Why all this hysteria? Why do you insist on making a scene and making it even harder for me? You’re looking at this backward. The issue in Jerusalem is not what they do to me, whether arrest or murder, but what the Master Jesus does through my obedience.
— Acts 21:13, The Message
You’re looking at this backward. Paul never was one to hold punches, and he certainly didn’t when his community tried to dissuade him from going to Jerusalem. He told them to cease the arguments and pleas. He knew where he was to go. He wasn’t going to let anything keep him from it.
Paul had discovered the secret to life: not living it for himself. Everything he did was in service of the God who called him into His marvelous light. The more he stood in that light, the more he loved and wanted to obey it.
The light made things clear. The issue wasn’t what happened to his body. The issue was God’s mission, and His mission was to see His name proclaimed in Jerusalem. The light changed the stakes.
It still does. When I start to order my life according to God’s commandments rather than my desires, everything changes. The old arguments and pleas become nothing but hysteria and noise. I become more committed to the cause. I become—dare I say it?—a radical, a rebel, which is exactly what Jesus calls people to. He is no easygoing God, this Jesus. Faith in Him requires a whole-life response: mind, body, heart, and soul.
When that happens, I see things as Paul did. The issue isn’t the temporary, obvious one; it’s the eternal, deeper one. At stake is my obedience and what God does through it.
Image: José Manuel Ríos Valiente (Creative Commons)