The Church at Antioch was split and very worried, particularly over insistence of the Jerusalem Christians that all Gentiles must accept circumcision before they could be accepted as Christians. Anyone w an East African background can understand how deeply emotional the issue had become. If, in our present-day situation, a Church insists that all its members must accept circumcision, there could be outright rejection of that Church by people from the East African societies which do not practice circumcision. Only in an area where all the people w from a society where circumcision was an essential custom, could s a Church continue.

It is clear that Paul and Barnabas had not asked the Gentile converts of Cyprus and Asia Minor to accept circumcision. From Paul's letters we can see that what he required of the Gentile converts was wholehearted commitment to the new way of life shown and given to them in Jesus Christ. He himself had been transformed by his meeting with the living Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, and Paul was convinced that if Jesus could transform him then he could transform anybody else. In Paul's letter to the Galatians, where he writes about the circumcision issue, he shows that Abraham had faith and was accepted by God because of his faith before circumcision was made the external sign of the people of God. Paul, himself a circumcised Jew, realized that circumcision by itself was only an external bodily sign. Unless the inner self was changed a new relationship with God was not possible; circumcision could not bring about that new relationship.

Paul had seen uncircumcised Gentiles living new, transformed lives in the power of the Holy Spirit, and he was absolutely convinced that God had accepted these people as his spiritual sons and daughters without their acceptance of the Jewish Law and circumcision.