No distinction

So God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did to us, and made no distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they." – Acts 15.8-11

It some ways it is hard for us to grasp what it was like in the early church.  The saved Jews thought this was just going to be kind of a completed Judaism. They really weren't sure that the Gentiles should be a part of it unless they became Jews as a part of becoming a Christian. At the very least surely the Jewish believes would somehow be closer to God because of their history. The Gentiles would only be grafted into the true church made up of saved Jews.

The churches held a council at Jerusalem to decide what to do. How are they going to handle this dilemma?

They came to the conclusion that they must include the Gentile believers. God gave them the same Holy Spirit after all and He purified their hearts with the same faith. By the grace of God they were all saved in the exact same manner.

So the disciples said that there was 'no distinction between us and them.'

From the very start the church has been a place where there is no place for distinctions within the body. Those from generations of Christians who have been saved since a child are no better and indeed no worse than those saved today from lives of wickedness and immorality.

When Paul wrote to the Galatians he put it this way - 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.'

No distinctions. The ground is level at the foot of the cross.