The Holy Spirit’s Role in the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15

“Altogether, the outcome of this most important conference is one of the happiest proofs of the guidance and control of the earliest church leaders by the Holy Spirit the book affords. The unanimity with which the plan proposed by James, which was in no sense coercive is freely adopted by ‘the whole church’ and their acceptance as well of his formulation of it, which is repeated in the official minutes as quoted by Luke, shows that the Lord’s brother rightly read the mind of the Spirit as moving upon that first Ecumenical Council.”

Charles Fremont Sitterley, Jerusalem to Rome: The Acts of the Apostles (New York: Abingdon, 1915), 174.