The Apostolic Council of Jerusalem; Acts 15:1 – 21 and Galatians 2:1-10 – Part 9

Church History: Date: A.D.49-50
The character given by Peter of the ceremonial law; he calls it a yoke, an intolerable yoke, too heavy to be borne by the Jews themselves, not to mention the Gentiles, whose neck God never designed this yoke for, but for the seed of Abraham only.

Now the law of ceremonies, imposed upon the Jews might well be called a yoke, if we consider:
Their number and variety: there were a multitude of legal observations.

Their burden and difficulty; the ceremonial law was a most laborious administration of a very painful service.

They were very costly and chargeable; so many bullocks, rams, and lambs for sacrifice, that the misers of this age would think themselves undone with the expense.

Their insufficiency: they were only shadows of good things to come, and could not make the observers of them perfect.

The ceremonial law in itself a yoke and a burden; and the imposing of it upon the Gentiles is called a tempting of God; that is, a dangerous provoking of him, because it never belonged to them, but to the Jews only, which yet were never able to bear it; that is, so to observe it, as to be justified and saved by it.

It was never the intent or design of God, that his people should be justified by their obedience to the ceremonial law: but that, being pressed with the weight, and pinched with the uneasiness of the yoke, they should seek unto Christ for righteousness and life, who alone was the fulfiller of it.

There was this difference between the ceremonial and moral law: the ceremonial law was therefore good because God commanded it; the moral law was therefore commanded, because good. Christ, by his death, abrogated the former, but, by the obedience of his life, fulfilled the latter