What is that you have the attitude of “Whatever it takes” toward? For this cause or this end, you are willing to sacrifice anything and everything? Do you have something that you believe in so much so that you’d be willing not only to die for but also to live for it?

For Paul, such a thing was the spread of the gospel. Even it meant that going back a few steps, if it will help the spread of the gospel, then he was for it.

In Acts 21, when Paul gets to Jerusalem, he finds some who are unhappy with him because they believed him to be teaching something that undermines what they teach. Mainly that they don’t need to obey the laws anymore. But that’s not what Paul taught at all. He taught the gentiles that they are no longer under the law and therefore freed from the bondage of the law. And that, rather than leading people disobey the law, it will lead them to love the law, see its wisdom, and obey it, but not become bondage to it. However, some people weren’t understanding this. So what does Paul do? Blow them off saying, “It’s their problem that they don’t understand. I’m going to do what God called me to do and if they don’t want that, then to hell with them!”

Fortunately, that is not Paul did. He submitted himself to their tradition and followed their custom since it wouldn’t undermine the central message of the gospel and would give him a greater opportunity to preach the gospel. In other words, he didn’t burn bridges unnecessarily so that the gospel could continue to spread.

He swallowed his pride. It made him look like he was going back on his words. But he wasn’t compromising the gospel. As a matter of fact, it was because of his zeal for the gospel that he submitted to those with immature understanding!

Would you be willing to submit to immature and wrongheaded requirements if it meant that the gospel would spread? Whatever it takes? Is it about being right or the spread of the gospel? Is it saving face or the spread of the gospel?

Oh that you and I would have Paul’s heart regarding the gospel!

PH