Acts 15:20

He proposes asking Gentiles to abstain from idol pollution, sexual immorality, strangled meat, and blood. The few requested abstentions promote holiness and fellowship, not salvation by law.

Cross-references · 40

• Acts 15:29You must abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.
• Rev 2:20But I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads My servants to be sexually immoral and to eat food sacrificed to idols.
• Rev 2:14But I have a few things against you, because some of you hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to place a stumbling block before the Israelites so they would eat food sacrificed to idols and commit sexual immorality.
• Lev 3:17This is a permanent statute for the generations to come, wherever you live: You must not eat any fat or any blood.”
• Gen 9:4But you must not eat meat with its lifeblood still in it.
• Acts 21:25As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they must abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality.”
• 1 Cor 8:4–13So about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world, and that there is no God but one.
• Lev 17:10–14If anyone from the house of Israel or a foreigner living among them eats any blood, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from among his people.
• 1 Cor 6:9Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts,
• 1 Cor 10:7–8Do not be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written: “The people sat down to eat and to drink, and got up to indulge in revelry.”
• 1 Cor 6:18Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a man can commit is outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.
• 1 Th 4:3For it is God’s will that you should be holy: You must abstain from sexual immorality;
• Rev 9:20Now the rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the works of their hands. They did not stop worshiping demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk.
• Deut 12:16but you must not eat the blood; pour it on the ground like water.
• 1 Cor 7:2But because there is so much sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.
• Deut 15:23But you must not eat the blood; pour it on the ground like water.
• 1 Cor 5:11But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a verbal abuser, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.
• Heb 13:4Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.
• Col 3:5Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.
• Gal 5:19The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery;
• Ezek 4:14“Ah, Lord GOD,” I said, “I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have not eaten anything found dead or mauled by wild beasts. No unclean meat has ever entered my mouth.”
• 1 Cor 8:1Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
• 1 Pet 4:3For you have spent enough time in the past carrying out the same desires as the Gentiles: living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and detestable idolatry.
• Exod 34:15–16Do not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you, and you will eat their sacrifices.
• Eph 5:3But among you, as is proper among the saints, there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed.
• Ps 106:37–39They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.
• 1 Tim 4:4–5For every creation of God is good, and nothing that is received with thanksgiving should be rejected,
• Ezek 20:30–31Therefore tell the house of Israel that this is what the Lord GOD says: Will you defile yourselves the way your fathers did, prostituting yourselves with their abominations?
• Deut 12:23–25Only be sure not to eat the blood, because the blood is the life, and you must not eat the life with the meat.
• 2 Cor 12:21I am afraid that when I come again, my God will humble me before you, and I will be grieved over many who have sinned earlier and have not repented of their acts of impurity, sexual immorality, and debauchery.
• Rev 10:8Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, “Go, take the small scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel standing on the sea and on the land.”
• Dan 1:8But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king’s food or wine. So he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself.
• 1 Cor 10:14–28Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.
• Num 25:2who also invited them to the sacrifices for their gods. And the people ate and bowed down to these gods.
• Heb 12:16See to it that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his birthright.
• Exod 20:3–5You shall have no other gods before Me.
• Gen 35:2So Jacob told his household and all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods that are among you. Purify yourselves and change your garments.
• Ezek 33:25Therefore tell them that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘You eat meat with the blood in it, lift up your eyes to your idols, and shed blood. Should you then possess the land?
• 1 Cor 6:13“Food for the stomach and the stomach for food,” but God will destroy them both. The body is not intended for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
• Deut 14:21You are not to eat any carcass; you may give it to the foreigner residing within your gates, and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are a holy people belonging to the LORD your God. You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Greek word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.