… with the following letter: “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the believers of Gentile origin in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that certain persons who have gone out from us, though with no instructions from us, have said things to disturb you and have unsettled your minds, we have decided unanimously to choose representatives and send them to you, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. 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. Farewell. Acts 15:23-29

They put into writing what the Holy Spirit has led the apostles and others to decide. Just as God put the Ten Commandments into writing, so the directives to the new Gentile converts to Christ are written and hand delivered. Through this final decision letter they quell the controversy created by the folks who have said things to greatly disturb the Gentile converts.

With the condemnation of fornication comes the affirmation to be Holy as Christ is Holy. This is something even the philosophers took no stand on with the heathen idol worshippers. Christians take this stand. Also with the directives to abstinence, the blood is poured out like water onto the ground when it is killed, reminding us of Christ’s blood poured out for us as a sacrifice for our sins. So as with Holy Communion we eat His Body and drink His Blood in remembrance of His suffering sacrifice.