Romans 10:1 (MSG) Believe me, friends, all I want for Israel is what’s best for Israel: salvation, nothing less. I want it with all my heart and pray to God for it all the time.
Acts 16:2-3 (NIV) The brothers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. Paul wanted to take Timothy along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.
I am not interested in giving a theological lesson on Israel’s salvation, although that would be a very interesting conversation. There’s a life lesson that leaps off the page at me when I read Romans 10:10, Acts 16:2,3 and then backtrack and read Acts 15. What stands out to me is that the great Apostle Paul demonstrated he cared more about showing love than claiming rights.
To frame this you have to understand that there was a huge controversy at this time regarding the painful and humbling rite of circumcision. Jewish tradition and Jewish law was clear, among all of God’s covenant people the men had to be circumcised. However, the early Christian leaders had determined that Christ’s death on the cross absolved us from the ceremonial requirements of the law, including circumcision. You can read all about a huge confrontation in Acts 15, in which Paul was defending the right of the new Gentile believers to forgo circumcision, and a group of men we call Judaizers were angrily insisting that every single edict in the Old Covenant was still in force whether one was Christian or not. Here was the conclusion of the council that met in Acts 15, Elder James said in Acts 15:19 “It is my judgment that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.” He went on to take circumcision off the list of required conditions for being included in their spiritual family.
In Acts 16, Paul decides to take young Timothy with him on his next missionary journey. Timothy’s father was Greek so that made him a Gentile and in Acts 15 the right to be uncircumcised had been established. Paul had a right to take Timothy along with him without any changes whatsoever. Most of us would have said, “go take a long walk off a short pier,” to a bunch of old fogeys insisting on an ancient ritual that served no spiritual purpose whatsoever. The only thing that going along with this outdated code accomplished, was that it enabled Paul and Timothy to teach the Jews about God’s grace. Do you care about others enough to do what you don’t HAVE to do?
There are times to stand up for your rights but for too many of us; standing up for our rights is reflexive. List all your rights. You have a right to eight hours of sleep, a balanced amount of people and privacy, three meals a day with variety, access to preferred entertainment, positive affirmation, respect, positions that build our self esteem and freedom from stupid rules. If you’re like me, you just automatically get an attitude when one of these “rights” is denied. Too many of us automatically refuse to be inconvenienced, stressed, sacrifice or made to feel uncomfortable unless it’s absolutely required. Grace is actually the modern evangelicals exemption from regular church attendance: works of service, spending long periods in prayer, or submitting to one another. We will say, “I’m saved by grace, you can’t put me back under the law.”
I totally agree that salvation by grace liberates us from hundreds of obligations our forefathers in the faith had to contend with, but one thing grace doesn’t liberate us from is love; in fact, it intensifies it. Paul’s eternal salvation wouldn’t have been impacted by his refusal to circumcise Timothy, but the opportunity to reach his lost brethren would have been forfeited and that was intolerable for him.
The operative question is not do you love others, but what do you have to do to convince them you love them? Sometimes people can make the answer to the second question very difficult; and granted, sometimes people’s demands are impossible. However, can anyone reading this deny that many more doors to people’s hearts would be open if we were more interested in showing love than in claiming rights?
