When Christians fall out

Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company... Acts 15:36-39

When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles... Galatians 2:11-12

A great feature of the Bible is its honesty about the faults of even its so-called heroes -  you can look at the Old Testament, and people like Abraham, Moses and David, or at the New, and people like Peter and Paul, and you see them “warts and all”; no attempt is made to gloss over their imperfections.

This thought is in my mind because we recently had a sermon about the importance of unity in the church. It was good to be reminded of this vital theme; we modern Christians should be ashamed of the extent of disunity among us, all the thousands of movements and denominations.

But let’s never imagine that the problem is new! Far from it. You don’t have to read the New Testament particularly carefully in order to see that, right from the very beginning, arguments, disagreements and divisions were common: Acts 6:1 - probably only days after Pentecost! -  is just the earliest recorded squabble.

Two of the worst disputes feature Paul: well, he was a pretty strong-minded person, wasn’t he?

In Acts 15 we read of what today might be called a bust-up between him and his friend Barnabas. Luke uses the Greek word from which we get the English “paroxysm”, a violent convulsion, translated in the NIV as “sharp disagreement”. The Message translation puts it graphically: “Tempers flared and they ended up going their separate ways”. Oh dear!

And then in Galatians 2 it’s Paul and Peter (referred to here as “Cephas”) who find themselves at loggerheads: Paul tells us that, one memorable day in Antioch, he “opposed Peter to his face, because he stood condemned”. And he did it “in front of them all”. Again, oh dear!

Deciding who was right and who was wrong isn’t the point; it’s not for us to judge. But perhaps we can learn lessons from these sad episodes which help us to work out some of our own difficulties. The key thing is to see why these disputes arose, and to ask if they could have been avoided. (What we mustn’t do is assume that because the Bible records them it also approves of them. No way!)

First, then, Paul’s quarrel with Barnabas.

Was this basically a personality clash, the sort of thing that sometimes happens even between friends? I think there was more to it than that. It was more like a disagreement over policy and even strategy.

Let’s use our imaginations to read between the lines…

Paul and Barnabas are planning a re-run of their first missionary journey, the events described in Acts 13-14. Barnabas seems to assume that they will take John Mark (who happens to be his cousin) with them, as they did first time. But Paul isn’t happy. “He deserted us last time!” he protests. “He’s unreliable! We can’t risk him again!” (The background is told in Acts 13:13.) And so Paul recruits a man called Silas for the proposed journey, while Barnabas and John Mark head off for Cyprus.

How easy it is to see both sides of the dispute! Barnabas (it’s no accident that his name means “Encourager”) takes a soft line regarding John Mark’s failure: “Oh, we all need a second chance! We all make mistakes, and he will have learned from last time”. While Paul is uncompromising: “No! The task is too important to risk a repeat.”

Don’t we sometimes see this kind of thing in our churches today? Somebody loses their way over something, and the church knows it must act – it can’t just turn a blind eye - but really doesn’t know what to do. On the one side there are the Barnabases, the “We-really-should-make-allowances” faction – “Jesus, after all, is all about forgiveness. Didn’t he restore Simon Peter after he denied Jesus? Didn’t he show compassion and mercy to the woman taken in adultery?”

On the other side, there are the Pauls, the hard-liners – “There are times when a stand has to be made, or the purity of the church will be compromised”. Which way to go?

Well, it seems that the church backed Paul on this one: they “commended Paul and Silas to the grace of the Lord” (Acts 15:40) for their journey, and we don’t read of them doing that for Barnabas and John Mark; in fact, we hear nothing more at all about that journey.

But – hey! – let’s not overlook the fact that now there were two evangelistic tours instead of one. Let that encourage us: even when things go wrong, God is well able to bring something positive out of it.

But what about the other dispute – that explosive crisis in Antioch? I’m afraid we’ll have to come back to that next time…

Lord God, thank you that you work through far from perfect men and women in bringing your purposes to pass. While we take encouragement from that, help us never to be complacent about our faults and divisions, but to remember the prayer of Jesus, that we may all be one, even as he and you are one. Amen.