Ch. 17: 2nd Missionary Journey (2)- Thessalonica, Berea, Athens

Thessalonica (vv. 1-9)



1 When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,’” he said.



1 Thessalonica. The missionaries chose to stop in Philippi and minister there, because of a vision in the form of a “Macedonian man” calling for their assistance. Although Christ himself did not appear in the vision, it was clearly a vision sent by him. There is no mention of direct divine guidance regarding their next stop. Sometimes God gives us guidance in a way that goes beyond simple reasoning, but most of the time he expects us to plan wisely. Luke himself was no longer with them (notice “they [not ‘we’] came to Thessalonica”) and may not have known the factors that led them to bypass Amphipolis and Apollonia and not stop until they had reached Thessalonica, the present capital of Macedonia and its largest and most prosperous city. It may have had to do with which of the cities along their route enjoyed the status of Roman cities. Or it may have been because some of the converts in Philippi had friends or relatives in Thessalonica whom they thought would be equally receptive to the gospel. It may also have been which cities had significant Jewish population and synagogues where Paul and Silas could proclaim the “good news” of Jesus the Messiah “to the Jews first, and then to the Gentiles”.

“In Philippi, Paul had time to reflect. His ministry there was the result of a providential call. Where was he to go next? Should he wait for a divine sign, or should he use his common sense? Not surprisingly, he opted for the latter. Given the limited time available (Paul expected that Christ would return shortly in glory) and the vastness of the world, it was clear to Paul that he could not afford to fritter away his energies by stopping at any town or village just because it happened to lie on his path, or by accepting any invitation that happened to be offered. He needed places that, in addition to absorbing his message, had the capacity to radiate it out. His focus had to be on places that multiplied his efforts. In practice this meant cities with a mobile population, where returning visitors could bring the gospel to places that he himself could not reach. Thus Paul trudged a further three or four days from Amphipolis to the nearest city that met this criterion: namely, Thessalonica (modern Salonika), capital of the Roman province of Macedonia” (Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Life).

“Paul's sojourn in Thessalonica brought home to him how lucky he had been in Philippi. There, at the very beginning, he had found a wealthy patron, Lydia, who provided him with accommodation, and facilitated his ministry by furnishing him with access to the middle class. Freedom to draw on their resources relieved him of the need to earn his living. He could give himself entirely to preaching the gospel. And there were people with the leisure to listen. Things were very different in Thessalonica. Paul twice reminds his converts there how long and hard he had to work: 'we worked night and day that we might not burden any of you' (1 Thess. 2:9); 'we did not eat anyone's bread without paying, but with labour and toil we worked night and day that we might not burden any of you' (2 Thess. 3:8). The normal artisan laboured only from sunrise to sunset. If Paul had to work at night, it was because he had difficulty in making ends meet. He could not afford the warm clothing that would make the winter chill of northern Greece bearable (2 Cor. 11:27). The further implication is that his converts, all of whom were pagans (1 Thess. 1:9), were not able to help him financially. They too belonged to the working class, and had to slave twelve hours a day seven days a week to make a living (1Thess. 4:11; 2Thess. 3:12). There is not the slightest hint of any wealthy patron at Thessalonica. There was no one to host the community, with the result that all were expected to make a contribution to the common meal” (Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Life).

There was a Jewish synagogue. On the strategic role that the “liberal” synagogues (i.e., those that were tolerant and open to the gospel) of the Diaspora played in Christian evangelism, see Henry Chadwick’s remark (The Church in Ancient Society):

“As the Christian mission in the Gentile world gathered momentum, the synagogues of the Jewish Dispersion often provided the springboard, partly because Greek synagogues possessed the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew scriptures, partly because Gentile ‘God-fearers’ gathered round the community for worship, though rarely becoming proselytes. In synagogues of the Dispersion the prophet Malachi's contrast between the rejected sacrifices of Jerusalem and those of the Dispersion being accepted (1.10–110) could be applied to the situation after AD 70 (Justin, Dialogue 117). Christians took the prophecy to justify the Gentile mission. Probably there were instances where a local church originated in the conversion en bloc of a synagogue with some liberal inclination. At Rome, where there were at least nine or ten synagogues, that is likely to have been the case. Converted Jews brought with them their Septuagint Bible but also traditions of exegesis.”

2 As his custom was. By this time Paul had an established, tried-and-true routine in his evangelism. Here we see how he proceeded with fellow Jews. The synagogues offered him, as a visiting rabbi, the opportunity to actually teach the scripture lesson planned for that Sabbath. And usually it was not difficult for him to find a bridge in the Scripture lesson for that Sabbath to the subject of the messianic hope of Israel.



Since we do not know what week in the year this occurred in or the exact sequence of lessons, we can only guess that it might have been a passage allowing him to “explain and prove that the Messiah had to suffer [i.e., die] and rise from the dead." I should caution you, that the Greek verb translated by NRSV, RSV, ESV and NIV as “proving” does not have quite so strong a meaning. The old King James Version rendered it “alleging”, and the New American Bible (Roman Catholic) and the NET read “demonstrating”. The verb really means something like “proposing” or “claiming”.



Although many Jews in Paul’s day may have understood from the Old Testament that the Messiah had to die, most did not. For them the coming of the Messiah meant a great victory of God. And how could the death of God’s Messiah be a victory? Yet if they could not be made to see that this was God’s intention, they could not possibly believe the heart of Paul’s message, that “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah”.



Paul and Silas had to explain all of this very patiently. And because they were very thorough, it took them three Sabbaths. Of course, their missionary activity was not limited to the Sabbath days. We can easily imagine that from Sabbath to Sabbath they were also busy making contacts and leading individual Jews to faith.



4 Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women.



The result of these long labors was converts—new believers in Jesus—persons who followed Paul’s close arguments from the Old Testament and were persuaded. This suggests that, while there was certainly an emotional component to the conversions and a sense of the need for forgiveness (one cannot imagine Paul not including sin and guilt in his messages!), it was the rational conviction of the Messiahship of Jesus that was prominent. Luke, not having been there himself, doesn’t give us a head-count. But his language suggests that there were more “God-fearing Greeks” than full-fledged Jews among the "persuaded".



Also significant among the converts were women of high standing in the city who were the wives of the principal citizens. Although Paul relied solely upon the power of God to make his audiences receptive to the gospel, he understood very well the strategic value of converts who had civic stature and political influence. This could be helpful to his incipient communities of believers, allowing them protection under the law and the ability to spread the Good News without hindrance. That these were women rather than men was due to the disinclination of Gentile men to undergo circumcision in order to be come Jews. Their wives, on the other hand, were attracted to the Jewish faith and were present to hear Paul’s message of Jesus.



5 But the Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd [actually, ‘the Assembly’, δῆμος]. 6 But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials [politarchs, πολιτάρχας], shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, 7 and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” 8 When they heard this, the crowd [i.e., the Assembly’, δῆμος] and the city officials [πολιτάρχας] were thrown into turmoil. 9 Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.



Reason for the Jewish opponents suborning people to start a riot was their plan to bring charges against Paul and Silas:

“Their plan was to bring Paul and Silas before ‘the crowd’ and ‘the city officials’ on a charge of disturbing the Pax Romana by preaching a religio illicita [i.e., a religion not officially approved by the governing authorities] and by advocating another king in opposition to Caesar” (NIV Commentary).

6-9 Since Paul was no coward, it is likely that the new believers insisted they be allowed to hide him and Silas from the mob (see v. 10). But the new believers then paid the price for their new faith by being themselves dragged into court, charged and forced to post bond before being released (v. 9).

“What is happening to Jason is clear enough: he is giving security for the good behaviour of his guests, and hence hastens to dispatch Paul and Silas out of the way to Beroea, where the jurisdiction of the magistrates of Thessalonica was not valid” (Sherwyn-White, Roman Society & Roman Law in the NT, 95-96).



"But the underlying idea of the retreat of Paul is more than a running away from trouble. Paul exploits the fact that there was no inter-city jurisdiction or authority except that of the Roman governor. If the proconsul or legate is not apprised of a political affair, a trouble-maker can continue his career indefinitely by moving from city to city. The cities kept control over their inhabitants in the last resort through their property. The property-lacking vagrant was very difficult to handle. Hence the significance of the action taken at Thessalonica against Paul's guarantor [Jason]" (Sherwyn-White, 97).

We have already mentioned how Paul's itinerary, other than the miraculous call to Macedonia, was dictated by careful planning, but also by unforeseen circumstances. Murphy-O'Connor suggests factors leading to the next leg of his trip:

Paul's first instinct was simply to continue west along the Via Egnatia, just as he had done after similar trouble in Philippi. A little reflection, however, brought it home to Paul that such a course would make it very easy for the authorities to find him. Thus there may be a historical reminiscence behind Luke's assertion (Acts 17:10) that Paul got off the Via Egnatia just after it crossed the River Axios and went south-west to Beroea (modern Veroia). It soon became clear, however, that there was no real security as long as Paul stayed in Macedonia. He had come to the attention of the authorities in both Philippi and Thessalonica. Opposition was only going to spread and harden. This put paid to any plans that Paul might have had to carry his gospel west along the Via Egnatia. What mattered now was to get out of Macedonia as quickly as possible. A boat going south along the coast to the adjoining Roman province of Achaia was the best solution. An abrupt move to a different jurisdiction wiped the slate clean.

Beroea [Berea] (vv. 10-15)



As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now the Berean Jews were more receptive than the Thessalonian ones, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.



The new believers in Thessalonica now secretly sent Paul and Silas off to their next stop on the way south to Athens, namely Berea.



The missionaries’ strategy in Berea was the same as in Thessalonica, commenting on Scripture in the weekly Sabbath services of the Jewish synagogue. But the Berean synagogue differed in two important respects from that of Thessalonica: (1) the full-fledged Jews there were more receptive and eagerly tested Paul’s claims against the Scripture passages that he referred to in the Old Testament, not just on the Sabbath, but “every day”. (2) The number of full-fledged Jews who believed was large, and among the politically well-placed individuals were not just the wives, but their husbands as well.



When the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, they went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. 14 The brothers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. 15 The men who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.



Trouble came because Berea was not far enough from Thessalonica. Paul’s Jewish opponents there, frustrated that he had escaped the clutches of the authorities there, followed him to Berea.



Athens (vv. 16-34)



16-21 Paul observes the situation and attracts the attention of philosophical types by his popular preaching.



On the first few days of a visit to Athens the average ancient visitor would have marveled at the beauty of the architecture: including the Parthenon. Athens in Roman times was no longer the center of intellectual and cultural life in the Mediterranean world. It had long been surpassed by its chief rivals in the East Mediterranean: Ephesus in Asia Minor and Alexandria in Egypt with their huge and impressive libraries, and Tarsus with its university—and of course, by Rome itself. Still, the proud Athenians fancied themselves the elite of the philosophical world. Witherington summarizes the situation well:

[O]utsiders perceived Athens as trading on the glories of its past, and being a place full of intellectually arrogant people and those who liked to bandy about the popular ideas and topics of the day. Luke was not alone in this opinion (cf. Acts 17:21; Thucydides, History 3.38.5; Demosthenes, Philippic 1.10). In truth, both Alexandria and Tarsus, not to mention Rome, may have been more academically high-powered places than Athens in Paul's day.

But Paul was no ordinary visitor to Athens, nor was what Paul admired in life human intellect or artistry — his chief interest was faith in and worship of the True God, the God of his ancestors. So he spent his Sabbaths in the local synagogue, presenting the credentials of Jesus as Messiah to his fellow Jews and the Gentile inquirers there (v. 17).



When he wasn’t in the synagogue, but in the streets and marketplaces during the weekdays, what caught his attention was not the graceful lines of the Parthenon’s pillars or its brilliant colors reflected in the bright Mediterranean sun, but the presence everywhere—on every street corner—of statues of the Greek gods and goddesses. And Paul knew that these were not there just to be admired for their craftsmanship, but in order to receive worship, worship that only One Being deserved, the One God who made heaven and earth. He was therefore deeply troubled by what he saw. And this led him to action: he began to speak to anyone who would listen to him and to tell of the true God and His Son, Jesus.



The Greek market (agora, v. 17) was not only a place for the exchange of goods, but also of ideas. It was therefore a hangout for philosophical types, of which Luke mentions two schools of thought, the Epicureans and the Stoics (v. 18). Typical of such marketplace intellectuals were curiosity about anything that seemed novel (especially if it came from other lands [v. 18], such as Egypt which was thought to be the home of recondite wisdom), and a certain degree of snobbery manifested here in the dismissive label they first give to Paul: “seed-picker” (σπερμολόγος, translated as “babbler”). In other words, in contrast to the Philippian and Thessalonican populations who were disinclined to any foreign (i.e., “non-Roman”) religious customs or ideas, the Athenian philosophers welcomed such things.



Paul was not reluctant to take the initiative in presenting his gospel, but he was particularly eager not to miss opportunities when others actually invited him to present his message. This is what happened, when these Epicureans and Stoics invited him to present his ideas to the Council of the Areopagus and to answer their questions. Since the role of that Council was to ensure public order by reviewing any new religious idea being propagated in the city, Paul was not, in truth, being honored by this invitation: rather it was more of an examination of the potentially dangerous "new divinities" he was preaching. As Luke tells us, his listeners confused "Jesus and the resurrection" with two new deities! Just how risky it was to face a charge of preaching new and unauthorized deities in Athens can be seen from the fact that the famous philosopher Socrates was condemned to death on such a charge. Yet, in spite of being "on trial" as he undoubtedly was, Paul eagerly seized the opportunity to present the gospel, just as he later did before Felix and Festus in Caesarea (Acts 24-25).



22-34 Paul’s Speech on the Areopagus (“Mars Hill”)



Paul did not believe in watering down his message in order to avoid offending his hearers, but he did believe it tailoring it so that the only potentially offensive parts were those that were the core of the gospel itself. What we see him presenting in these verses is a very sophisticated (in the best sense of that word!) introduction to the gospel. One gets the impression that at the end of what Luke gives us here Paul was just at the entrance to the gospel proper.



22-23 He began with a sincere compliment: the many idols showed that the Athenians were seeking to know and please the gods. To that end, statues and altars to every conceivable god or goddess were erected, so as not to overlook or offend any, whether Greek, Roman, Egyptian or Phoenician. In this practice the Athenians were not alone in the ancient world. Other civilizations, such as the ancient Hittites, imported into their national worship any foreign god or goddess that seemed to have power or influence, and whose goodwill might be of benefit to the State.



In order to cover any that the Athenians had unknowingly omitted, they even had an altar with the inscription “to an unknown god”. This provided Paul with an opening. For he will satisfy their curiosity by telling about such a God who is unknown to them, but who wishes to be known by them. And in so doing he will also rebut the charge that he was introducing new divinities, since He whom he was proclaiming had been worshiped by the Athenians all the time, although without knowing His name!



It may seem to us today somehow appropriate to seize upon this ancient Greek label for God, since to the intellectual non-Christian "God" (if He exists at all) is inherently unknowable. Paul would have challenged such an assumption, as he makes clear in the opening chapter of his letter to the Romans (1:18-32): the natural creation itself declares the glory of God's wisdom and power, as Psalm 19:1-6 so jubilantly celebrates, as the law of God equally shows His moral glory (Romans 2:12-16; Psalm 19:7-14). But he would agree—and he makes a point of it here—that unless this Creator had taken the initiative to reveal Himself ultimately in the person of His Son, Jesus the Messiah, He would forever have remained "the unknown God" to the world of paganism (whether ancient or modern!).



24-25 This “unknown God’ is not given a name by Paul. He does not call him Zeus or Jupiter or even the Hebrew Yahweh. It is enough that he is the Creator and “Lord of heaven and earth”.



And although the inscribed altar showed a readiness of the Athenians to offer such a deity a temple and sacrifices, Paul assures them that such a Creator needs no temple, since the world He created is His temple. And because He made everything and provides his human creatures with life and breath and all things needful, he does not need their sacrifices.



These two statements are routine for the Old Testament conception of God: Solomon acknowledged that God did not need the new temple he built for him on Mt. Zion (1 Kings 8:27), and the psalmist emphasized that God owned “the cattle on a thousand hills” and did not need Jewish offerings either (Psa 50:8-12). For the average pagan these two ideas were strange indeed: a god with no need for a temple or sacrifices? Still, these hearers were not just run-of-the-mill Greek peasants: they were rationalist philosophers. So some of this might have already made sense, which is why Paul felt free to speak about it. The first idea was also known to Zeno, the founder of the Stoics. And the second idea was also held by the Epicureans.



In his letters to his converts Paul goes further to explain that the temple of God is the individual body of the believer (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19), and the sacrifices we offer Him are those same bodies, yielded daily in obedience (Romans 12:1-2).



26-29 This unknown God created all the existing races and language groups from a single ancestor (Paul doesn’t name him as Adam, although that was who he had in mind). He stressed the unity of humanity in order to help his hearers to understand how One Creator God not only sustains all nations with food and shelter, but holds them all responsible to His ethical commands and His offer of salvation. In other words, this God doesn’t need them to build Him a temple or offer Him sacrifices, but He does require their faith and obedience to His will.



In vv. 27-29 Paul quotes some of their native philosophers and poets. But not because he regards their own pagan thinkers as the definitive source of knowledge of God: merely that those thinkers too had held some of these truths. Paul seeks common ground in order to communicate. As the NIV Commentary says:

“In support of this teaching about humankind, Paul quotes two maxims from Greek poets. The first (“For in him we live and move and have our being”) comes from the Cretan poet Epimenides (c. 600 B.C.); the second (“for we are his offspring”), from the Cilician poet Aratus (c. 315–240 B.C.). By such maxims, Paul is not suggesting that God is to be thought of in terms of the Zeus of Greek polytheism or Stoic pantheism. He is rather arguing that the poets his hearers recognized as authorities have to some extent corroborated his message. In his search for a measure of common ground with his hearers, he is, so to speak, disinfecting and rebaptizing the poets’ words for his own purposes. But despite its form, Paul’s address was thoroughly biblical and Christian in its content.”

30-31 In these verses Paul comes to the point: this is where he begins his transition to the gospel of Jesus the world’s Savior and Judge:



“God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent 31 because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice’ through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.”



Three issues in particular now were unavoidable insults to Paul’s hearers: Firstly, to have their illustrious history with its poets and philosophers called “times of ignorance” (Muhammad referred to the entire history of the world prior to the revelation of the Quran as the jahaliya [period of ignorance]). Paul had cited with approval two of their thinkers on individual small points, but the whole fabric of pagan thinking: the frantic search for as many gods and goddesses as possible in order to appease the forces of nature and history by sacrifice — this was sheer “ignorance” of the truth that comes from the One God, who demands righteous living, and who forgives sins on the basis of His own Son’s loving sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection.



