Allow for Growth in Others 

             Our impression of someone’s character is quickly formed and not easily changed. If we’re not careful, we can permanently pigeon hole a person based on immature mistakes we saw him make in one phase of his life. I have heard Christians say, “I can’t believe that person is doing (some good spiritual work), because he wasn’t like that when I knew him in college” or, “How can that person be qualified to be an elder? When I knew him 10 years ago, he sure wasn’t ready!” It’s possible that our previous opinions of someone’s qualities are still true years down the road, but love believes and hopes all things (1 Corinthians 13.7). Love compels us to fair-mindedly evaluate people’s spiritual lives based on where they currently are and where they could be given time and maturity, not on where they were in the past. In short, we must allow for growth in others.

When we look at the New Testament, the relationship between the apostle Paul and John Mark is a helpful illustration of allowing for spiritual growth. We’re first introduced to Mark as a Jewish Christian living in Jerusalem, where his mother had a house (Acts 12.12, 25). After traveling to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, he accompanied them on their first missionary journey but left them for unstated reasons and returned to Jerusalem near the beginning of the trip (Acts 13.13). As they prepared for their next journey, Barnabas wanted to take Mark again (his cousin, according to Colossians 4.10), but Paul “thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work” (Acts 15.37-38). Although it seems like Paul’s negative impression of Mark was settled, references to Mark scattered through Paul’s letters give us a different picture. From his Roman prison cell, Paul stated in Philemon’s letter that Mark was with him and sent his greetings (Philemon 24). In Colossians 4.10, Mark also sent his greetings to the Colossian church through Paul’s pen, and Paul indicates that he had previously given instructions about Mark’s potential visit to that church. At the end of Paul’s life, in his second letter to Timothy, he instructed his younger coworker to “Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.”

Although he was thoroughly unimpressed with Mark’s endurance for ministry in Acts 15, Paul allowed Mark room for spiritual growth, and Mark became an effective fellow worker. Eventually Mark would pen the gospel of Mark, which many scholars believe is the earliest of the four canonical gospels. May we all imitate Paul in our relationships with other Christians, looking past mistakes and helping each other press forward to future growth.

Nathan