Paul and the Council of Jerusalem

At the Council of Jerusalem, church leaders agreed that gentiles need not be circumcised in order to become Christians. Some time after this Peter visited Antioch. Although he had supported Paul's opinion at the Jerusalem Council, Peter refrained from eating with the uncircumcised Christians. Paul confronted Peter and accused him of hypocrisy. We might be shocked to read about this blowup between Peter and Paul, the two great pillars of the church. Luke does not record the episode in Acts. Paul brings it up in his letter to the Galatians in order to bolster his insistence that the Galatian Christians should resist any effort by outsiders to impose upon them Jewish ways. Whatever the nature of their meeting, Peter and Paul did agree on an essential truth: Salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ.