James was summing up all the evidence. Peter, Paul and Barnabas had all seen Gentiles turning to God in repentance and faith as they heard the gospel of Jesus. But legalistic believers, who had previously been legalistic Pharisees, demanded that the new Christians should be circumcised as Jews and obey their religious rules. They were making it more difficult for people to be saved, imposing layers or regulations on top of the grace of God.

James knew that was wrong. It was not just his own idea; he had listened carefully to the apostles' evidence of what God had done. All those men had been brought up to believe that God demanded good behaviour and religious observance to earn salvation; but they had also found themselves incapable of being good enough, and so they did not want to get in the way of anybody receiving the free salvation offered through Jesus Christ (Acts 15:10).

Wrong religious habits are hard to break. The Jewish-background believers were used to rules which governed every area of life: the pagan worship of religious Gentiles encouraged immorality and selfishness. Jesus gave the apostles responsibility to make both groups into His disciples (Matthew 28:19). The practices of pagan sacrifice were becoming a stumbling-block to Gentiles accepting the gospel, as non-kosher meat was a problem for Jews. So James gave his ruling that, whatever their background, the church should present Christ, and not their own tradition, and that their way of life should change so that unbelievers would not be deterred from considering the gospel and receiving Jesus Christ.

Like all human beings, we default to what we know and like. Our traditions and habits often have more influence than the demands of the gospel. We may claim to be devout, but does that mean we are devoted to Jesus or just maintaining our family or tribal tradition - even if it keeps other people away from Jesus (Matthew 23:1-39)? The church is His Body on earth; so to keep unbelievers away from Him makes no sense, and is actually a denial of our faith.