When Someone is in Error: Our Example in Priscilla, Aquila, and Apollos

I had a dream last night about the most precious saint, one trying to teach something on the internet, about the Bible, that she just didn’t understand. Her heart, however, was so right on and her fruit very good. Let me start from the beginning:

I was on social media going over my newsfeed when this sweet little mini-teaching came to my attention:

“Shrimp isn’t food! We can’t eat shrimp! But don’t worry, there is plenty of crab to go around and it’s even better.”

Somehow, in the dream, her tone and heart came across crystal clear in the presentation. Her name was foreign, I am betting African, very exotic and beautiful to my mind, but I couldn’t have reproduced it on paper if my life depended on it. I was about to click on her name so I could gently correct her in private before the internet vultures descended to call her names and humiliate her publicly when I clicked the wrong thing, or the screen refreshed all on its own, and *poof* her post was gone and I couldn’t find her. I sat there, just sick at heart about what was about to happen to this woman with the beautiful spirit. I woke up and went to prayer about it.

I knew this woman had received an incomplete teaching herself, obviously. She certainly wasn’t wrong on purpose. I wasn’t sure if she had just seen a meme with shrimp on it, saying it wasn’t food, and took it at face value as being the only outlawed crustacean now, or if someone had seen a pic of her on social media eating it and had laid into her and really didn’t teach her, or what. What I knew was that she didn’t have all of the information she needed for understanding, and certainly not the understanding to teach. We see it all the time on social media, right? Folks lambasting people about what they are doing wrong, but not really providing a complete teaching, or even trying to impart understanding. And we certainly don’t see the social media critics sticking around to make sure people are equipped to go on with life after they receive a disembodied tidbit of information about this or that Torah Law. They are critics who go around looking to correct, not teachers looking to impart understanding. She knew that shrimp was not food. She believed it with her whole heart. She obviously didn’t even know exactly why it isn’t something that the Bible would call food. Perhaps she didn’t even understand that when the NT says the word food, that it is in an OT context, that the Bible painstakingly defines the word food, that all food has always been clean (despite the belief of the Pharisees that one could defile perfectly good food with unwashed hands), and that no additions or subtractions were made by Yeshua/Jesus in what qualifies as food, once the context of the first-century controversies is taken into account. This delightful lady wanted to obey God, n’est-ce pas? Of course! Someone convicted her of eating shrimp and she went up to the mountaintop to lovingly inform others – and make no mistake, her delivery was loving. God can do much with such a lovely heart as hers. I honestly felt very maternal feelings for her, she was so genuine.

But I lost track of her! She was about to reap a potential harvest of public correction, humiliation, name-calling, and – worst of all – she didn’t know enough to answer questions she would get from people who did not agree. Of all the things I ever learned in Church that offends me the most, it was the idea that new believers should be out preaching before they have been properly equipped. It has resulted in many precious babes landing right in the mouths of wolves who destroyed them before they even had a chance to mature. Eagerness without the knowledge to back it up isn’t so much zeal as a recipe for disaster. We have a responsibility to instruct new saints to hang back in humility while they become strong enough to be suitable guides for others.

And what about the person who “taught” her or those who were undoubtedly about to hunt her down over the coming catastrophic crab crisis? What is the responsibility now that she has it wrong? What model is provided by the Scriptures? We find it in Acts 18:

24 Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. 25 He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. 26 He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. (ESV)

(Just FYI, the image I used for the thumbnail is actually a marble floor from ancient Ephesus – perhaps our intrepid Bible heroes and heroine set foot upon those stones.)

