Every movement eventually faces a question that tests its future.
The early Church was no exception. We sometimes read the Book of Acts through rose-tinted spectacles, imagining a golden age where everyone agreed, the Spirit moved powerfully, and the gospel spread unhindered. The reality was rather different. The Church in Acts was made up of ordinary people, and it knew disagreement, misunderstanding, sin and compromise just as we do. An old hymn puts it honestly enough: the Church has always been “by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.”
One of the great challenges of our age is learning how to disagree well. In Love Your Enemies, Arthur Brooks argues that we live in a “culture of contempt” – divided into echo chambers that reinforce our own opinions and encourage us to dismiss those who think differently. More troubling still, our contempt is often aimed not at ideas but at people. It is not simply that we think someone is wrong; we conclude they are worthless. Sadly, that same spirit has found its way into the Church.
Acts 15 records a moment when the future of the Christian movement hung in the balance. This was no minor disagreement about worship style or personal preference. Luke tells us that Paul and Barnabas were drawn into “sharp dispute and debate” with those who insisted that Gentile believers must be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses. The question at stake was fundamental: how is a person saved?
The Church’s response is instructive. Rather than letting factions harden, the apostles and elders gathered in Jerusalem to seek the mind of Christ as a body. Their concern was not victory but truth – a distinction as vital, and as easily lost, today as it was then. One mark of spiritual maturity is learning to tell the difference between core theological conviction, where we cannot bend, and personal preference, where wisdom makes room for faithful disagreement.
As the discussion unfolds, something striking happens: the participants keep drawing attention to what God is doing. We read of the joy that spread as news of Gentile conversions reached Jerusalem. Peter reminds the council how God had poured out the Spirit on Gentiles. Paul and Barnabas describe the signs and wonders that accompanied their ministry. Again and again, the question is not “who’s right and who’s wrong?” but “where is God at work?”, recognising that we may all be convicted.
This doesn’t mean experience replaces Scripture. It does mean we should pay attention when God appears to be doing something that challenges our assumptions. Peter’s testimony carries particular weight here, because it had cost him something. He’d needed his own heart changed before he could see what God was doing among Cornelius’s household, and even afterwards he found it hard to navigate what the change meant for the Law’s role – Paul later had to challenge him over exactly this in Galatians 2. Growth in discernment, even for an apostle, wasn’t instant or comfortable.
Sometimes God moves in places we didn’t expect. Sometimes he welcomes people we assumed were far from him. The question is always whether we’re willing to listen.
Yet experience alone isn’t enough. Today, there seems often to be an assumption that “my truth” is the ultimate argument. After hearing the testimonies of Peter, Paul and Barnabas, James turns to Scripture, showing how what God is doing among the Gentiles is consistent with what he’d already promised through the prophets. Experience and Scripture are held together – the Church listens to what God is doing, then reflects carefully on his Word. That remains a wise pattern for every generation.
From there, the Council moves from reflection to application. James proposes a way forward that preserves the truth of the gospel while protecting unity: salvation comes through grace, not the Law, and that principle cannot be compromised. Yet Gentile believers are also asked to live counter-culturally, to avoid confusing their pagan neighbours, and to act sensitively toward Jewish believers still bound to the food laws. Truth and love are held together. Grace and holiness are not opposed. Gospel freedom bends, where it must, to gospel witness.
This is where discernment gets harder. Sometimes there is genuine freedom, and more than one faithful path forward. Later in Acts, Paul and Barnabas disagree sharply over John Mark and part company – yet God uses both ministries afterwards; Barnabas disappears from the narrative, but arguably we have Mark’s gospel because of his decision.
At the same time, the New Testament is equally clear that some things are non-negotiable – occasions when error must be resisted and separation becomes necessary. The real challenge is knowing which situation we’re facing, and that takes wisdom as much as conviction.
Acts 15 reminds us that Christian leadership is neither rigid nor endlessly accommodating. It is discerning. It listens carefully, remains uncompromisingly anchored in Scripture, pays attention to the Spirit, and pursues unity without sacrificing truth. When the council reaches its conclusion, the result is not resentment but encouragement – the believers rejoice, the Church is strengthened, and the movement continues.
Perhaps that’s the greatest lesson of all. The gospel advances most effectively when God’s people learn to handle disagreement with grace and truth, because we cannot proclaim good news if we cease to embody it. Jesus himself was described as “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). If the Church is to remain a healthy movement, rather than a divided institution or a decaying monument, we must learn to be the same.
