Risk (2)

Each Monday I will be posting a new letter until I am done with the list of people I have created. For those who might be interested, the next letter will be addressed to my dad, John Young.

This morning, during my personal devotional time, I found myself engulfed in Acts 15. The setting is the Jerusalem conference. Christians had come together to discuss matters that divided Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. In the end, a letter was issued to Gentile brethren in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. The contents of the letter are found in Acts 15:23-29.

What jumped out at me as I reflected upon the text was not what normally would. My thoughts were centered upon verses 24-26. From the ESV, it reads like this: “Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

First, I am encouraged that men were able to come together and hash out crucial issues. Jewish Christians, entrenched in their ways of doing things, were able to see the big picture. There were matters of personal practice that could not be bound on others. The leadership recognized such and when others were distancing themselves from Gentile Christians who refused to conform to Jewish ways of doing things, the leadership sought not to lay an undue burden upon those Gentiles. I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall in that get together. I would like to know how it went down, but I am left with only the conclusion. That’s good enough for me. Its still encouraging to see the outcome of the Jerusalem conference.

Second, I am enthralled by how the letter speaks of Barnabas and Paul as “men who have risked their lives for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ.” What would I do in their situation? What would you do in their situation?

Opposition is a kind of crossroads. Opposition can cause to go in any number of directions. That Paul and Barnabas went in the way of risk for Christ’s sake, jeopardizing their own lives in the process, is convincing proof that their faith was grounded in Christ.

We really have it good here in the United States. Regardless of where we think the country is going, we cannot begin to equate the kind of peril we might face as people of faith with what the early church got over and over and over again. When we start to think that we’ve got it bad, let’s remember the great risk that our spiritual heritage has left us!

For what will we risk our lives?