“He knew only the baptism of John” – so his understanding, if anything, was merely incomplete. Like the lovely young lady in my dream. She obviously had the good fruit down, which requires the kind of knowledge that scholars cannot impart to anyone and has to instead be grown by the Holy Spirit, but her knowledge was incomplete. What did Priscilla and Aquila do? Did they interrupt the teaching, call him names, label him as a false teacher? After all, as Roman Jews, they had been recently expelled by Claudius from their home in the early 50’s and were probably in a bad mood. They knew the Scriptures and here was this young upstart with a pagan name, despite all his eloquence. He had something wrong, which obviously made him a heretic according to the by-laws of the First National Church of Facebook and its sister denomination, First Assemblies of Twitter. By those unwritten rules of conduct, they had every right to make a series of internet videos denouncing him as a moron and an idiot, calling his motivations and integrity into question, and telling everyone to listen to them instead. But what did they actually do?

“They took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.” Wow, so little drama. Taking him aside meant two things – they recognized the need not only to instruct, but also to protect his honor among those whom he had been teaching. Also, they saw that his lack of knowledge was not a character flaw – someone had relayed to him an incomplete picture, and probably because they themselves had been given an incomplete understanding. It happens. At its core, this story is about treating each other like brothers and sisters, about those who actually have a MORE COMPLETE understanding stepping in to gently instruct those whose understanding is LESS COMPLETE. This is not what happens on social media, where most correction is public, brutal, and given by those who actually know very little yet look for every opportunity to look like experts by being the sheriff of that one bit of information. On social media, people treat an incomplete understanding as though it is a character flaw! As though knowledge is what we worship, instead of a relational God who is teaching and enabling us to be His image-bearers, and was even willing to send His one unique Son to die on the Cross to make it happen.

Priscilla and Aquila were Jewish believers – they grew up with the milk of Torah and evidently had the maturity to stomach the meat of the weightier matters as well. They were mature believers, eminently qualified to teach both from the standpoint of knowledge and maturity of fruit. They modeled for us the proper way to correct – not tearing one another down publicly over genuine lapses in understanding, but guarding the reputation of the one being corrected, instructing in such a way as to not become stumbling blocks to a brother whom God has called, and with the goal of having their brother be able to be more, and not less, able to minister afterward. If they had handled the situation in our modern social media way, the incident would have resulted in an angry schism within the crowd, some following after Apollos and some going after Priscilla and Aquila. Apollos, by the ancient ways of honor and shame culture, would have had to fire back insults in order to undermine their character, in an attempt to get his standing before the crowd back. Instead of building God’s Kingdom together, they would have divided it into two separate camps. We see people trying to do this very thing in I Cor 1 – but Apollos, Peter, and Paul were having none of it!

So, when we see someone in error, we have to make sure that we (1) have enough knowledge to correct, and that means we have done the hard study ourselves and haven’t just watched youtube videos or consulted Rabbi Google or Pastor Yahoo, (2) take the person aside privately and gently to better instruct them, and (3) make sure that we guard their honor jealously so that we do not create schizms or make it so that no one will want to listen to them in the areas where they are right. Doing this wrong, and unbiblically according to the New Creation model, results in damage to the Kingdom, not a strengthening of it. In the beatitudes, Yeshua preached a radical new option to the old honor/shame paradigm – one that made gentleness, mercy, peacefulness, and meekness the traits worthy of honor, as opposed to the ruthlessness required by the public battles for honor practiced by the Pharisees, Scribes, Sadducees, and the rest of the ancient world.

I am reminded that Yeshua/Jesus preached that a good shepherd will leave the ninety-nine in order to go after the one and bring it home. I find it very telling that the good shepherd does not bring the ninety-nine along as an audience in order to correct that lost one publicly. If the good shepherd is that solicitous of the needs and dignity of one lost one, how much more so should we respect a brother or sister who is simply wrong about something?

 



The Character of God as Father Pt 13: Peter, Paul, and protecting the younger siblings

 

Galatians 2

11 But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.

12 For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision.

13 And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation.

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This passage can be difficult to understand if you don’t know about the traditions of the elders that Yeshua (Jesus) spoke against.  I’m going to just give a quick overview of what was happening here that was rabbinical instead of biblical.

