer of thanks.

 

Paul 17

 

Acts 15:5-11                 

Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”

The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

For Christians the events in Jerusalem at Pentecost, described in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles saw the coming of the Holy Spirit. Through that narrative, a transforming religious event, we are able to trace the birth of Christianity. That transition from the old covenant to the new covenant arising from Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross, that sacrifice that would forever expose and reveal God’s love for a fallen and broken humanity; an exposition of love divine, forever unsurpassed. We see this in Paul’s passion as he proclaims his gospel saying:

 For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:12)

For ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your bodies, and in your spirit. (1Corinthians 6: 20)

And in his letter to the Galatians, Paul speaks to us of the significance of Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross, how as a believer he applied it to himself, saying:

I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I but Christ that liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (2:20)

We turn now to the book of the Acts of the Apostles chapter 15 which continues to detail the Spirit led beginnings of the Christian church, of that early movement of which Paul was so central to. I want to remind you that as before, that we are really looking at the evolution of the church from what it was then, a Jewish sect, a significant group, but still a sect within the fold of Judaism. There its followers grappled with that thorny question of accepting the Gentiles into the ranks of this growing Christian movement.

So now we return to that somewhat stormy meeting in Jerusalem, AD 58, that meeting that came to be known as the Church’s first council, the Council of Jerusalem. That’s where some of the Pharisees who had become followers of Christ, began to say that these Gentiles who were becoming Christians mostly through Paul’s missionary efforts, would first have to convert to become Jews. They said that if these Gentiles were to become accepted, they would have to be circumcised and observe all the Jewish laws, the laws of Moses.

Let’s consider for a moment, the passion and the concerns that gave rise to this meeting in Jerusalem. That meeting arose because the stricter Jews were concerned that they stood to be outnumbered by waves of incoming Gentile converts, as a result of Paul’s missionary efforts; Gentiles coming into their church who had never committed themselves to the purity of the Jewish religion, as they saw it. Naturally, we can understand their concerns, the concerns of the Jewish believers, concerns for the continuation of their identity and culture and yet it was clear that through God, events were taking them in a new direction. Peter of course, reminded them of this when at that meeting, he got up and spoke as we now read:

The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.” (Acts 15:5-11 NIV)

In these few verses we can see that Peter points out to those assembled at this meeting, that God had already made a choice and that God had made the decision to pour out the gift of his Holy Spirit on Gentile believers. Years before, you will recall that Peter preached in the house of Julius, the Roman centurion, at Caesarea, a Gentile household of course, and all those in that household who heard what Peter said, all those who heard that message became filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in tongues and praising God. Returning to Jerusalem at that time, Peter’s account of this event was given to the apostles at Jerusalem and they accepted it after Peter said:

So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God? (11:17)

So, Peter, as we can see, had already made, years ago a compelling argument, for bringing the Gentile believers into the embryonic church. How indeed, argued Paul, could anyone prevail against the will of God? But if we read on from verse 10-11, he put forward another question to his contemporaries, as we have seen:

Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

When Peter talks of a yoke that nobody is really able to bear, we could say that that this yoke could also be likened to a weight or a burden that nobody has ever really been able to carry. More than that he clearly points to a yoke, a weight, a burden that neither the people gathered at that meeting in Jerusalem, or the Jews as a whole and their ancestors were really not able to bear. He was referring to the Jewish law that had led to hypocrisy and shows of false religiosity. Peter, wasn’t saying anything new here, and he’d no doubt heard Jesus himself expound on the same question:

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. (Matthew 23:4).

For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:20)

And if we just look again at Peter’s statement at verse eight, he refers to God as ‘God knows the heart.’ Again, we are not without reference to Peter’s utterance for we should know as Peter did, that story of the prophet, Samuel who was sent to anoint the shepherd boy, David as the future king of Israel. When Samuel saw David’s brother, Eliab he thought at first that he had found the Lord’s anointed, but we have this verse in scripture that reads:

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1Samuel 16:7)

In the Psalm of David, the 23^rd Psalm, the fifth verse, we have these words:

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

The God who knows the heart, who knows our innermost thoughts, knows each one of us fully is the God who anoints us, or not as the case may be, this is the same God who poured out his Holy Spirit on the Gentiles, on Julius and his household in Caesaria. Thus, Peter could say:

God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.

If we return once again to God’s anointing of David by Samuel we will find at first, in that story, that David wasn’t even brought up for consideration, let alone thought about as a viable candidate for kingship, neither you will remember did Jesse, his father consider his youngest son. David wasn’t even present when Samuel turned up to meet Jesse, as the youngest and perhaps the least of his sons in terms of maturity he was out in the fields looking after the sheep. So it was that David’s seven older brothers came one by one under Samuel’s gaze before David, after some pressing from Samuel was finally presented. And here in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth verse of Samuel 16 we get a real sense of that holy and auspicious occasion.

And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come hither.

And he sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to. And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him: for this is he.

Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up, and went to Ramah.

It seems that no one expected David to be chosen for kingship, to be God’s chosen one, least of all Samuel, God’s prophet. But as we know, God looks at the heart and not at the outward appearance. Earlier I mentioned Pentecost, and for Christians we have our record of that day, the Holy Spirit coming like fire upon the apostles impelling them and driving them with fresh courage, and energy to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. Peter had witnessed this event and he himself had received the Holy Spirit, and again he witnessed that same outpouring at Caesarea, that power that could only come from God. Should the Gentiles be admitted to the Church? Peter, as we have seen, gave his answer:

God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by   giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.