Do Paul and Barnabas See Each Other Again

Just before Paul's second missionary journeying a controversy erupted in Syrian Antioch regarding whether new gentile converts should be circumcised or non. Paul and Barnabas, as well as others, are sent to Jerusalem to settle the split up in the church. The entire matter is debated, a decision is arrived at, and the two evangelists return dwelling to Antioch in late fall of 49 A.D. with what was decided. Please see the commodity in this series entitled "Controversies in the Church" for more information.

Paul begins planning his second missionary journey in tardily fall of 49 A.D. Information technology originated in a desire expressed by him to Barnabas, that they should revisit all the cities where they had preached the Gospel and founded churches (Acts 15:36). He felt that he was not called to spend a peaceful, though laborious, life at Antioch, but that his truthful work was "far off among the Gentiles" (Acts 22:21).

The Apostle Paul knew that his campaigns were not concluded. He knew that, as the soldier of Jesus Christ, he must not residuum from his warfare, merely must "endure hardness," that he might delight Him who had called him (2Timothy two:3 - four). As a careful physician, he remembered that they, whose recovery from sin had been begun, might exist in danger of relapse.

The words really recorded as used by Apostle Paul on this occasion are, "Come up, allow us plough dorsum and visit our brethren in every city, where nosotros have announced the word of the Lord, and let united states of america see how they fare." We observe here, for the get-go fourth dimension, a trace of that tender solicitude concerning his converts, that earnest longing to behold their faces, which appears in the letters which he wrote afterwards, as one of the near remarkable, and one of the most bonny, features of his character.

Paul and Barnabas

Paul was the speaker and not Barnabas. The feelings of Barnabas might not be and so deep, nor his feet and so urgent. Paul thought doubtless of the Pisidians and Lycaonians, every bit he thought afterwards at Athens and Corinth of the Thessalonians, from whom he had been lately "endeavoring to meet their confront with cracking desire" (1Thessalonians 2:17, 3:10). His wish was to revisit every urban center where converts had been fabricated.

This plan by Paul, however, of a combined visitation of the churches with Barnabas was marred past an outbreak of human being nature. The ii apostolic friends were separated from each other by a quarrel, which proved that they were indeed, as they had lately told the Lystrians, "men of similar passions" with others (Acts 14:15).

Barnabas was unwilling to undertake the journey unless he were accompanied by his relation Mark. Paul could not consent to the companionship of one who carve up from them, but a few years prior, at Perga in Pamphylia. Neither campaigner was willing to yield his stance to the other. This quarrel was much more than closely connected with personal feelings. At that place is little doubt that severe words were spoken on the occasion.

Information technology is unwise to be over-anxious to dilute the words of Scripture, and to exempt even Apostles from blame. Past such criticism we lose much of the instruction which the honest record of their lives was intended to convey. Without attempting to rest as well nicely the faults on either side, our simplest grade is to believe that, as in near quarrels, both Barnabas and Paul were to arraign for the split.

Barnabas was determined to have with them John who was called Mark.

Merely Paul did non call up it good to have him because he had departed from them at Pamphylia, and did non go with them to the work. Equally a effect, such a abrupt contention arose between them that they parted (dissever) from one another (Acts xv:37 - 39, HBFV).

Paul'south natural disposition was impetuous and impatient, easily kindled to indignation, and overbearing. Barnabas had shown his weakness when he yielded to the influence of Peter and the Judaizers. The remembrance of the indirect censure he and then received may have been perpetually irritated by the consciousness that his position was becoming daily more than and more subordinate to that of the friend who rebuked him. Once he was spoken of as chief of those "prophets at Antioch," among whom Saul was the last. Now his proper name was scarcely heard, except when he was mentioned equally the companion of Paul.

In short, this is ane of those quarrels in which, by placing ourselves in imagination on the one side and the other, we can alternately justify both, and easily see that the purest Christian zeal, when combined with human weakness and partiality, may take led to the misunderstanding. How could Paul consent to take with him a companion similar Mark who could testify an embarrassment and a hinderance? Such a task as that of spreading the Gospel of God in a hostile world needs a resolute volition and an undaunted courage. And the work is likewise sacred to be put in jeopardy past any experiments.

Mark had been tried in one case and found wanting. And Barnabas would not be without strong arguments to defend the justice of his claims. It was hard to expect him to resign his involvement in one who had cost him much feet and many prayers. His dearest wish was to see his young kinsman approving himself as a missionary of Christ. At present, too, he had been won dorsum to a willing obedience, he had come from his home at Jerusalem, he was set up now to face all the difficulties and dangers of the enterprise. To repel him in the moment of his repentance was surely "to interruption a bruised reed" and to "quench the smoking flax" (Matthew 12:20).

It is not difficult to sympathise the obstinacy with which each of the disputants, when his feelings were once excited, clung to his opinion every bit to a sacred truth. The simply course which now remained was to divide and choose two unlike paths and to labor independently. We cannot, however, suppose that Paul and Barnabas parted, like enemies, in anger and hatred. It is very likely that they made a deliberate and amicable organisation to split the region of their get-go mission betwixt them, Paul taking the continental, and Barnabas the insular, role of the proposed visitation.

One stream of missionary labor had been divided, and the regions blessed by the waters of life were proportionally multiplied. Campaigner Paul speaks of Barnabas later equally of an Apostle actively engaged in his Master's service (Colossians 4:10). We know nothing of the details of his life beyond the moment of his sailing for Cyprus, just we may reasonably attribute to him not only the confirming of the kickoff converts, merely the full establishment of the Church in his native island.

At Paphos, the impure idolatry gradually retreated before the presence of Christianity. And Salamis has earned an eminent place in Christian history, through the writings of its bishop, Epiphanius. Mark, too, who began his career as a "minister" of the Gospel in this island (Acts 3:5) justified the practiced opinion of his kinsman Barnabas.

The severity of Paul, however, may have been of eventual service to his grapheme, in leading him to feel more deeply the serious importance of the work he had undertaken. And the time came when Paul himself acknowledged, with affectionate tenderness, not only that Mark had again become his "fellow laborer" (Philemon 1:24) but that he was "assisting to the ministry" and one of the causes of his own "comfort" (Colossians four:ten - xi).

It seems that Barnabas was the first to take his departure. He decided to split with Paul and take Mark with him to revisit their labors on the island of Republic of cyprus (Acts 15:39 - 41). Paul took Silas with him to Tarsus and officially started his second missionary journey.

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Source: https://www.biblestudy.org/apostlepaul/life-epistles-of-apostle-paul/paul-barnabas-split.html

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