Secondly, to suggest that this God would hold the entire world accountable ("judgment") for their obedience to His laws and his message of salvation was also an affront to the perceived dignity of humanity in Greek philosophical thought.



Thirdly, the hearers would have been offended to be asked to believe that a dead person could come back to life in his body! For the Greeks, the afterlife was only in spirit: there would never be a time even in the remotest future in which a person’s dead body would come back to life. When you read Paul’s words to the believers in the Greek city of Corinth (1 Cor 15), you will see what a difficult time Christians had in such Greek cities, explaining to their friends that they believed in a bodily resurrection. Yet as Paul stated in 1 Cor 15:12-19, the final resurrection of believers is implied in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And if the final resurrection is denied, it is only logical to deny Jesus’ bodily resurrection. And if this is denied, there is nothing left as a historical basis for our belief that he is the Son of God and able to save us from our sins.



32-34 The reaction of Paul’s hearers was largely negative. This was predictable. As the IVP Acts Commentary observes:

“Epicureans, atomic materialists, viewed reality as an endless chance combining and dispersion of atoms. They would find the concept of bodily resurrection laughable (Epicurus Epistle to Menoeceus 123-32). The Stoics, materialist pantheists, identified the divine as the principle of reason pervading all and, in the form of fate, governing all. Because of either their cyclic eschatology (belief that there were periodic conflagrations of the universe after which history simply repeated itself) or their later adoption of the Platonic concept of the soul's immortality, they could not conceive of resurrection (Chrysippus Fragment 625; Bahnsen 1980:11).”

I don’t think Paul really expected that there would be a large number of his hearers at the Areopagus who would be able to believe his message at first hearing. So the small number who did is not to be thought evidence that he made a mistake in saying what he did. The fact of the matter is that there were converts, even if but a few that are named. Paul reached out for common ground, but when that common ground ran out, he boldly proclaimed the simple truths of Scripture. And so should all of us!

Ch. 15:36 - 16:40 The 2nd Missionary Journey, Pt. 1

Although the journey to be described in the next chapters is customarily called the “Second Missionary Journey”, Acts 15:36 makes it clear that Paul’s original intention was not further outreach geographically, but rather a revisiting of the churches he and Barnabas had founded on their previous trip.



Summarizing the accomplishments of this journey, the IVP Acts Commentary writes:

“The mission … now takes several new directions. Strategically, there is the Lord's direct guidance throughout the journey (Acts 16:1-10; 18:9-10). Geographically, the gospel invades Europe (Acts 16:10-18:22). Politically, Christianity faces its opponents' challenge concerning its status in the empire (Acts 16:20-21; 17:6-7; 18:13). At the same time earlier themes continue: contextualized witness, persecution, power encounter and divine protection.”

Acts 15:37-41 Paul and Barnabas Disagree on Mark as a Traveling Companion and go their separate ways.



Luke includes this material in order to show how sincere and devout believers could disagree on minor matters involving strategy and yet be independently guided by the Holy Spirit into fruitful areas of service to further the spread of the gospel and the growth of the Church.



NIV Commentary on Acts (also IVP Acts) believes that Mark and Barnabas had both been more sympathetic to the Judaizing party at Antioch than Paul was (Gal 2:11-14), and this may have been at the root of this parting of the ways. But surely this is too speculative a view. Luke says nothing about such a reason, even though he clearly sides with Paul on Mark’s earlier “desertion”, and assigns the cause of the separation to Paul’s lingering distrust of Mark’s personal reliability on a dangerous and arduous mission. Witherington (Acts 472) also rightly notes that the very fact that Paul asked Barnabas to go with him shows that he had no qualms about working together with him despite any lingering differences related to the incident mentioned in Gal 2:11-14.



41 The mission in the Province of Cilicia was “strengthening the churches” that Paul had founded in the three years between his first visit to Jerusalem after his conversion and Barnabas’ fetching him from Cilicia to minister in Antioch. the “strengthening” probably included general biblical and ethical instruction, but in particular making sure that the poisonous teaching of the Judaizers was eradicated, together with delivering the letter from the Jerusalem authorities (see Acts 15:23).



16:1-5 First Stop: Derbe and Lystra.



Barnabas had wanted Mark to travel with them as a third associate. Instead Paul takes Silas (Latin Silvanus) to replace Barnabas as the number two missionary. On the excellent qualifications of Silas as a missionary partner the NIV Acts Commentary notes:

“Paul’s selection of Silas (or “Silvanus,” as he is referred to more formally by his Latinized name in 2Co 1:19; 1Th 1:1; 2Th 1:1; 1Pe 5:12) to accompany him on his return visit to the churches was wise. He had evidently come to appreciate Silas in their contacts at Jerusalem and Syrian Antioch and concluded that he would make a congenial colleague. More than that, Silas was a leader in the Jerusalem congregation (Acts 15:22) and was explicitly identified in the Jerusalem letter as one who could speak with authority on the attitude of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15:27). He was also, it seems, a Roman citizen who could claim, if need be, the privileges of such citizenship along with Paul (Acts 16:37). This was not true of Barnabas. Likewise, Silas was a prophet (Acts 15:32), who appears to have been fluent in Greek (Acts 15:22, 32) and a helpful amanuensis (1Th 1:1; 2Th 1:1; 1Pe 5:12).“

Paul also seizes the opportunity in Lystra to bring a third member of the team on board: young Timothy (Acts 16:1-3). Being the son of a mixed marriage (mother [Eunice] Jewish, father Greek), Timothy had not been circumcised. But since according to Jewish law, Jewishness was passed by the mother, not the father, he was in the eyes of Jewish law a true Jew by birth (see Witherington, Acts 474f., who disagrees with a study by S. Cohen showing that this law only came into effect in the 2nd Cent. AD). It was, therefore, appropriate for Paul to have him circumcised in order not to offend the Jews in those regions, who expected him to be circumcised since only his father was non-Jewish (v. 3). (See also Witherington, Acts 435.) It has also been suggested that this illustrates a strategy that Paul claimed he used in his evangelism:

“To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (1Corinthians 9:19-22 NIV).

In 2Tim 1:5 Paul refers to the faith of Timothy's grandmother Lois and mother Eunice, which must mean that both of these women had been converted to Christianity during one of the earlier missionary journeys, unless of course the "faith" that dwelt in the grandmother was valid pre-Christian Judaism.



6-8 These verses give us the route that the missionaries took from Iconium to Troas (see the map at the head of this posting). From Iconium they traveled directly westward to Antioch in Pisidia. At this point Luke tells us that they were “prevented by the Holy Spirit from preaching the message in the province of Asia” (v. 6). How this was accomplished Luke does not say. Wenham (Paul and Jesus, 78) and D. Aune (Prophecy in Early Christianity, 266) think a Christian prophet confronted them with the prohibition. Certainly such prophets opposed Paul’s journey to Jerusalem later in Acts (20:22-24; 21:10-13), and in fact his traveling companion Silas was himself a prophet (Acts 15:32). But judging from the vision Paul received in Troas and from his own statements in his letters about his frequent visions, this was most probably the form in which the Spirit’s message came. In his own letters Paul never mentions visions of any other figure than the exalted Christ. It is, however, somewhat interesting to reflect that ancient armies of the Hittites and Babylonians employed omens and oracles (i.e., divination) to ascertain what routes their gods wished them to take as they marched against enemies. Here Paul, Silas and Timothy can be seen as “soldiers of Christ”, waging spiritual warfare against “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:10-13), and they too are guided by God at every turn.



Luke does not tell us why the Holy Spirit prevented them from proceeding further directly westward into the Roman Province of Asia, whose principal city was Ephesus, later a major Christian center. Perhaps the missionaries themselves were not told why. God either had other Christian missionaries operating in those fields so that Paul was not needed yet, or the area was not yet ready for the gospel.



So, turning directly northward, they passed through Mysia heading for Bithynia, where later there were Christian churches to which Peter wrote his first epistle (1 Pet 1:1-2). But again the Holy Spirit put up a roadblock. Unless they were prepared at this point to double back and retrace their steps south and east to Syria, only one other direction and route lay open to them: westward, skirting the northern edge of Mysia, to Troas on the Aegean Sea cost, the famous city of King Priam described in Homer’s Iliad.



9 In the night while at Troas Paul received a vision (not a dream), in which a Macedonian man implored him to “Come over to Macedonia and help us”. It is ironic that the figure in the vision was a man, yet the first converts in Macedonian Philippi were women (Acts 16:13-15)! It is also of interest that Luke does not report him as asking for the gospel, but for “help” in general (βοήθησον ἡμῖν). In his letter to Corinth Paul seems to equate the OT word “help” with salvation in Christ: “For he says, 'In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.' I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” (2Corinthians 6:2 NIV).



But supernatural and mystical revelations were not the only factors dictating Paul’s routes. Sometimes it was political developments. When Paul’s party arrived in Philippi, they found themselves poised on the threshold of the Via Egnatia, the main East-West trunk road leading westwards to Rome itself. Paul later told the Roman Christians that he has “often intended to visit” them, and this may have been one of those times. But a dramatic turn of events in the capital city made this impossible: in A.D. 49 Emperor Claudius banished all Jews from Rome because of disturbances having to do with someone named “Chrestos”, which most scholars think reflects a misunderstanding of the title “Christ” (the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word "Messiah"). If Rome was now off-limits to Jews and especially to Christian Jews, it was clearly not the time for a visit. (See R. Barnett, Jesus & the Rise of Early Christianity, 330.) As Barnett concludes:

“Thus the die was cast for Paul to remain in the Aegean region. For the next eight years (50-57) Paul devoted his energies to preaching and church building in Philippi and Thessalonica on the Via Egnatia, in Corinth, the capital of Achaia , and in Ephesus, the leading city of Roman Asia. Moreover, he had missionary designs on Alexandria Troas (2 Cor 2:12-13). To be sure, Paul preached in Beroea and in Athens, as well as in other places not mentioned in the records; yet he appears to have had a decided preference for establishing centers of Christianity in Roman cities.”

