You Can Be Right and Still Get It Wrong: Carrying Truth Well

This morning I was walking with Paul through Acts 9 and found myself stopping over one word.

After Paul returned to Jerusalem following his dramatic encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, Luke tells us:

“And he was talking and arguing with the Hellenistic Jews; but they were attempting to put him to death.” —Acts 9:29 NASB 1995 (emphasis mine)

Arguing.

That caught my attention.

The word Luke uses can carry the idea of “disputing or expressing forceful differences of opinion without necessarily having a presumed goal of seeking a solution.” [1] When I read that, I thought, Well, that sounds more familiar than I care to admit. Especially in my early years of ministry (and probably even the middle ones too if we're being completely honest!)

Paul. Me. And, since we’re being honest, probably quite a few of you as well.

I get it! There is something amazing about discovering truth—or becoming deeply convinced of truth—that makes us want everyone else to see it too. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can become a challenge when we start thinking the best way to let others know what we're discovering is to make the strongest possible argument: explain it better, prove the point, correct the error, win the debate.

Paul certainly had the background and training for this approach, and that, no doubt, impacted his early steps. Acts 9 tells us that almost immediately after his conversion, he began proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues. Before long, he was “proving that this Jesus is the Christ” (Acts 9:22). Then he arrived in Jerusalem and began disputing with the Hellenistic Jews.

I love his zeal. Maybe because it makes me feel better about all those times in my past when I thought the right thing to do was to prove my point(s)!

See, I have the spiritual gift of prophecy—not prophecy in the sense of predicting the future, but the strong impulse to speak biblical truth into situations and unapologetically call people back to what God has said. It is a gift I am incredibly grateful for. It is also a gift that has needed no small amount of maturing over the years, because there is a distinct difference between speaking truth and proving that I am right.

Somewhere along the way, I began to learn that distinction. And when I look at Paul this morning, I think I can see that he did too.

Scripture does not give us a moment when Paul suddenly announced, “I've been going about this all wrong.” Nor does the chronology of his letters allow us to draw a neat line between a confrontational young Paul and a kinder, gentler older Paul. But while he always stood firmly on truth, I do think we can see a shift in his approach.

Here's my point:

He could use extraordinarily strong language when the gospel was being distorted. But we also hear him say something that reveals how deeply he cared about more than simply making his case:

“I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”
—1 Corinthians 9:22

I don't hear less conviction in those words. I hear a different understanding of what his conviction was for.

Paul wasn't changing the gospel to accommodate his audience. He was willing to change his approach—and even surrender freedoms he had every right to exercise—if doing so removed an unnecessary obstacle between someone else and the gospel. His goal became bigger than simply proving the truth of his message; he wanted the people standing in front of him to receive that truth.

My mentor Jerry used to illustrate this in a way only Jerry could. He said there were two ways to get someone over a fence: you could blow them up and get them over it, or you could lead them over it.

Either way, technically, they got over the fence. But one is definitely “more better” as he used to say.

I've thought about that illustration many times over the years, especially as God has given me opportunities to speak into subjects about which people have strong—and sometimes deeply entrenched—opinions. I've learned that it is entirely possible to be completely right about the truth while being completely wrong in the way we carry it. Proving my point without ever persuading anyone to consider it is the exact opposite of correctly carrying the truth God has entrusted to me. 

Perhaps one mark of maturity in ministry is learning that the person on the other side of the argument matters more than winning the argument. 

Hear me in this: That doesn't mean truth matters less; it means people matter too.

And we don't have to sacrifice one in order to maintain the other. I think we see that more and more in Paul’s life.

Years later, Paul would tell Timothy that “the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Tim. 2:24–25).

Notice that Paul doesn't tell Timothy not to correct people. He tells him how to correct them—with gentleness. And gentleness isn't weakness; it's strength under control. See the shift?

That distinction matters, because we should never lose the parts of us that care deeply about and stand unflinchingly for the truth of God's Word. Personally, I don't want to become so concerned with avoiding disagreement that I stop saying what needs to be said.

But I also want to get better at determining which hills really matter and which ones don't. I hope we all become better at this—listening before answering, asking questions before assuming, and understanding the person standing across from us rather than simply preparing our next response. Because again, this matters.

Jerry was right. There really are two ways to get someone over a fence, and one way is definitely “more better.”

And maybe that is part of what I see when I follow Paul from Acts 9 through the rest of his ministry. I still see the same man who cared passionately about truth. I still see courage, conviction, and a willingness to confront error when it mattered. But I also see a man increasingly willing to meet people where they were, surrender his own rights, adapt his approach, and do whatever he could—short of compromising the gospel—to remove the obstacles that might keep them from hearing it.

Paul never lost his zeal.

Instead, he learned what his zeal was for—and that made all the difference.