James’s appeal to Scripture at the Jerusalem Council changes the course of history. God has spoken, and that changes everything. Stepping back, his use of the prophets has amazing things to teach us.

A Crucial Moment in the Early Church

Tensions were running high. The “who’s who” were all there, for the stakes were simply too enormous to miss this meeting. The mother city played host. The keynote addresses were set to begin.

It was AD 49, and on the docket was a pivotal issue that early followers of Jesus had to hash out for the explosive new movement to go forward. It had begun almost entirely with Jewish followers of Jesus. But recently, non-Jews (Gentiles) had been joining the movement in droves, upsetting the status quo and raising tremendous theological questions. What are we to do with Gentiles?

Do they need to convert to Judaism to be on the varsity team of early Christianity? Or, more seriously, do they need to adhere to Mosaic customs and laws in order “to be saved” (Acts 15:1, 5)? Would Christianity be gospel for some and gospel + law for others? The apostles and elders gathered in Jerusalem to sort it out, famously recorded in Acts 15:6–21.

Peter spoke first, recounting how the Gentile Cornelius’s household had experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit—like Pentecost 2.0—after Peter himself saw a vision from the Lord declaring all things “clean” (Acts 15:7–11, referring to Acts 10–11). Paul and Barnabas then “related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles” (Acts 15:12). But was this enough proof?

The decisive speech fell to James, the brother of Jesus. Yet his speech mainly quoted Scripture (Acts 15:13–18). Visions and miracles do not truly matter unless God himself has spoken authoritatively on the matter. The turning point at the Jerusalem Council was a passage from the Word of God.

Scripture and the Apostles

James’s appeal to the Old Testament (OT) comes as no surprise to those who are familiar with how the New Testament (NT) works. Nearly every writing of the NT engages verbatim with the OT somehow, and you can hardly drive through a chapter in some books (like Romans) without hitting the OT. Why? The apostolic writers were simply following Jesus’s instructions. As one of his last acts on earth he “opened their mind” to understand the Scriptures, so that through them they might witness to the whole world (Luke 24:44–47).

The NT authors apply the OT along three main veins:

• To present the gospel of salvation (e.g., Genesis 15:6 in Galatians 3:6)
• To describe the person and work of Christ (e.g., Deuteronomy 18:15 in Acts 3:22)
• To capture the identity and mission of the church (e.g., Exodus 19:5–6 and Hosea 1:6–10 in 1 Peter 2:9–10)

Though OT literacy is waning,¹ it is exhilarating to dive deeper into the use of the OT in the NT. It may not be easy, but it is always worth it.

So let us trace through what James does with the OT to solve the conundrum at Jerusalem. What is it about the OT that brings clarity—and changes the history of the world in the process? Let us follow three steps.

Step 1: Identify the passage(s)

The first (but often overlooked) step is to notice that an NT author is using the OT in the first place. Footnotes and study Bibles help, but quite often the writer plainly tells us.

Here James doubles down with “words of the prophets” and “as it is written” (Acts 15:15)—it is hard to miss that he is using the OT here. The citation reads like a single quotation and is presented like that in most English Bibles. However, James tips his hand with plural “prophets.” He is actually combining passages:

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