Page 20 - 《每日活水》靈修月刊7月號

6 為了同心協力邁步
2:1~10

1 What Is Central?
2
1-5 Fourteen years after that first visit,
* Barnabas and I went up to Jerusalem and
3 took Titus with us. I went to clarify with
4 * them what had been revealed to me. At that
5 time I placed before them exactly what I
6 was preaching to the non-Jews. I did this in
7 private with the leaders, those held in
8 esteem by the church, so that our concern
9 would not become a controversial public
issue, marred by ethnic tensions, exposing
10 my years of work to denigration and endan-
gering my present ministry. Significantly,
Titus, non-Jewish though he was, was not
required to be circumcised. While we were
in conference we were infiltrated by spies
pretending to be Christians, who slipped in
to find out just how free true Christians are.
Their ulterior motive was to reduce us to
their brand of servitude. We didn’t give them
the time of day. We were determined to pre-
serve the truth of the Message for you.

6-10 As for those who were considered
important in the church, their reputation
doesn’t concern me. God isn’t impressed
with mere appearances, and neither am I.
And of course these leaders were able to
add nothing to the message I had been
preaching. It was soon evident that God had
entrusted me with the same message to the
non-Jews as Peter had been preaching to
the Jews. Recognizing that my calling had
been given by God, James, Peter, and
John—the pillars of the church—shook
hands with me and Barnabas, assigning us
to a ministry to the non-Jews, while they
continued to be responsible for reaching out
to the Jews. The only additional thing they
asked was that we remember the poor, and
I was already eager to do that.

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