16:11-40 First Stop: Philippi.



11-15 Preaching in the Jewish Place of Prayer. The conversion of Lydia.



13 Unlike Thessalonica and Berea, other Macedonian cities Paul would visit, Philippi’s Jewish population was too small to merit a synagogue. According to later Jewish law (perhaps already effective at this time) a community had to have a minyan, a group of ten adult men, in order to be able to form a synagogue (m. Sanhedrin 1:6; Pirqe Abot 3:8). If the community was smaller than that, they could have a “place of prayer”, usually (like synagogues themselves [see Sanders, Judaism 224]) near to a body of water:

“The reference in Aristeas to washing hands in the sea may explain the fact that several Diaspora synagogues were near water. According to Acts 16:13, Paul and his companions went to the riverside near Philippi, expecting to find a synagogue there. It is quite likely that, before the synagogue service, many Diaspora Jews walked down to the shore and washed their hands, and probably their feet as well.”

Witherington (Acts 490) suggests a less convincing purpose for the need for nearby fresh water: the women, who constituted almost the entire group, had to perform ritual ablutions in running water after their monthly period in order to be considered clean and able to attend Jewish worship. this could not be done in their homes, even if they had plumbing. The problem with this explanation is that a woman bathed on the morning after 7 days of menstruation and remained unclean until the evening.



13 From the Jewish custom of standing to pray but sitting to teach we can gather that Paul “sat down” in order to teach the women gathered there from the (OT) Scriptures, and as was his custom let the Scripture passages assigned to the week lead into a presentation of the good news of Jesus the Messiah.



14 Since full conversion to Judaism only posed a serious problem for men, for whom it entailed adult circumcision, but not for women, one wonders why Lydia, a wealthy woman born in Thyatira on the western coast of Asia Minor, was at this time only a “God-worshiper” (σεβομένη τὸν θεόν, see above on Acts 10:1), poised on the threshold of entering Judaism. Could it have been the Jewish dietary laws which would have interfered with eating together with her clients in the purple dye trade? Thyatira was not only a center of the purple dye and dyed garment trade, but being situated on a major border between provinces was ideally locateed to foster inter-province trade. Since Lydia had a spacious home in Philippi, it has been guessed (not more than a guess!) that she: “was probably the overseas agent of a Thyatiran manufacturer; she may have been arranging the sale of dyed woollen goods which were known simply by the name of the dye (IVP New Bible Dictionary, sub “Thyatira”). Her work didn’t require travel, but it did require entertaining, at which she was obviously very good. She became the host of the new Christian study and worship group. this is a good example of how the Lord is able to use skills that we may have before we become converted to serve Him in our new lives as believers. Lydia’s was hospitality, for which she became an example.



Lydia is the first of three persons Luke singles out among the converts at Philippi. Each has a different background and different reason to be open to the message. Lydia does not appear to have any desperately felt need for God: she was wealthy, had a respectable job, friends and a large beautiful home. We know of no scandalous sin of which she was guilty. Yet something in her hungered for God. Otherwise she would not have stood poised to enter Judaism as a “God-fearer”. Some of us may have been that way: no huge guilt that we felt, but with an indefinable inner hunger to know the Creator in the way that only a believer in Jesus can.



But whatever her conscious need, Luke emphasizes that it was because “the Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul” (NRSV).



15 If Lydia was widowed, her “household” could have included her children; otherwise it was her household servants who joined her in putting faith in Jesus and undergoing baptism. While she only stood at the door of Judaism rather than entering it fully, she did not hesitate by baptism to enter the door of faith in Jesus fully and publicly.



The first step in conversion is an open heart and sincere faith. The second is public profession of faith by baptism. The third is an earnest desire to serve Christ by serving his people. This she did by offering her house as a meeting place.



16-18 If the first example Luke gives is Lydia, a wealthy person from the uppermost ranks of wealth and social standing, the second is near the bottom: a slave girl who had a “spirit of divination”. The phrase “had (i.e., possessed) a spirit” may give the impression that this woman was in control of the spirit. But in fact the very opposite was the case: the spirit had her, as is always the case with occult powers. What the woman had was not some natural talent that she controlled and that made her more useful to society and happy with herself. Rather — somewhat like today’s addictions — she had begun by yielding to a power that she did not fully understand, thinking it might bring her success and fortune, and then found herself unable to free herself. Luke makes it clear also that her owners (v. 19) would not have wished her to free herself of this curse, since they were making a very large profit (ἐργασίαν πολλὴν) from renting out her services, much as a prostitute is “run” by her pimp! The poor woman desperately needed a Savior, such as only Jesus is.



To a modern reader reading what the woman was doing in v. 17 almost seems to have been a service for Paul and Silas, like an advertising campaign. For she was announcing in an approximate way the truth of what they were doing. Yet it was in part the very ambiguity of her announcement that troubled Paul (With. Acts 495). The “Most High God” (ὁ θεος ὁ ὑψίστος, Hebrew ‏אֵל עֶלְיוֹן‎ el elyon) in Judaism denoted the One True God, not just the “god” who happened to be the head of a pantheon of deities, such as was Zeus of the Greeks or Jupiter of the Romans. And “a way of salvation” in pagan parlance meant nothing more than what today’s “miracle” cures from a lingering disease or the latest self-help book might offer. Furthermore, Paul understood that this “spirit of divination” was nothing more than a demon, not a spirit from God. And just as during his earthly ministry Jesus refused to allow demons speaking within their “host” humans to testify to his identity as the son of God (see Mark 1:23-25; Luke 4:33-35), so also Paul was greatly annoyed by the “testimony” of this demon. In fact, Luke (who was with him at the time; see the use of “we”) tells us he put up with it for “many days” (v. 18) before taking action.



I dare say that most of us have never witnessed an exorcism and only know of such from either the accounts of Jesus in the gospels or through one of the kitchy movies of modern times such as Exorcist 1, 2 or 3. But because we have never witnessed one does not mean that those recorded in the Bible were unreal or fictitious. Paul was not in the business of hawking supernatural powers: we only read of his displaying such powers when the situation was truly drastic. He could not keep this woman from pestering him, and he undoubtedly saw that she herself was in the tragic grip of this demon and longed herself to find this “way of salvation”. So finally he acted and by doing so put himself, Silas and Luke at risk (as we shall see).



19-22 The first consequence was that the woman’s owners found themselves without a way to make money from her services, and made a “citizen’s arrest” of Paul and Silas, dragging them before the authorities. The charge, however, was not theft of property but advocating customs not lawful to Roman citizens (which the citizens of Philippi were). Although Luke was with them on the first occasion (see the “we” in v. 16), he was apparently not with Paul and Silas “many days” later (v. 18) at the time of the exorcism and was therefore not present at the arraignment, the beating or the imprisonment. If, as a number of scholars believe, Philippi was actually Luke’s hometown (Witherington, Acts 490), he may have been either at his home or treating a hometown patient at the time Paul and Silas were arrested.



We are not told what these unlawful “customs” (ἔθη) were. The IVP Acts Comm. notes:

“At the same time there is actually a kernel of truth in their words. In the Roman Republic a cult of Apollo centered on healing and prophecy, and under Augustus a magnificent temple to Apollo was erected on the Palatine. ‘Apollo Palatinus was in some sort the equal of Jupiter Optimus Maximus’ (Rose and Robertson 1970:82). Preaching the way of salvation in the Lord Jesus, in whose name the ‘spirit Python,’ inspired by Apollo, was cast out, might certainly be viewed as advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”

It is interesting that the missionaries are assailed as “Jews”, which is ironic: if this had transpired in Judea, it would have brought protest from the Pharisees, since it was performed on the Sabbath (Acts 16:16) and violated the Sabbath laws!



“The crowd” (v. 22) may have been those standing around at the time fo the exorcism, who were either brought along to the magistrates as witnesses or simply followed out of fascination. As is typical of crowds observing something sensational, they shift their attitudes very quickly and a lust for violence leads them to “pile on” to the victims, in this case Paul and Silas. Added to this was the anti-Semitism so widespread in Greco-Roman society. All of this (i.e., a charge of disturbing the peace) may have prompted the lictors to use the rods they carried to beat the two prisoners, which was legal enough, provided the prisoners were not Roman citizens. The Roman citizen of Paul and Silas is not revealed until later (v. 37), perhaps because the loud shouting of the crowd prevented the magistrates from hearing the prisoners’ claims.

“Since prisons functioned in ancient times more as places of detention for those awaiting trial than as places of punishment, the praetors' consignment of Paul and Silas to the jailer for safekeeping is not part of the summary justice … but precedes handing them over for trial before the proconsul (Sherwin-White 1963:82). Security seems to have been of the utmost concern, for these pagan minds must have wondered, If they can cast out a soothsaying spirit, what will prevent them from using their magical powers to escape incarceration?” (IVP Acts Comm.).

