Acts 15:39–40: “Then the contention became so sharp that they parted from one another. And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus; but Paul chose Silas and departed, being commended by the brethren to the grace of God.”

April 12th, 2022 by Pastor Ed in devotional

We find here the fascinating story of Paul and Barnabas struggling to stay connected, but in the end, they disagreed so severely that they parted ways and 2 missionary teams went out instead of 1. We notice that “Paul chose Silas and departed,” and Barnabas took young Mark on to Cypress. One interesting result was that there was a doubling of the missionary effort in the early church. Paul didn’t have to visit the churches in Cypress and went on to the more difficult and formerly unreached places in Asia Minor and even Europe. And second, John Mark was able to mature and grow at Barnabas’ encouraging side.

It turned out that Silas was the perfect match for Paul because he was both a Jew and a Roman citizen, which was an important asset. In the next chapter, as a Roman citizen, he had the same benefits and protection as Paul. And as a respected leader in the mother church at Jerusalem, Silas reinforced the fact that Paul’s teaching of salvation by grace through faith was orthodox.

There are 3 lessons here for us:

1) Life is messy. Paul and Barnabas were regular human-type guys. We all need to keep in mind that no one, except Jesus, is perfect. Good friends, as well as good churches, sometimes go through splits because people are imperfect.

2) We need to be careful about being inflexible. We sense here that both Barnabas and Paul stuck to their demands and were inflexible concerning Mark. Compromise is a terrible word if we are talking about morals and ethics. But it is an absolutely essential word when we are talking about human relationships. Or as many have said, “Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be broken!”

3) It’s not what we think, what our opinion is, that really matters in the final analysis. It’s discovering just what the Holy Spirit thinks that is critical, and He may not agree with us. The church in Jerusalem had just gone through turmoil over what to do with the Gentiles, but they kept praying and discussing until they could say in unity, “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.”

“LORD, help us to listen for You and Your opinion today and then give us the grace to extend that grace to others.”