Reconciliation of the Christian Church

1. Jesus has all power.
2. He conveys it to Peter individually and to all the disciples in unity, and what they bind and loosen on earth will be bound and loosened in heaven.
3. Peter and the disciples, always retaining the authority to bind or loosen, in total unity with the Holy Spirit, emancipate the gentiles from all law.*
4. Hence, while the Jewish Christians and all those who would have laws, remain subject to Peter and the disciples and their legitimate successors (per Galatians), the gentile Christians are free of all law and indeed forever, for heaven has been ordered in accordance with the disciples decision and Jesus’ promise, i.e., liberty from law.
5. Paul declares that anyone who obeys the least law because it is law essentially forfeits his birthright as a gentile and becomes Jewish in spirit and thus, by clear implication, subject to the continuing law-making of Peter and his successors, i.e., the Church of Rome, possessor of all authority over those who recognize law.

[* If the gentiles were to be bound at all this was the place to do it. And the proof for their total liberation lies in the three or four restrictions actually imposed. They could have imposed more. Nothing was due to an oversight. They could have required an abstinence from homosexual activity, or they could have forbidden women to speak in the church. They did not do this and for the simple reason that they intended no law whatsoever. They trusted entirely in the Holy Spirit. The restrictions actually imposed apparently had to do with being sensitive to the feelings of Jews, Christian or not, in gentile lands,** and thus could easily be derived from the three great loves, i.e., love God absolutely, love neighbor as self, love Christian more than self. For Paul makes clear that these were not binding on the gentile Christian, except with regard to dealings with people of “weak faith” who honored laws in order to honor God.]

[** A source, I cannot remember who, suggested this was due to a desire to enable the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians to break bread together at the table.]

Conclusion: a Christian must be either lawful (Jewish mentality), and thus comply with the edicts of the Church of Rome, or he must be lawless/free (Gentile mentality) and be subject to the Holy Spirit alone and immediately without qualification, or else he is in rebellion against the Church by holding to some laws of private interpretation but without respecting the authority of the Roman Pontiff as Jesus' specifically annointed law giver.

There are two files or tracks on the Way, the Roman/Lawful/Jewish and the Free/Lawless/Gentile. Peter is head of the Church and thus of the Lawful and Free alike. But he, or the bishops in unanimity and in his absense, can issue laws only for the Lawful, i.e., for all those who recognize even a single law as binding upon the Christian conscience.