25-34 God rescues his servants by an earthquake and saves a terrified jailer and his family. Earthquakes are common enough in the region of the Aegean Sea. The miraculous aspect was the timing: Paul and Silas were only in jail overnight. It was not necessary to liberate them from the jail to prevent them from long-term custody. At the formal trial the following day there would have been occasion to reveal their roman citizenship and to clarify the misunderstanding about the exorcism. Paul might even have relished to opportunity to bear a public witness at the trial to the magistrates! Yet God had other plans for him. there was a jailer — probably a retired military man — who needed to hear and be convinced by the gospel. That the earthquake opened the prison doors and broke open the stocks in which their feet were helf was also not miraculous: earthquakes do such things ordinarily.



If the prisoners had escaped, the jailer would have been punished, even though the earthquake was clearly beyond his control. It was for this reason that, thinking the prisoners had escaped, he was about to take his own life rather than face disgrace and punishment of himself and his family.



But the fact that Paul and Silas and the other prisoners (“we are all here”) did not use the open doors to flee custody was remarkable. The jailer had probably heard them singing hymns before the earthquake (v. 25), and now their remarkable composure and unselfish behavior after the prison doors were sprung open (more concerned with the jailer’s attempted suicide than with their own wounds and discomforts: “Do yourself no harm!” v. 28) was in many respects even more miraculous than the earthquake.



Trembling from both the recent scare and the deep impression that the prisoners’ faith and concern for him had left on him, the jailer asked the question: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” As we noted above, “saved” and “salvation” were terms that meant different things to different groups in Greco-Roman society and in different social contexts. We have to ask ourselves: What was the danger that the jailer thought himself in? Now that the prisoners had not fled, he faced no threat of punishment from his superiors: he needed no “salvation” from that. But the behavior of these men during and after the earthquake showed that they were remarkable, to say the least: men whose integrity and therefore message could not be doubted. Furthermore, as we noted above, although earthquakes themselves were not unusual in that region, the timing of this one — immediately after these men had been beaten and imprisoned — certainly looked like God (or “a god”) was angry about their treatment. So it is quite likely that the jailer feared implication in the injustice done to these ambassadors of the “god” Jesus whom they were preaching (see the demons' words through the slave girl: “These men are slaves of the Most High God”, v. 17). He needed to be “saved’ not just from the anger of this “god”, but even more from his own complicity in their imprisonment.



This would be a minimal meaning of the jailer’s question. But we should not exclude the possibility that he had comprehended much more of the meaning of the gospel from the hymns he heard the prisoners singing in the hours leading up to the midnight earthquake. Perhaps he had heard in their singing and audible praying something about Jesus’ death, resurrection and offer of forgiveness of sins. If so, then by being “saved” he could very well have meant most of what we as Christians understand by that term. He wanted what Paul and Silas obviously had: not just forgiveness for this one misdeed, but full pardon for a lifetime of sin, and a peace of mind that allowed such joy and confidence and concern for others in the midst of injustice and suffering.



The answer given was short and direct: “Believe in/on the Lord Jesus”. The very brevity of the reply suggests that indeed Paul and Silas knew that the jailer had heard from them the basic facts of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and his offer of forgiveness. What was now needed was not more information, but a personal decision to trust Jesus as Savior and obey him as Lord.



A retired military man such as the jailer would have known what it meant to acknowledge Jesus as “lord” (κύριος kyrios), a term he would have used to address his military superiors (see the words of the Roman centurion to Jesus in Luke 7:7-9).



The promise “and your household” merely means that the same condition needed to be met by them; hence, “They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house” (v. 32). The tender ministrations of the jailer and his family (v. 33-34) to the bleeding and dirty prisoners demonstrated already the radical transformation that faith in the Lord Jesus would continue to work in them in days to come.



35-40 Confronting the Magistrates.



When Paul and Silas last stood before the magistrates, a noisy crowd may have drowned out their objections. Now they will have their vindication. It isn’t clear why the magistrates now ordered their release without trial. The NIV Commentary suggests:

“They had probably only wanted to teach them a lesson about the peril of disturbing the peace in a Roman colony and felt that a public flogging and a night in the city’s jail would be sufficient to do that. So they ordered the jailer to release Paul and Silas.”

Witherington (Acts 499) reaches a similar conclusion.



But whatever the reason, Paul will have nothing short of an admission of wrong-doing by these magistrates. His and Silas’ rights as Roman citizens have been violated not once, but twice:

“The Lex Valeria (509 B.C.) and the Lex Porcia (248 B.C.), reaffirmed in the Lex Julia (23 B.C.), shielded Roman citizens from humiliating punishments in public, such as beating with rods (Cicero Against Verres 2.5.161-70; On Behalf of Rabirius Charged with High Treason 12; Bruce 1990:366). Further, a Roman citizen was always entitled to a trial before punishment was administered. Paul demands that the magistrates come and publicly escort them from prison. This will be a public admission that the magistrates were wrong and that Christians pose no threat to Roman law.” (IVP Acts Comm.).

For these two men to make such a claim falsely was not likely, since persons falsely claiming Roman citizenship could be executed by beheading (Witherington, Acts 499 n. 127). In Rome itself wearing the toga was a sign of Roman citizenship (Cowell, 72), but Paul was a manual laborer and furthermore would never have worn a garment that set him apart from the simple people whom he was called to evangelize. Witherington (Acts 501) suggests that a citizen could demonstrate his status by carrying “a testatio, a certified private copy of evidence of his birth and citizenship inscribed on the waxed surface of a wooden diptych, in a stereotypical five-part form”.



Faced with exposure of having been guilty of a flagrant violation of the law they were sworn to uphold, the magistrate gladly came in person to the prison and escorted Paul and Silas out. Paul may have used this ploy in order to force the magistrates to be especially favorably inclined toward his group of new believers.

Ch. 15:1-35 The Jerusalem Council

As a result of the missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas and the continuing growth of churches like that at Antioch in Syria, the number of Gentile adherents to the faith in Jesus as the Messiah and Savior was fast approaching (if not already exceeding) the number of Jewish ones. This posed certain serious problems, which must have been apparent not only to the Jerusalem leaders (James and Peter) but also to Paul and his colleagues.

Since observant Jews had opportunities every day to see the moral laxity of Gentiles, especially in matters of sex, not to even mention their indifference to specifically Jewish concerns about a God-pleasing kosher diet and ritual purity, there would be quite an obstacle to such Jews becoming Christians if they saw what a large number of Gentile adherents the new faith had. As F. F. Bruce (Paul: Apostle of the Heart 174) observes:

“It was all very well for Barnabas and Paul to forge ahead with Gentile evangelization, but meanwhile the Jerusalem leaders had to discharge their own responsibility to commend the gospel to their fellow-Jews. The discharge of this responsibility would not be rendered any easier by reports that large numbers of Gentiles were entering the new fellowship on what must have seemed to be very easy terms.”

It is even possible that the direct evangelizing of Gentiles, such as Peter’s visit to the home of Cornelius in Caesarea (Acts 10), had seriously eroded the general Jewish goodwill toward the new Jesus movement and made possible Herod Agrippa’s execution of James son of Zebedee and attempted execution of Peter (Acts 12).

Add to this the fact that after the death of Agrippa, and the re-institution of Roman procuratorial government in Judea, there was an outbreak of Jewish acts of terrorism by Zealots against the Roman authorities that was countered by the capture and crucifying of the leaders. This made Jews in Palestine all the more suspicious of any of their number who were too friendly to Romans or even Gentiles.

So direct Gentile evangelism was proving very costly to the Jerusalem believers in terms of persecution and hindering conversions. They had every right to be concerned that it be carried out in a responsible way so as not to alienate potential converts among their fellow Jews. This was the occasion for the Jerusalem conference recorded in Acts 15.

From the perspective of 21st Century Christianity, after 2000 years of a Gentile (and mostly Euro-American) Church, it seems strange to us to see some among the earliest Christians insisting that Gentiles must be circumcised and observe all of the law of Moses, not just its ethical or moral commands but its ritual ones as well. Yet we must put ourselves in the situation of that day to properly understand. At that time what we call “Christianity” was a small branch of Judaism with a recently emerging strong impetus to evangelize Gentiles. The biblical anticipation of this outreach to Gentiles, according to many of the earliest Christians, was the Old Testament prophetic picture of Restored Israel (the Jesus people) in the “last days” welcoming a huge influx of Gentiles. As the IVP Acts Commentary puts it:

“Such a ‘proselyte model’ of Gentile conversion [i.e., requiring circumcision and obedience to the whole Torah] was natural to Jews steeped in the Old Testament, which promises that in the last days Gentiles, through the witness of a restored Israel, will flow to Jerusalem and be incorporated into the one people of God (Is 2:2-3; 25:6-8; 56:6-7; 60:2-22; Zech 8:23).”

Similarly the NIV Comm.:

“[They did not] oppose reaching Gentiles through the ministry of the church. But they felt that the outreach to Gentiles should … follow a proselyte model, not … be apart from the law. After all, in the last days, all nations were to flow to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem (cf. Isa 2:2-3; 25:6-8; 56:7; 60:3-22; Zec 8:21-23), not depart from it.”

Of the passages just cited, the following has special interest, because of how it describes the conditions for Gentile entry into the Restored People of God:

“And foreigners [i.e., Gentiles] who bind themselves to the LORD to serve him, to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant— these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”” (Isaiah 56:6-7 NIV)

This certainly looks like the conditions demanded by the opponents of Paul and Barnabas. Keeping the Sabbath without desecrating it is clearly a Jewish rite, and “holding fast to [God’s] covenant” with Abraham and Moses would certainly involve circumcision.

