To have clarity on this matter, we must contextualize our minds with what was happening in the first half of the 1st century regarding those followers of the Messiah Yeshua. In the first three years, all of them belonged to the lineage of Israel, coming from different official sects or simply none of them, but they all had in common a perfect understanding of the need to walk in their daily lives in light of the updates made by Jesus regarding the provisions within the law called in Hebrew “jukim” and the new spiritual capacity to fulfill the demands of divine holiness.

The official sects born from Israel’s religious heritage claimed for themselves the correct interpretation of the practice and obedience to the law. Thus, this brought a contrast between each of them and this new sect that called themselves the Way. Why were they called that? Well, because their way (the way of living God’s law) was new to the rest, and that gave them a new identity.

As we know, this Way began to be built with the Messianic ministry and on the day of Pentecost (Shavuot in Hebrew), after the salvific consummation, it also had its spiritual consummation in all those disciples he had. However, although all this was happening among Israelites, three years later it also had the consummation of the promise given to Abraham for the Gentiles (Gen 12:3; Acts 10).

It is good to understand that there were always Gentiles entering by conversion to Israel, such as Rahab and Ruth, but by the 1st century there was a phenomenon that had never appeared before, where one of the official sects (the Pharisees) took this seriously and developed a whole proselytizing strategy. This sometimes led the Roman Empire to prohibit this.

However, while this was happening, the reality is that the majority of Gentiles remained only on the outer circle of Israel’s practice, due to the excessive legalistic rigor of this sect, which kept adding more rules to pious life.

In the case of the Way, after that “Pentecost” for the Gentiles that occurred at Cornelius’ house, many began to join the new group. They were taught as a priority the Tanakh (Acts 15:19-21), which was the Bible of that time in light of the Messianic teaching that would come to them through oral tradition.

From that moment on, two key questions would arise for them: What would be the practice for the Gentiles? Which sect would have the privilege of teaching? However, to guide this new group of Gentiles, the Lord brought an apostle who had experienced sectarian fragmentation himself, to the extreme of becoming a murderer violating the very law he loved so much. He knew the law of Moses, the Midrash of the different sects, and the oral Mishnah of the Pharisees in great detail. But the seal of his election would be the training that the Messiah himself would give him, which began in a period of three years in the desert.

Thus, he fulfilled one of the apostolic requirements: having been with Yeshua since the baptism and being witnesses of his death and resurrection (Acts 1:21-22). And that is why he was accepted by the rest of the apostles when he could show them what he had learned under a special revelation from Jesus himself, including details that only the apostles knew (Gal 1:11-12; 1 Cor 11:23).

It is this apostle who will guide the rest in how the acceptance and instruction of the new disciples coming from the Gentile world should be. Of course, this also warranted the correction of those already saved from within Israel who needed to learn how to deal with the new brothers. They were not always subject to that reality just because they were neophytes in Scripture and on the whole path. So the task ahead was daunting: on the one hand, to continue spreading within and outside the Jews, and on the other, to disciple Gentiles from scratch.

As every challenge implied dangers:

1. The new disciples could interpret the entire new Way in the light of their personal paradigms, leading to distortion.
2. Gentiles had to learn so much that anyone could present themselves to them as a teacher when in reality they too were neophytes regarding the Way.
3. The new distortions could become visibly opposed groups within the church or simply grow within it, eating away at it from within.

Author: Dr. Liber Aguiar.