The Judaizers

With reference to Acts 15:1-5—This class of men were a serious and fatal trouble to Paul and the ecclesias. They first made their appearance on the page of New Testament history, in Acts 15:1-5. Their new-fangled crotchet was, that the belief of the Gospel of the Kingdom, and baptism, were not sufficient for salvation; but that a Gentile must besides, or in addition to these, be circumcised, and keep the law of Moses. This dogma was their stock in trade -- the basket of small wares, with which they began in the world, and set out in life to make their fortunes. The simple assertion of their dogma brought them into direct collision with the apostles, and especially with Paul. They were the Judaizers, styled in ecclesiastical history, the Ebionites. Their dogma was tantamount to a denial, that "the blood of Jesus Anointed, Son of the Deity, cleanses from all sin" (1 John 1:7) and that "his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree" (1 Pet. 2:24); for if salvation could not be attained without circumcision and obedience to Moses, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, were an insufficient sacrifice for sin. The apostles seeing this, unanimously repudiated the dogma, and labored incessantly to prevent it from obtaining a lodgment in the public mind. Paul being "the teacher of the Gentiles," was particularly and acutely argumentative against the Judaizers, or Ebionites; who, consequently, denied the divine authority of the epistles, and accused him of being an Antinomian, because opposed to seeking justification in Moses and in Jesus combined. Thus "they turned away from him."