So with this background we can understand why there would be Jewish adherents to the earliest Jesus Movement who would be troubled by the admission of uncircumcised Gentiles into the community. As for the reason Paul and Barnabas (and eventually Peter and James) decided against such a restriction on Gentile entrance into the Church, one needs to read Paul’s lengthy arguments in Galatians. I would recommend that you read that short book as a background to the study of Acts 15.

1 Luke probably knew the names of the “certain individuals” (NRSV, Greek τινες) who caused the furor in Antioch, but he will not dignify them by naming them. In this he follows Paul’s own example. For even when Paul heatedly denounces opponents in his letters, he usually does not name them. These unnamed men may or may not have been those who later argued the extreme case against Paul in Jerusalem (Gal 2:4), but they almost certainly are the men who proceeded further north from Antioch to “infect” Paul’s new congregations in Galatia (Gal 1:6-7; 3:1) and come under Paul’s curse in Galatians 1:8-9. Paul’s strong language about these “false brothers” probably reflects how fiery was the conflict with them in Antioch, which in classic Greek understatement Luke describes as “no small dissension and debate” (στάσεως καὶ ζητήσεως οὐκ ὀλίγης Acts 15:2 NRSV, ESV following KJV, ASV; NIV somewhat obscures Luke’s euphemistic language by paraphrasing the phrase as “sharp dispute and debate”).

2 “Debate” (ζήτησις) was common enough within the churches, as it was among the Jewish rabbis. One could argue without producing a breach in fellowship. Paul had several such arguments with Peter and Barnabas (Gal 2:11-13; Acts 15:36-39). But when the situation reached the stage of “dissension” (στάσις), a breach of fellowship has occurred (a dangerous situation) and the only solution is conflict resolution in the form of a council of the apostles in Jerusalem.

“The behavior of Paul and Barnabas teaches us that it is right to contend for the truth of the gospel in spite of the debate that may ensue. No local church or denomination should settle for politically expedient peace at the expense of doctrinal purity. At the same time, Antioch's decision to appeal to Jerusalem shows us that doctrinal purity maintained in an atmosphere of contentiousness--at the expense of peace--is an equally wrong situation” (IVP Acts Comm.)

When the issue of dispute does not affect the very essence of the gospel, it can and should be handled by conflict resolution. In a sense, this is what Paul often did with his churches in matters such as the speaking in tongues (1Cor 12-14) and the eating of food previously offered to idols (1 Cor 8).

But sometimes — rarely — a doctrinal dispute goes to what both sides regard as the core identity of what is meant by “Christian”. When that happens, conflict resolution will not bring about reconciliation and agreement. Such was the case in the Protestant Reformation (see e.g., Luther). When this is the situation, there is no other course of action open but for the contending parties to become independent bodies.

Paul clearly regarded the teaching of the unnamed men pushing circumcision as a threat to the very essence of the Gospel. The ruling of Peter and James in Acts 15 did not necessarily bring about unity between all the contending parties: but it affirmed the position of Paul’s party as being the Jerusalem church's position as well. But more on that later.

3 As the delegation from the Antioch churches proceeded south through Phoenicia and Samaria on its 250-mile trip to Jerusalem, Luke tells us that Paul and Barnabas excited their hearers with news of “the conversion of the Gentiles” (τὴν ἐπιστροφὴν τῶν ἐθνῶν). The definite article “the conversion” could, of course, have been used merely merely in order to refer to the particular events Luke has just described in Acts 13-14, a kind of missionary report. But since the churches of Phoenicia and Samaria were not the “sending churches” of Paul and Barnabas, and thus were not the proper recipients of such a missionary report, and any such report would also have had to include news of Jews in those cities who had believed in Jesus, another possibility needs to be considered, one which also might explain why Luke says that the news “brought great joy” (ἐποίουν χαρὰν μεγάλην). It is just possible that what Paul and Barnabas were trying to indicate was that what had happened to them in Cyprus and Asia Minor was the first stage of the great turning to God among the Gentiles which was prophesied in Isaiah and other end time prophecies. In other words, this was a sign of the fast-approaching End of All Things, when the Messiah Jesus would return to establish his earthly reign. This response of great joy, then, was much more than “the appropriate response to news that persons of any cultural group have come to salvation” (IVP Commentary). Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and Ethiopians would be “cultural groups”. “Gentiles” is not a "cultural" term, but a religious or theological one, for that huge portion of earth’s population which had not been included among God’s chosen people (Israel), but who in the Last Days would experience a massive turning to God through the working of His Spirit.

Witherington (Acts 452) is right in noting that Luke does not say that the missionaries stressed a Law-free conversion of the Gentiles or that the joy shown was an anticipation of a favorable verdict for Paul and Barnabas in Jerusalem. Thus we cannot agree with the NIV Commentary, which says of these verses: “The Phoenician and Samaritan Christians, being themselves converts of the Hellenists’ mission after Stephen’s martyrdom (cf. Acts 8:4-25; 11:19), probably took a broader view than that which prevailed at Jerusalem and rejoiced at the news."

4 The delegation from Antioch was warmly received by the Jerusalem leaders (apostles and elders) and church body.

5 Luke’s “but” (or “on the other hand” δέ), introduces the opposing point of view held by Christians who had been part of the Jewish school of thought described by the word “Pharisees”. Although the word "Pharisees" takes on unavoidably negative overtones in the New Testament, due to Jesus’ criticism of the group in the gospels, there is no necessary negative connotation to the word here. In fact, one should also probably avoid using the translation “sect” for the Greek term αἵρεσις Luke employs here to describe the Pharisees. That term (αἵρεσις) is used by the ancient Jewish historian Josephus to describe the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and the other groups within normative Judaism, which he likes to call “philosophies”. They represented alternative, sometimes heatedly competing, ways of interpreting the Law and its application to daily life. They were schools of thought, or parties, but hardly “sects” (although this English term is sometimes used of them). The English word “sect” too often describes a group with views so aberrant from the norm that it has no proper place within the greater group of Christianity (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, etc.). this was not true of groups like the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes.

6 According to NIV Comm.:

“While Luke says only that the apostles and elders met to consider these questions, his mention of ‘the whole assembly’ in v. 12 and ‘the whole church’ in v. 22 shows that other members of the congregation were also present.“

But the “whole assembly” (v. 12) can simply refer to the group comprised by the apostles and elders. And “ with the consent of the whole church” (v. 22) comes at the very end of the closed door deliberations, so that the “whole church” could have heard the recommendations of the smaller deliberative body and concurred with their ruling.

7 The mention of “much (i.e., lengthy) discussion” shows that such an important issue required that every aspect be explored and every point of view heard. Only then does a prominent figure like Peter weigh in with his own experience (i.e., Cornelius, Acts 10-11) and its relevance to the issue.

The choosing of Peter (“made a choice among you”) as the instrument for opening the door of the kingdom to the Gentiles as a group is indeed shown by Acts 10-11, but was foreshadowed much earlier, when Jesus promised the “keys of the kingdom” to Simon Peter (Mat 16:19), which many scholars understand to mean his privilege to open the access to salvation by faith first to Jews at Pentecost (Acts 2), then to Samaritans (Acts 8), and finally to Roman Gentiles (Acts 10-11).

8-9 The crucial evidence that God requires no circumcision or keeping of Jewish ritual law was the bestowal of the Holy Spirit upon Cornelius’ group the moment they believed. This argument of Peter’s is the same as that of Paul in his letter to the Galatians (Gal 3:2, 5). And Paul later bolsters it by adding the example of Abraham, who was still uncircumcised when God called him out of Mesopotamia and gave him the promises (Rom 4:11).

10-11 Peter’s conclusion/application comes in the form of a question or challenge to those present who advocated requiring full observance of OT law by the new Gentile converts: “Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?“ What is meant by “trying to test God”? This expression is used in the Greek translation of the OT texts describing the rebellions of Israel against God and Moses during the desert wanderings. It refers to something very much like what a little child does when its mother says “Don’t touch this newly baked cake”, and as soon as Mother is out of the room, it reaches out to touch it -- just to see if Mother will enforce her rule. See also Acts 5:7-11, where it describes the actions of Ananias and Sapphira. For Paul’s use of the expression see 1Cor 10:9. In other words, Peter was warning that God’s punitive wrath might come upon the Jerusalem Church, if they opposed His clear intention of welcoming Gentiles on the basis of simple faith in Jesus the Messiah, without taking upon themselves all of the obligations of OT law.

Peter goes on the make a statement regarding Jewish experience under the Law which would be contradicted by not only the rabbis of his time but by most of the “establishment” New Testament scholars today! The latter claim that Jews in Paul’s day did not consider law-keeping to be the means of entering God’s covenant family, but merely the way one expressed one’s gratitude to God as a secure member of that family. They also say that bearing the “yoke of the law” was not a burden, but a delight (see quotes from IVP Acts Comm.: “Taking on the yoke of the law and carrying it was a positive image in Judaism (m. Berakot 2:2; m. 'Abot 3:5)”).

Apparently, Peter would respectfully differ! His entire argument depended for its acceptance by all those present (including the Pharisee Christians!) that bearing the yoke of the Law was neither easy nor a delight, but a burden that neither his hearers nor their ancestors could carry. Contrast Jesus’ own promise to those who would become his disciples: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mat 11:28-30).

