Paul and Barnabas' Sharp Dispute - Acts 14 Life Study

[JJ]

Regarding Paul and Barnabas’ sharp dispute over Mark:

I have come to think over many years of considering this account in Acts 14 that Witness Lee’s conclusions concerning it (See Life Study of Acts Message 43) miss the mark.

Perhaps this temporarily unpleasant time of contention among two very close co-workers is an example of God working all things for good to those who love Him and are called according to purpose.

Barnabas may have been showing "natural" favor to his own cousin, as Lee states. But, perhaps he saw the potential in Mark for him to learn from his mistake in leaving them during their first journey, while Paul was more focused on not wanting to repeat the experience of being abandoned by him.

In the long run, Barnabas, as a "son of encouragement", may actually have been right too (i.e had a good but different reason than Paul's also good more immediate reason). Mark obviously was later with Paul and in good fellowship with the churches as Paul later wrote to the Colossians about from prison in Rome - Colossians 4:10: “Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, sends you his greetings; and also Barnabas’s cousin Mark (about whom you received instructions; if he comes to you, welcome him)” and wrote one of the four Gospels. It is also noteworthy that Paul apparently did not write Barnabas off forever, or "quarantine him", but later wrote about him as a fellow apostle twice after this event in 1 Cor 9:6 “Or do only Barnabas and I not have a right to refrain from working?” and Galations 2 (the account where only Paul stood his ground in the matter of not requiring the gentiles to be circumcised).

Note that 1 Cor was written by Paul during in his three year stay in Ephesus recorded in Acts 19, so it seems that time may have healed any wounds from the event.