Bringing Joy

Acts 15:1-3

But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers.

Aaron Orendorff

Here are Paul and Barnabas, going up to Jerusalem, in the very heart of “no small dissension and debate.” The stress of the situation must have been enormous. The questions they were facing as well as the issues around which those questions turned were not merely theological, they were profoundly personal: Who are God’s people? How is a person saved? What place does the law of Moses (Israel’s heritage and ethnic identity, in other words) have in the life a follower of Jesus Christ?

Yet amidst all of this debate and stress, Luke tells us that as they went through the churches in “Phoenicia and Samaria,” Paul and Barnabas “brought great joy to all the brothers.” What an amazing statement. How easy it would have been to simply relay their side of the story, to jockey and position for power, to make sure that the right side won. But instead of simply bringing news (or even simply bringing “the truth”) what they bring is joy. May that be what true of us as well as we enter into the situations in our life where debate and stress abound.