It is worthy of note, if our inquirer will look it up, to see that the expression, "Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law," is omitted from the Revised Version and the better Greek texts. Evidently the law under discussion in the fifteenth chapter of Acts includes the whole Mosaic code which the Lord did not impose on the Gentiles. Every moral element in that law remained. But every moral element of the law is included in the Ten-Commandment law. When Christ came, the ritual law expired by limitation. The great vine which had twined around the great trunk of the moral law dropped off, but the tree stood,—the Ten Commandments remained,—impaired in no part of its life. There will be no trouble to our inquirer whatever, or to any other who earnestly desires to know the truth, if he will keep in mind that God's government is one, eternal, unchangeable; necessarily so from His own perfect, holy, just, loving character. His law is as His government, and that law is summarized in the great Ten Words spoken from Mount Sinai.
In order to win the transgressors back to that law and teach them His character and hold them to Himself, God devised the ceremonial law by which His children could from the very beginning express their faith in Him. In the patriarchal age it was very simple. In the Mosaic age it was very complex, but every act that was performed had its lesson respecting sin and salvation; and sin is, ever has been, and ever will be, the transgression of the moral law of Ten Commandments. Sometimes this ceremonial law has been so intertwined in its moral aspects with the moral law that to the casual observer they have seemed almost the same. It is like a strong, growing green vine on an oak. When the vine is cut it falls and dies, but the oak stands just the same. The life of each is different. So it is with the two laws. We have a ceremonial law in this dispensation, God's simple regulations regarding baptism and the Lord's Supper. The four things imposed on the Gentiles in Acts 15 were things of moral bearing, things which those Gentile converts did not consider were part of the moral law because their minds had been blinded by generations of practice. They were imposed by the apostles because they did have a moral basis.