Accountability and Arguments
There is a lot more in this text than I could possibly write about in the time I have - but a church without conflict is a church that is either empty or certainly isn't doing anything to reach people. People will have division. In the first part - the division was over jewish circumcision for gentile believers. Notice they sent the teachers of the church in Antioch to Jerusalem to visit the Apostles and the "Elders" - The Apostles and Elders heard both sides of the story and went back to scripture and made their decision. The burden of circumcision was simply not required. Salavation is in faith alone. The interesting point is there were people both INSIDE and OUTSIDE the local church in Antioch that got involved. While this is not a prescriptive command for structure its interesting read about how cooperative leadership and external counsel works - and works correctly!
I look forward to viewing this in the light other passages related to elders in the church and how they were selected and interacted with the individual churches.
Also interesting to note that after Paul got back - there was another conflict between he and Barnabus over John Mark's desertion. They appeared to resolve this without external help and the gospel moved foward. No one became enemies or got bitter over it. In fact later we see Paul asking for John Mark's help.
We wont always agree on everything but the Gospel and advancing God's Kingdom is something we better agree on or we are done!
Created over 2 years ago
