Thoughts on Acts 16

Today's reading: Judges 4; Acts 16

Acts 16 opens kind of oddly given what we just read in Acts 15...

In Acts 15 Paul and Barnabas go to Jerusalem and the leaders of the early church all decide together that circumcision is not required for Gentile converts to Christianity, but then, at the beginning of the very next chapter, we are told that Paul wanted to take Timothy with him so he circumcised him. How does that make sense?

Let's just get the whole "it's a contradiction" thing you hear about this sometimes out of the way first. Luke, the author of Acts, knows what he is doing. Even if he was making this all up, he's a great author and is very detailed in his treatment of the events, so he isn't going to mess something like this up. If you were trying to make that case between two events that happened in his book spread out by a few chapters, it might be more believable, but we aren't even talking about a few paragraphs separating these events, so we have to recognize from the outset that this is not an accident or contradiction on Luke's part.

The simple explanation is that while circumcision was not required for salvation, it was required for gaining a hearing among the Jews. As Paul went from place to place, he always went to the Jews first, and only after would he go to the Gentiles. What they were trying to convince the Jews of was that Jesus was the prophesied Jewish Messiah and that salvation by faith in Him was the fulfillment of all that Judaism had been building toward. But to have an audience with Jews, and any chance of convincing them of this reality, the message had to be coming from Jews. They would certainly not listen to some Gentile showing up telling them that he understood their Scriptures better than them and they should listen to what he has to say. So Paul circumcised Timothy so that they would have a proper hearing from the Jewish communities they visited and not get rejected from the outset because of the perception that this was anything other than a proper Jewish teaching.

So while circumcision was not required for salvation, the people Paul and Timothy were sharing the gospel with did value circumcision as a mark of being part of God's people, and so it was worth circumcising Timothy so that it would not be an unnecessary barrier to their faith.