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 are currently and where
we expect them to be when given time, not on where they were in the past. In
short, we must allow for growth in others. After all, isn’t God doing that with
each of us?

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withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work”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 Combs