Acts 15:19-29

¹⁹James continued by saying, “Therefore I have decided that we(inc) should stop bothering the non-Jewish people who are turning away from their sins and turning to God. That is, we should stop demanding that they obey all our laws and rituals.

²⁰Instead, we should write a letter to them requiring only four things: They should not eat meat/food that people have offered to idols, they should not have sex with someone to whom they are not married, they should not eat meat from animals that have been killed by being strangled { people have strangled}, and they should not eat the blood of animals.

²¹In many cities, for a very long time people have been proclaiming the laws that Moses wrote MTY, laws prohibiting those things. And every ◄Sabbath/Jewish day of rest► those laws are read {someone reads those laws} in the Jewish meeting places. So if the non-Jews want to know more about those laws, they can find out in our meeting houses.”

²²The apostles and the other elders, along with all the other members of the congregation, accepted what James had said. Then they decided that they should choose men from among themselves and that they should send them, along with Paul and Barnabas, to Antioch, to let the believers there know what the leaders at Jerusalem had decided. So they chose Judas, who was also called Barsabbas, and Silas, who were leaders among the believers at Jerusalem.

²³Then they wrote the following letter that they asked Judas and Silas to take to the believers at Antioch: “ We(exc) apostles and other leaders who are your fellow believers send our greetings to you as we write this to you non-Jewish believers who live in Antioch and other places in Syria and Cilicia provinces.

²⁴People have told us that some men from among us went to you, although we had not told them to do that. They troubled/distressed you SYN by telling you things that confused your thinking.

²⁵So while we(exc) met together here, we decided to choose some men and ask them to go to you, along with Barnabas and Paul, whom we (exc) love very much.

²⁶Those two have put their lives in danger because of their serving our Lord MTY Jesus Christ.

²⁷We (exc) have also chosen Judas and Silas to go to you. They will tell you the same things that we are writing.

²⁸The Holy Spirit and also we decided that you should not be required {that we should not require you} to obey a lot of burdensome Jewish laws. Instead, we only require you to obey the following instructions,

²⁹You should not eat food that people have sacrificed to idols. You should not eat blood from animals, and you should not eat meat from animals that people have killed by strangling them. Also, you should not have sex with someone to whom you are not married. Those things especially offend Jewish believers. So if you avoid doing them, you will be doing what is right. That is all.”