---
title: Acts 21:25
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/acts-21-25/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/acts-21-25.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Acts 21:25
testament: NT
section: Acts
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Acts 21:25

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> As 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.”

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (1984 edition): "keep away from what is sacrificed to idols as well as from blood"
- NWT (2013 revision): "keep away from what is sacrificed to idols as well as from blood, from what is strangled, and from sexual immorality"

## JW Usage

The Watchtower cites Acts 21:25 as confirmation that the apostolic decree of Acts 15:29 was still in force years later — James reminds Paul of "our decision in writing" — and reads the continued circulation of the four-item list as proof that the blood item is binding on all Christians for all time. The verse is paired with Acts 15:29 in JW publications as a bookend showing the decree's lasting authority.

## Protestant Usage

James does refer back to the decree, and the four items remain the same package. But the question is what kind of authority the decree carries — perpetual absolute law on every item, or pastoral guidance for first-century Jewish-Gentile fellowship. Acts 21:25 does not settle that question; it only confirms the decree was still being communicated. The same Paul standing in front of James in Acts 21 had already written 1 Cor 8 and 10:25 applying the idol-food item conscience-pastorally. The decree's continued circulation does not make the blood item alone perpetual any more than it makes the idol-food item alone perpetual. The four items rise or fall together.

## NWT Issue

The NWT renders the verb apechesthai as "keep away from" the four items — including blood — language that frames the decree as an ongoing prohibition fitting the modern transfusion doctrine. Standard translations read "abstain from" (ESV, NASB, NIV). Both renderings are within the verb's range; the NWT's choice is consistent with its broader handling of Acts 15:29 but emphasises the continuing-action sense. The translation itself is not the deepest issue here — the interpretive lift from "abstain from blood" to "refuse a medical transfusion" is what the text cannot bear.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Apostolic Decree's Four Items](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/blood-acts15-apostolic-decree.md) — Acts 15:29 vs 1 Corinthians 8 — Paul's Own Hermeneutic [Practice]