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Biblically, all believers have been on equal standing since Mt Sinai.  In fact, there has only ever been one difference — that being that the eating of the Passover Lamb is forbidden to the uncircumcised, but other than that, all things are equal and always have been.  But the traditions of the elders, the Pharisaic laws, changed all that and made a wall of separation between those born Jewish and those born Gentile.  Belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was not enough, keeping the commandments was not enough — because one was still considered “common” or “unclean” until they had formally converted to Judaism according to their traditions.  This was also the heart of the matter before the Acts 15 council, and the whole point of Peter’s vision — the belief that, unless one converted to Judaism according to the traditions of the elders (now recorded in the Talmud), they were unclean and anyone who touched them or ate with them or ate what they touched would be unclean as well.  It was accepted to the point that ten years after the resurrection of Messiah, his own followers weren’t questioning it!

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And might I say that to call someone unclean whom God has made clean is to question God Himself, as well as the scriptures?  So this tradition had to go — or else the gospel would have never traveled beyond the Jews into the nations.

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Acts 10:28  And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.

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But in Galatia, we have a problem — Peter, who was the very man the revelation that believers are not unclean or common was given to, backtracked and refused to eat in the homes of the former Gentiles who were now joined to Israel.  Nor were the former Gentiles allowed to eat in the homes of Jewish believers in Messiah!  There was now a separation — and who was it at the hands of?  The mature, the older siblings.  Not Jews who denied Messiah, but Jews who received Him!

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Sidebar:  This is the antithesis of the kind of family that God is building.  In a good family, the older help care for the younger, the older serve the younger — because it is the younger and weaker who need served, not the eldest!  The older teach the younger, patiently.  The healthy aid the sick.  The older are never permitted to beat up, or discourage, the little ones.  The older siblings do not lord authority over the younger, but instead serve as faithful representatives and extensions of parental authority and never step beyond it, or assume that authority for themselves.

familyis

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So we had the older siblings (1) abusing the younger and (2) treating them as though they are not even family at all.  And the worst part is that Peter and Barnabus were in the thick of it — anything tolerated by Peter was going to be accepted as Messianic halakah — the doctrines that the Messianic believers would live by.  Someone had to step in to avert the destruction of the family that God was trying to build through Yeshua.  Fortunately, Paul stepped in — even though it would seem he was the only one who did.

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He let Peter have it, because the family was at stake and the character of God the Father and Yeshua were being misrepresented.  The Torah was being misrepresented.  Their actions were calling people unclean who were clean!  Paul did what Peter should have done.  Peter knew the truth better than anyone that Gentiles were being brought in as full citizens of Israel WITHOUT becoming Jews, and be subject to the same King, the same laws, the same blessings, the same standing.

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In the Body today, we see an upside down system.  Leaders being protected as they misrepresent the character of our King, and the youngest and weakest being trampled underfoot. No true family works like this, even most bad families don’t work like this.  Because we are doing this, because we are tolerating and promoting this, we aren’t being real brothers and sisters, we aren’t being real children of the King.  It really reminds me of the cutthroat atmosphere of High School, where really, no one loves each other and everyone wants to be associated with the in-crowd — no matter what the cost to their souls or to their fellow human beings.

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What would Paul say if he could see us?  I don’t think he’d be nearly as concerned about the Sabbath as he would be with the obvious fact that we obviously don’t love each other as family.  Perhaps if we were more focused on being a family and not turning a blind eye to those who are not acting like big brothers and sisters just because they are interesting, we would shine and lead many to righteousness.  All these little ones need care, they need a real family, and we need to start working on providing them with something better than the world can offer.

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Family is about the older caring for the younger, the strong protecting the weak, the wise instructing the unlearned.  It is about being joined with like kind and producing the kind of fruit that speaks well of the Patriarch.  Anything that does not meet these criteria, by definition, does not qualify as a healthy family.