If you are like most people, including most church people, you are risk-averse, and you try to avoid conflict whenever possible. It is the rare person who considers conflict something to be embraced, something that can lead to positive results. Most of us think of conflict in strictly negative terms. We don’t like to be at odds with another person; it makes us uncomfortable. Conflict can undermine one’s image of oneself as the kind of person whom other people like. We like to be liked. We like to get along.

Sometimes, however, conflict is inevitable. Paul and Barnabas find this out in Acts 15. They have returned to their home base of Antioch after attending the council of Jerusalem, where they successfully defended their practice of preaching the gospel to Gentiles. The council ruled that Gentile converts would not have to be circumcised or observe the Jewish purity laws, beyond abstaining “from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood” (Acts 15:20). Once this agreement was reached they sent representatives to Antioch to deliver the decision. After they did so, “they were sent off in peace by the believers to those who had sent them” (Acts 15:33). Everything was hunky-dory, and good feelings reigned.

After some time in Antioch, Paul goes to Barnabas and suggests that they take another tour of the cities they visited on their missionary journey in order to see how the churches they had established were faring. Barnabas agrees to the trip, but here is where the good feelings go away. He wants to take a young man named John Mark who traveled with them for part of their trip the last time but left the team at Pamphylia and returned home to Jerusalem. Luke tells of Mark’s leaving in Acts 13:13 but gives no reason for his departure. Paul, however, apparently took it as a betrayal, and now he rejects the idea of having Mark accompany them again.

This incident offers some insight into the two missionaries’ characters. Paul comes across as a headstrong, rigid personality who holds himself and his companions to a high standard and who is not tolerant toward anyone who does not measure up to that standard. Barnabas, on the other hand, true to his name, which means “Son of Encouragement,” is a compassionate, forgiving soul who is willing to give Mark a chance to redeem himself from his earlier failure. Paul may have been right in his assessment of Mark’s character, and Barnabas may have been too lenient, too quick to forgive, but I know which of the two men I would prefer to travel with, and it’s not Paul.

The conflict between Barnabas and Paul becomes so severe that they part company. Barnabas takes Mark and sets out to Cyprus, while Paul teams up with a guy named Silas and travels throughout Syria and southeastern Asia Minor, visiting and, ironically enough, offering encouragement to the churches there.

This episode, as painful as it must have been in the moment, serves to shed light on the overarching theme of the book of Acts, which is the unhindered nature of the gospel. Throughout the narrative, obstacles arise again and again, threatening to stop the spread of the good news. Conflicts between Hebraic and Hellenistic Jews, questions about taking the gospel to Samaritans and God-fearing Gentiles such as Cornelius, and the dispute over whether pagan Gentiles could be accepted into the faith without first becoming Jews all represent potential barriers to the gospel’s advance. Arrests, persecutions, and this conflict between two of the most prominent leaders in the young church threaten to hinder the forward motion of the message.

But in each case the Holy Spirit overcomes the obstacle and sends the movement in new and fruitful directions. The stoning of Stephen and the persecution that followed scattered the apostles so that the gospel moved beyond the borders of Palestine. Peter’s bold decision to baptize Cornelius was the Spirit’s way of cracking open the shell that bound the church within a Jewish-only framework, and Paul’s and Barnabas’s work among the pagan Gentiles demolished what was left of that shell. Now here in chapter 15 a bitter dispute between two leaders, a conflict that could have had far-reaching negative consequences, leads to a doubling of the missionary effort. No barrier is too strong for the Spirit to overcome. Nothing can stop the unhindered gospel.

The story of the apostles’ argument shows us that conflict can be creative. It need not be the death knell of a relationship; it can instead help germinate seeds that otherwise would remain sterile, thereby producing fruit in unexpected and wonderful ways. The Spirit is always ready to transform our conflicts into something positive, holy even. The question is, are we willing to open ourselves to the Spirit’s gracious work in our lives and the conflicts that will inevitably come?