In the book of Acts we learn that Paul's understanding of the gospel contradicted the legalism of Judaism. Acts 15 portrays the process by which the leadership of the early church at the Jerusalem Council put its stamp of approval on his evangelism, showing that they disapproved of the legalism maintained by some of the Christians with a Jewish background.

At the end of that meeting the apostles and elders in attendance sent out a circular letter to the Christian churches. In it they reported: "For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well" (verses 28, 29).