12 Peter’s cogent argument reduced the noisy chamber to absolute silence: no one could object. Now it was the turn of Barnabas and Paul to report all that God had accomplished through them on their recent mission. In making this report they not only offer an argument in support of Peter’s conclusion, but fulfill a command of Jesus recorded by Luke himself (Luke 8:39; 9:10). Since Barnabas’ name comes first, it is likely that, because he had closer connections in the Jerusalem church and was widely respected there, he was chosen to speak first.

13-21 As the recognized leader of the Jerusalem Church, it is James (Hebrew Jacob), the brother of Jesus, who has the final word. Since James was extremely strict in his personal observance of OT law, doubtless the opponents of Paul and Barnabas hoped for support from him. He summarizes the most important arguments and expresses what was fast becoming the consensus view, which supported Peter, Paul and Barnabas.

James provides us here with a good example: be as ascetic and self-denying as you want in your private life. But do not become a Pharisee in judging others in the church whose private lives seem to you less rigorous and self-denying.

14 See New Documents 1:94, where it is rightly observed that Luke’s use of the name-form “Simeon” instead of "Peter" in James’ speech (Acts 15:14) shows that the latter was using Aramaic. It also accords with the theory that this part of ch. 15 derives from a Jerusalem source rather than being a free composition of Luke’s.

James refers to Peter’s experience with Cornelius and the former’s observation that the spontaneous giving of the Spirit to these Gentiles showed God’s acceptance of them as Gentiles. But he adds that this accords with OT prophecy (v. 15-18, quoting Amos 9:11-12 [see footnote "b" in the translation] in the Greek LXX).

One can be too fine in reconstructing the particulars of James’ interpretation of the Amos passage and its application to his times. Perhaps a more general understanding can be agreed upon by all interpreters today: the prophets predict that in the “last days”, meaning just “in the future” as this phrase often means in the Hebrew OT, God will bring many Gentiles into his fold. James sees in this passage that God wishes to facilitate that entry, not make it more difficult. Hence, he concludes that this council also not make it more difficult (v. 19).

20 Still, there have to be minimal standards. And James suggests here what they should be. The three selected make up a strange-looking group. As usually interpreted, the first — abstaining from eating meats purchased in the public market which had first been presented in pagan temples — was to guard against even the suggestion that Christians believed in more than one God. The second — abstaining from (usually translated “sexual immorality” or “fornication”) — was to keep monogamy and marital fidelity (sacred since Genesis 2!) unsullied and protected. But the third seems to be involving Jewish kosher practices, seemingly at odds with James’ own verdict just given!

You should not, however, regard these three prescriptions as conditions for salvation, as though anyone who once or twice might engage in such a practice would lose his status as a saved person. Paul’s own advice to the church at Corinth about some members who eat meat previously offered in pagan temples (Rom 14-15; 1 Cor 8) shows what was also James’ intention here. It was the Church’s strong recommendation that these three practices be avoided. A Gentile must regard his Jewish fellow-believer as what Paul called the “weaker” fellow believer (1Cor 8:7-8), who has more scruples against eating non-kosher food. You should not invite such a man to your house and serve him meat from an animal which was not properly drained of its blood when slaughtered. This would be an offense against that person’s sincere scruples. Many Christians today voluntarily abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages when sharing a meal with fellow Christians who are tee-totalers out of conscience.

22-35 The final action of the Jerusalem Council was to draft a resolution and a ruling to be sent back to the inquiring church at Antioch, and to be relayed to any of the Gentile-dominated churches of Cyprus and Asia Minor affected by the previous missionary journey. To assure the church at Antioch that what they heard was not just Paul and Barnabas’ version of the proceedings (v. 27), highly respected members of the Jerusalem church were sent with them (v. 25-27). Verse 24 deliberately repudiates the earlier group from Jerusalem who had caused such anxiety in Antioch.

31-35 As is his custom, Luke closes this section with a description of the beneficial effects of the whole incident and its judicious resolution upon the Church as a whole, and in this case, upon the local church at Antioch where the disturbance began. the results are: joy, encouragement, stability, and the effective propagation of the gospel message.

But not all was settled. About later years Henry Chadwick (The Church in Ancient Society) notes sadly:

The first-century aspiration to keep Jewish and uncircumcised Gentile believers within one single community was difficult to maintain. The epistle to the Ephesians already presupposes that the problems were severe. In the middle years of the second century Justin Martyr (Dialogue 46–48) knew of Jewish Christian communities who believed Jesus to be Messiah and observed the prescriptions of the Torah, perhaps also the traditions of the elders, and did not expect Gentile Christians to be circumcised or to observe the sabbath and food laws. He also knew of other Jewish groups whose only point of difference from the synagogue was belief in Jesus the Messiah. Justin was sad that Jewish and Gentile believers had ceased to be able to worship together, and that the numerous Gentile Christians were in many cases failing to grant full recognition to their Jewish brethren.

Acts 14: The Successes in Galatia

(Click on the image above to enlarge it.)

(Map courtesy of website http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/corinthians/maps.stm)(For another good map and JB Phillips' paraphrase of Acts 14 click here.)

1 From Pisidian Antioch Paul and Barnabas proceeded eastward to the city of Iconium, where they continued to proclaim the good news (gospel) about Jesus the Messiah. And again they began where they believed the soil to be the most fertile and ready, the local synagogue.



From the definite article “the synagogue” it would appear that there was only one gathering place for Jewish worship in Iconium (modern Turkish Konya). Obviously ESV’s and NIV’s “Jewish” is unnecessary, since the Greek text has only “the synagogue”, and what would a synagogue be if not Jewish?



The town, the Latin form of whose name is Iconium, existed long before the ancient Phrygians settled it. It is known already from texts written towards the end of the Hittite empire (c. 1220 BC), where it appears as Ikuwaniya.

“With Augustus’ reorganization of provinces in 25 B.C., Iconium became part of Galatia. But while Rome chose Antioch of Pisidia and Lystra as bastions of its authority in the area, Iconium remained largely Greek in temper and somewhat resistant to Roman influence” (NIV Commentary)

2 Luke tells us that "the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers." The expression “the unbelieving Jews” indicates that some at least from the synagogue had believed the gospel message spoken by Paul and Barnabas, as indeed v. 1 says. The initial wave of opposition took the form of slander, injected in the minds of the non-Jews in the city in order to poison their minds and keep them from believing the message.



Luke’s source does not provide him with the specifics as to what the slander was. It had to be something that would be inflammatory to non-Jews, not just to Jews. The best refutation of slander is not words alone but upright, noble and courageous behavior. And it is this which Luke focuses on in the rest of the chapter. The contrast between the behavior of the missionaries and that of the mobs is stark.



3 Luke, like Paul, tends to use “God” for the Father and “Lord” for Jesus. Therefore, Luke characterizes the missionaries’ message as “the message of his (Jesus’) grace”, meaning His gracious gift of salvation through His death and resurrection. It should be understood that “grace” as opposed to “law” will be an issue in these churches in the coming years, as evidenced by Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Confirmation of the message boldly preached came in the form of miracles. Luke’s source again does not specify what these miracles were. “Later when writing his Galatian converts …, Paul appeals to these mighty works performed by the Spirit as evidence that the Gospel as he preached it and as they received it was fully approved by God (cf. Gal 3:4-5)” (NIV Comm.). The IVP Acts Commentary observes:

These miracles at Iconium place the work of Paul and Barnabas in continuity with the mission of Jesus and "the Twelve" and bear witness to unbelieving Jews that the salvation blessings Israel experienced in the past and hoped for at the end of the age are now not only theirs but also the Gentiles' (Acts 2:22; 5:12; 15:12; Ex 7:3; Ps 135:9; Acts 2:12/Joel 2:30; Gal 3:4-5).

But although both Luke and Paul claim that the miracles show the truth of the message, Jews were on good ground to question this assumption, because of warning passages in the Torah, such as Deut. 13:1-5 (LXX σημεῖον ἢ τέρας). Deceivers also will perform miracles to lure Israel away from fidelity to God.



5 The plot is not just by unbelieving Jews, but by Gentiles (pagans) as well. The gospel always divides people. If your goal is complete unity of thinking on religious matters, you will not want the gospel to be preached. It doesn’t say “You’re okay; I’m okay. Whatever you believe is okay”! It presumes the possibility of validating one of two competing religious claims. It believes that one claim can be right and another wrong.



The mention of stoning shows, however, that there is strong Jewish influence, since stoning as a form of execution is uniquely Israelite/Jewish.



6 Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor! there is a time to stand still bravely, and a time to pick up and run for your life.



Only in Acts 14:4, 6, 14 does Luke depart from his usual restriction of the term “apostles” to refer to the Twelve. He does not even use it of Paul, much less of Barnabas. On the use of “apostles” for Paul and Barnabas, see NIV Comm: “ While Barnabas was neither one of the Twelve nor a claimant to any special revelation, he was probably one of the 120 (cf. Acts 1:15) and may have been a witness of Jesus’ resurrection. Yet as with most titles of the NT, Luke, like Paul himself (cf. 2Co 8:23; Gal 1:19; Phil 2:25), not only used “apostle” in the restricted sense of a small group of highly honored believers who had a special function within the church but also in the broader sense of messengers of the Gospel.” See also With. Acts 419f.



8-10 Lystra also was an old city, mentioned in the same Hittite document (c. 1220 BC) that mentioned Ikuwaniya-Iconium. It has not yet been identified archeologically, although several candidates have been suggested. “That Paul began the ministry at Lystra by preaching to a crowd may imply that no synagogue was available for him to preach in. “ (NIV Comm.).



