In Acts 16, a young church leader named Timothy becomes a part of our story. Timothy is significant for two reasons. First, he's only half Jewish, so his acceptance as a church leader further breaks down barriers to full participation in the church for non-Jews. Secondly, Paul becomes his mentor as a church leader, and writes two letters of advice to him, which we call 1 and 2 Timothy.
Also in Acts 16, we start to see how far the good news of Jesus is travelling in a short period of time. I'm going old school today and including a map because I think's it's cool to see what's happening visually.
Acts 15-18 chronicles what is called Paul's 2nd missionary journey, and in today's chapter he and his team travel the land portion of the journey, then a short trip by sea to Philippi. This is the first time the gospel reaches Europe. If you know your map, you can see Paul's team reaches the area of today's Balkan states and Greece. Churches are planted in cities like Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica and Corinth -- all places far from Jerusalem, with very different cultures and religious traditions. Folks in these towns are likely converting from polytheistic religions or Greek philosophy when they become Christians, so there is a lot of teaching to be done to help them grow in their faith. Paul's letters of encouragement and instruction to these churches, which he writes after his journey, are the New Testament books that carry their names.
This information may seem a bit dry compared to more devotional stuff, but it sure helps if you're reading some of the other books. These chapters tell you why eight other New Testament books were written and help them come alive when you read them.
"What the heck? You've been fighting to not make it difficult on the new believers, you recruit me and now you want me to go out back so you can do WHAT to me?" - Timothy
ReplyDeletemr. camron,
ReplyDeletewhat does circumcised mean?
Miles, ask your dad. All I can say is that no one could question Timothy's commitment. I wonder about those Jewish Christians Paul was worried about, though: did they actually check guys when they walked into town? Did Timothy have to drop trou for these people?
ReplyDeleteIt seems paradoxical in some senses. Paul teaches a theology of grace, just grace; constantly reminding those he taught not to get sucked back in by those who want to make it grace + something else (it was for freedom you were set free). Yet here he goes and caves on this and Timothy has to be whitteled on. Hmmm...
ReplyDeletePete, great observation -- althought "whittled on" is a little too descriptive for me!
ReplyDeletePaul is all in when it comes to grace, but he recognizes that the people he's trying to teach aren't all the way there yet. So he makes a strategic decision not to fight the circumcision battle by walking into camp with an uncircumcised church leader. He's thinking long term, thinking about how to move people from A to B to C to D instead of trying to jump all the way to Z in one leap.
If Tim had been a seeker coming to Christ, Paul never would have done this. He was asking a church leader to make a sacrifice for the sake of the people, not for a person to follow legalistic rules to be able to join the church. It's a big difference, and part of his "I become all things to all people" argument he makes later.
Honestly, this is something I struggle with as a church leader. How much, or when, should I "cave" to people's expectations of me as a pastor so that I can effectively serve them in the bigger picture? I really respect Timothy here, because I know I would have bowed up, said nasty things about how legalistic they were, basically rebelled against the whole thing. And I guarantee they did not appreciate the sacrifice he made. That's part of church leadership - you suck it up, don't expect a pat on the back, keep the big picture in front of you, love people in spite of their thoughts or behaviors sometimes, make some tough judgment calls...
glad to see there was some logic behind all that happened in this chapter because alot of it sounds like a National Enquirer cover page... I mean really.... I just erased a whole paragraph of comment because this chapter has worn me out.
ReplyDeleteThe question that is sitting in my head from this chapter is "Does God sometimes open doors for us that we aren't supposed to walk through?"
ReplyDeleteah... strategery. I knew Paul knew what he was doing
ReplyDelete