Today’s One Year Bible reading has a section in it that I have always found interesting. It led me to thinking about our Apostle and Apologist Paul’s personality once more:
Paul and Barnabas Separate
Acts 15: 36 After some time Paul said to Barnabas, “Let’s go back and visit each city where we previously preached the word of the Lord, to see how the new believers are doing.” 37 Barnabas agreed and wanted to take along John Mark. 38 But Paul disagreed strongly, since John Mark had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in their work. 39 Their disagreement was so sharp that they separated. Barnabas took John Mark with him and sailed for Cyprus. 40 Paul chose Silas, and as he left, the believers entrusted him to the Lord’s gracious care. 41 Then he traveled throughout Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches there.
The Apostles and early Christians were human, just like us.
Sometimes we read the Acts of the Apostles and think that they were super human! While we may not have the same calling as Paul and Barnabas, we still have the same Spirit residing within us as believers in Jesus - and we have the same weaknesses and human struggles, too.
Paul was a man of passion. He would rightly or wrongly pursue what he thought was the correct action with fervor and determination.
Saul (before the Lord renamed him Paul) persecuted the first believers with religious zeal. It took the intervention of God to stop him from bringing more to imprisonment on the Damascus road :
Acts 26: 9 “I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. 11 And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities.
(see Acts 9 & 26 for more details)
Paul admits the emotional nature of what he did, calling it “raging fury”. Paul could conduct reasonable apologetics, logically, with the philosophers at Mars Hill in Acts 17 and be a man of strong emotions. The facts that the Bible presents about Paul are amazingly detailed and we see a complex human being, as we all are, not some mythologically perfect “glowing saint” as he is sometimes portrayed as.
We see that Paul and Barnabas “disagreed strongly” and apparently had a falling out over John Mark (who is thought to have written the Gospel of Mark) who had earlier abandoned Paul in the midst of a missionary trip, which Paul seems to have not forgotten. Paul later asks specifically for John Mark to come to him while he is imprisoned and the conflict between himself, Barnabas and John Mark is forgiven and forgotten.
“Get [John] Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11)
In scripture, we see a very human Paul; a person a lot like us. Even though sometimes his anger and emotions were justified (as when he spars with Peter), the fact that he wasn’t always acting in some etherial and holy manner is apparent.
Paul Opposes Peter
Galatians 2: 11 But when Cephas [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. 13 And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
We can see that Paul was a strongly emotional man and sometimes was led by those emotions and not reason or the Spirit. With all of his flaws, God still used this man Paul through his reason, emotions and by the power of the Holy Spirit to do an almost unfathomable work in spreading the Gospel!
I would argue that it is precisely BECAUSE of the personality of Paul and his transparency, flaws and all, that Paul was such a powerful witness for Jesus Christ. God can mold us into the vessel that He wishes as we are moved upon by His Spirit. We are the clay, as scripture says and He is the potter. God used the disagreement between Paul and Barnabas to double the spread of the Gospel. All things work for the ultimate good, in the Lord.
Paul said of himself and how God used him in 2 Corinthians 12:
9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
God’s perfect will is always done here on earth and He uses imperfect human beings like ourselves to do it.
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