Lesson 22 – Serving with Accountability, part 2 (4:7-18)
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We continue with our study in how we hold ourselves accountable to others.
In the first part of verse 10 we learned how we are accountable through our suffering. In the second part we are accountable in reconciliation.
We do not find the word reconciliation here at all. To read the rest of this story between Paul and Barnabas and Mark, we must go to the book of Acts. In chapters 13 and 14 we find the account of their first journey through the area today known as Turkey. Paul and Barnabas were partners in ministry. In chapter 15, when they were preparing to go out again for a second trip, Paul refused to allow Barnabas’ nephew, Mark, to go with them because Mark had quit in the middle of the journey the last time and gone home. Paul wanted to be about his ministry, and he didn’t have time to bother with someone he considered a quitter.
But in the second part of verse 10 we discover that a change has come in this relationship between Paul and Mark – Paul may have sent a note to these people not to accept Mark back; but now he instructed them to welcome Mark to their church. We don’t know how the reconciliation took place. And in the lives of those around us – if we suddenly see reconciliation between people who had been at odds with each other, how that peace came to be is not ours to know before we accept them at just the word of the person we’ve called friend.
Verse 11 gives us another example of accountability – faithfulness. Here were workers who had proven to be an encouragement to Paul in spite of great pressure from others to forsake him. Other Jews considered Paul a traitor to the Jewish faith. But these few people had remained faithful to Paul and to the ministry God had called all of them to do. They had become an encouragement to Paul because of this faithfulness and support.