5 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.
Verse 5 is the critical verse there. “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.
Since we know that the council decided not in the favor of the Pharisees assertion (this is clear from the text) then we also know (again from verse 5) that we are not required to keep the law of Moses.
The opposite is a common tactic among those who believe keeping the Mosaic law is still required today. They will state, “The council of Jerusalem only decided the issue of whether or not one needed to be circumcised. Not whether or not the law of Moses was still for today”.
But we have verse 5, and the conjunction “AND” there that clearly shows BOTH topics were on the table, if not clearly stated later in the passage so what. It’s clearly stated in verse FIVE. That is the correct context for the council of Jerusalem.
But this is what one gets, when one “reads the Bible for oneself”, divorced from all historical and/or traditional teaching and guidance: confusion. We get an “invisible church” that is “unified” in “all the important doctrines”...
Except of course whether or not one is under the law of Moses today.
< sarc >That’s not an important doctrine. It’s trivial. It’s so trivial in fact, some will spend days arguing the point, if not weeks and months, and some will get so heated over the issue that their posts will be pulled. Yes, I spend days and weeks arguing unimportant topics. I get my posts pulled all the time for trivial matters. < /sarc >