In the previous post we examined the main political principles and ideas in Acts chapter 15 which we noted was a paradigm shift in 49AD. The Jerusalem convention of emissaries, senior statesmen and the whole citizen assembly decided that only the Noahic-Abrahamic standard of international law would be what they required for all nations in civic life. And they elected Judas and Silas along with Paul and Barnabas as social strategists [i.e. prophets] to spread this message to all the citizen assemblies. They chose social strategists – not pastors – for this task because it was mainly a matter of law and society, not of religion.
[Note: This series of posts does not assert that politics is primary in the New Testament, however, there are often overlooked principles and ideas that are worthy of attention. For context we paraphrase certain Bible terms by how it was understood at the time. Modern readers of Scripture focus only on the religious activities. Christians were active in politics from the beginning. Failure to understand this and to believe Christianity only belongs in the religious sphere leads some people today to wrongly judge Christian social activism as seeking improper religious imposition of beliefs using state coercion, i.e. ‘Christian Nationalism’ or Theocracy or Dominionism.]
Before continuing the narrative in Acts, it may be fitting to examine perhaps one of Paul’s first letters ...
