“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Food and Drink #4
“We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well” (Acts 15:27-29).
This is from the settlement promulgated by the Jerusalem Council. There are four things here as “necessary things.” Necessary for Christians to keep until the end of time? We have already argued that the Christian faith as such has no food laws, and if that is true, then what is this? Where does it fit in?
The council had been convened because some Jewish Christians had been insisting that Gentile converts had to become circumcised and submit to the whole law if they wanted to be saved (Acts 15:1). To this, the council answered with a firm no. Gentiles did not have to be circumcised, and they did not have to submit to a law that, as Peter put it, “neither our fathers nor we were able to bear.” (Acts 15:10). But if you are not going to be circumcised, then what is the point? The clear point was table fellowship with Jews. If the Jews were going to be asked to accept the Gentiles to the table, then the Gentiles, in keeping with the law of charity, were asked not to bring their blood pudding. The things mentioned were dietary issues that would be a real point of stumbling for the Jews.
Out of the list of four, three of them had to do with food—meat offered to idols, the consumption of blood, and the eating of animals which had been killed by strangulation. This decision was accepted by Paul and distributed by him (Acts 16:4). He did not do this because of anything inherently wrong with the food, but rather because he was interested in keeping peace between Christians. So long as the principle was settled (that eating and drinking is nothing), he didn’t mind Christians refraining from all kinds of food (because love is everything).
We know this because one of the prohibited items (meat sacrificed to idols) is given a clean bill of health by Paul elsewhere (1 Cor. 10: 25-26). Whatever could be wrong with eating it, the problem was not with the meat. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. So when meat is offered up to an idol (which is nothing), it follows that nothing happens to the meat. The meat does not become demon-possessed.
This does not make blood pudding a tasty dish, or even a good idea. But it does mean that unless you are working hard to keep the peace between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians (as they were in the first century), you don’t need to worry about it.