Biblion Bible Commentary
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Timothy, and the decisions delivered
Acts 16:1-5
1 He came to Derbe and Lystra; and behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewess who believed, but his father was a Greek. · WEB
Paul circumcises a young colleague within weeks of winning the argument against circumcision — which shows exactly what the argument had been about.
At Derbe and Lystra he finds Timothy, and the description is compressed and consequential: the son of a Jewess who believed, but his father was a Greek. A mixed household in a Roman colony, with a believing mother and a Greek father, in the town where Paul had been stoned.
The recommendation comes from outside the family. The brothers who were at Lystra and Iconium gave a good testimony about him — two congregations, in towns forty miles apart, know this young man and speak well of him. Paul does not recruit on impression.
Then the sentence that looks like a contradiction and is the key to the whole controversy: he took and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those parts, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.
The man who had just traveled to Jerusalem to prevent the circumcision of Gentile believers circumcises his own new colleague within weeks of the ruling. Read carelessly, this is inconsistency. Read with the council's actual finding in view, it is the finding demonstrated.
The question at Jerusalem was whether circumcision is necessary to be saved. On that Paul never bent, anywhere, and he said elsewhere in the fiercest terms that submitting to it as a condition of acceptance forfeits Christ Galatians 5:2. What the council did not do was forbid the practice, and the difference between a requirement and a liberty is the difference the whole chapter turns on.
Timothy's case is also particular. Descent was reckoned through the mother, so he was regarded as a Jew who had been left uncircumcised — not a Gentile deciding to become one. Every synagogue on their route would know his history within a day, and the mission's method depended entirely on getting into synagogues. Paul is removing an obstacle to preaching, at Timothy's cost and with his consent, in a matter he had just established was free.
The grammar of the objection collapses once the two categories are held apart. Refuse circumcision when it is demanded as a condition of salvation; accept it freely when it opens a door. A man for whom the rite means nothing about his standing before God can afford to do either, and only such a man can.
So they travel on, delivering the decrees from Jerusalem to the churches, and the result is the fourth progress report: So the assemblies were strengthened in the faith, and increased in number daily. A controversy that could have split the church is now a letter being carried from town to town, and the effect of its arrival is strength and growth.
held with reason What this mark means