Paul apparently possessed the gift of healing (1Cor 12:9,28,30), for he was able to bring about miraculous healings on several recorded occasions. But note that healing was not his primary mission in Lystra and Derbe: instead he was there to preach the gospel of Jesus. It was only as he saw in the audience a man who was believing the message (v. 9 “saw that he had faith to be healed”), but who was also a cripple, that he was led by the Spirit to call down God’s healing power upon the man. The physical healing in this case was just God’s way of showing what had already happened to him inside: he had been “made whole” in spirit by faith in Jesus.



11 Paul’s action was spontaneous, prompted by the Spirit (although Luke doesn’t try to state the obvious here), not following a prearranged plan. He could not have foreseen the crowd’s reaction. As it was, this was definitely not what he or Barnabas wanted. The polytheistic pagan mindset being what it was, such miraculous healing powers suggested that the two missionaries were gods in disguise! The specific pair of deities suspected, Zeus and Hermes, were both worshiped in this region, as archeological finds have demonstrated. Bible-readers need to know some Greek mythology in order to fully appreciate this story. Zeus (= Latin Jupiter) was the head of the Greek pantheon and an august figure, while Hermes (= Latin Mercury) was the messenger of the gods and therefore their “chief speaker”. Luke’s albeit abbreviated description of the sacrificial rites is completely true to what we know about pagan Anatolian worship. (If you think modern enlightenment has eliminated the worship of Zeus and his friends, see this recent article.) F. F. Bruce comments on extra-biblical evidence for the worship of Zeus and Hermes in the region of Lystra:

Sometimes minor details in the New Testament narrative have been illuminated and confirmed by archaeological research. For example, when Paul and Barnabas, in the course of their first missionary tour, visited Lystra in Asia Minor, and healed a lame man, the populace jumped to the conclusion that the gods had come down to them in the likeness of men, 'and they called Barnabas Zeus, and Paul Hermes, because he was the chief speaker' (Acts xiv. 12). Now Zeus and Hermes (whom the Romans called Jupiter and Mercury) were traditionally connected with that region; in the eighth book of his Metamorphoses (lines 626 ff.) the [Roman] poet Ovid tells a well known story of how they came to those parts incognito and received hospitality from an aged couple, Philemon and Baucis, who were well rewarded for their kindness, while their inhospitable neighbours were overwhelmed by a deluge.

But more precise evidence of the joint worship of these two deities in the vicinity of Lystra was found in 1910, when Sir William Calder discovered an inscription of c. AD 250 at Sedasa near Lystra, recording the dedication to Zeus of a statue of Hermes along with a sundial by men with Lycaonian names,' and again in 1926, when the same scholar, along with Professor W. H. Buckler, discovered a stone altar near Lystra dedicated to the 'Hearer of Prayer' (presumably Zeus) and Hermes.'

A good parallel to the phrase 'the chief speaker' (Gk., ho hegoumenos tou logou; literally, 'the leader of the speaking') is found in The Egyptian Mysteries of Iamblichus, where Hermes is described as 'the god who is the leader of the speeches' (Gk., theos ho ton logon hegemon). In their way, these 'undesigned coincidences' are as telling as the more direct confirmations of biblical statements.

Very little is known specifically about the ancient non-Greek language of Lycaonia in Roman times, but it was probably a descendant of the Luvian language known to have been spoken in that region in Hittite times. About Luvian we know quite a bit. Obviously, neither Paul nor Barnabas would have understood what was said in this language, which explains their delayed reaction, not understanding what was happening until they saw the sacrifice (v. 14). Tearing their clothes was a typically Jewish sign of mourning a death or a response to the hearing blasphemy or witnessing a sacrilegious act. But it was also a universally recognized sign of mourning or horror that even pagans in Paul's time would have understood.



Pelikan (Acts 163) calls attention to how the wild claim of the Lystrans that the gods can come down in the likeness of humans was

“the liturgical counterpart to a pagan confession of faith that was at one and the same time woefully misguided in its polytheism and idolatry (cf. Acts 19:28) and yet in some curious and twisted sense ‘not far from the kingdom of God’ (Mark 12:34) as an anticipation of the orthodox Christian doctrine that was to be confessed in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed: ''And became incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, became human".

He adds that:

“this reference to the divine as appearing ‘in the likeness of men’ did bear at least a superficial resemblance to the Pauline language about God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. 8:3) and about the incarnation of the preexistent Christ as being ‘born in the likeness of men and being found in human form’ (Phil. 2:7- 8). … [Yet] the early Christian apologists, above all Origen in Contra Celsum, were at great pains to differentiate the Christian doctrine of the incarnation from such pagan myths of the Olympian deities roaming the earth in search of plunder and sex.”

15-17 Paul’s abbreviated “sermon” to restrain the sacrifice required no knowledge either of Jewish scripture nor of Greek philosophy to understand. But it was true to the spirit of the Bible and to what was right in Greek philosophy. Pelikan observes that:

“his discourse at Athens [Acts 17:16-34] was primarily an exercise in the rhetoric of convincing intellectually; which may also account for ‘the more secular style of this speech,’ This discourse at Lystra came much closer to the rhetoric of persuading existentially (Acts 9:1-4; 24:1-2) when it spoke about God as (reversing the original [biological] order) (1) ‘satisfying your hearts with . .. gladness ‘, (2) ‘filling you with food’ (NRSV), and (3) giving ‘you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons.’”

This was something all ancients believed about their gods, but Paul attributes it to one God, not many—and He the totality of what can be called “god”.



Paul starts where his hearers were: not with the cross but with the idea that one God was the Creator of everyone (v. 15).



16-17 By v. 16-17 Paul does not mean that in past generations Gentiles did not need His salvation. Rather he means that in past generations the focus of his self-revelation was Israel, and the pagan nations only knew Him through the provisions of their needs through nature (rain, sunshine, fertile earth). But now this God has reached out directly to the Gentiles.



18 The speech is cut short before he can develop how God has reached out "now"—by Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection. But then his primary purpose was to restrain them from honoring them as gods with sacrifice, and this he has achieved.



19-20 This was a close shave for Paul. We see here just how fierce and passionate was the opposition to Paul and Barnabas from the non-believing Jews of Antioch and Iconium. They pursued the two of them all the way to Lystra and stirred up violence there too. After stoning Paul and supposing him dead, they dragged his body outside the city. Why did they do this? Perhaps because a person executed for sins against the gods would defile the city if his body were allowed to remain in the limits of the city.

“Some months later, when Paul wrote the believers in Galatia (again, we assume a “South Galatian” destination for the letter), he closed by saying, “Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17). Some of the marks may well have been scars caused by the stoning at Lystra. And when still later he wrote the Corinthians of his being stoned (2Co 11:25), it was Lystra he had in mind (cf. also 2Ti 3:11)” (NIV Comm.).

Young Timothy may have been among those who gathered around the apparently dead Paul (see 2Ti 3:10-11)” (cf. NIV Study Bible note).



That Paul got up and walked right back into the city of those who had stoned him not only shows unbelievable courage, but also concern that the few converts in the city should know that he had survived by God’s grace, and that their prayers for his protection had been answered.



20-21 Little is said about Derbe, but that is no measure of the importance of that visit. As the NIV commentary so rightly observes:

“Luke’s account of the ministry at Derbe is brief. All he says is that the apostles “preached the good news” there and “won a large number of disciples.” Luke spends more time talking about the larger and more influential churches in Antioch and Iconium, though the congregations in the smaller and more rural towns seem to have contributed more young men as candidates for the missionary endeavor (e.g., Timothy from Lystra [Acts 16:1-3; 20:4]; Gaius from Derbe (Acts 20.4) —a pattern not altogether different from today, where the larger churches often capture the headlines and the smaller congregations provide much of the personnel.”

22-23 are all about follow-up, the most important and underrated part of evangelism.



The IVP commentary on Acts notes:

Afterward, instead of moving straight east to Tarsus, a straight shot of 150 miles, Paul and Barnabas decide to retrace their steps. As will become Paul's practice …, the apostle will maintain contact with the churches he has planted, providing ongoing counsel and encouragement. Though Paul focused on church planting (1 Cor 3:6), the goal of his labors was to "present everyone perfect in Christ" to the Lord at his coming (Col 1:28; Rom 15:16; 1 Thess 2:17-20). So today, an evangelist or church planter who does not make provision for discipleship is like a farmer who harvests well only to see the crop spoil because it is not properly stored.

Paul and Barnabas not only followed up the converts with encouragement and good teaching, but they showed by their own courage that those who believed their message would have to have the same kind of courage. Equally important was providing the young believers with a stable and effective organizational structure: ordaining elders for each local congregation. Again, the IVP Acts notes:

The swiftness of these appointments has bothered some church-planting strategists (compare 1 Tim 5:22). But if the core of the membership came from the synagogue, they had sufficient biblical and theological background to permit rapid spiritual maturation. Further, "perhaps Paul and Barnabas were more conscious of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the believing communities" than we are today (Bruce 1988:280).

24-28 The return trip to Antioch is now described: retracing their steps through Antioch of Pisidia and Perge, then by ship back to Antioch in Syria. The returning missionaries then discharged their obligation to the congregation that had sent them forth and followed them with prayers by reporting all that had happened, giving them reasons to thank and praise God and the names of the converts for whom they could pray.



All in all this was an excellent start for the gospel.