Part 4

The pity of it is, not a word of this conversation has been preserved. We can imagine what some of the questions were and we can guess what some of the answers would be, but the actual words are gone. They are lost forever. What we do know, however, is that at the end of these fifteen days of wonderful talk, Saul went away from Jerusalem, his mind stored with truth about Jesus. He had heard from Peter’s lips the supreme facts about the life of the Person who was henceforth to be Lord and Master of his own life. Peter and James told all their friends in Jerusalem what had happened to Saul, how his career had suddenly changed, how the man who once dragged harmless Christians to prison was now getting ready to give his whole life to the work of telling the good news about Jesus and they already saw that a mighty champion of the truth had joined them and they all thanked God for Saul of Tarsus. When he left Jerusalem, after his memorable visit with Peter, Saul probably went home to Tarsus, and he lived and worked for a time in the home province of Cilicia. There is a long period of his life at this time about which we know nothing at all. He must have been at work for he could not settle down and rest. There was a tremendous drive in his glowing spirit, and wherever he was something was always happening. If he spent some years in Tarsus, as is probable, it is certain that many people there heard of Jesus from him and we can well believe that he went from town to town through the mountain province to tell in all the synagogues the truth which he had learned.

It is possible, however, that he may at this time have had a long period of serious illness. He has himself given us one single glimpse into this unknown period of his life. In the twelfth chapter of Second Corinthians, he says that a tremendous experience came to him fourteen years before—that would be in this period. He was suddenly “caught up” into a higher world where he saw what nobody can see with ordinary eyes and where he understood the mysteries of life in a new way. It seemed for a moment as though he had lost his body and found his soul, as though he had leaped across all the space of the universe and had come to God’s dwelling-place and everything lay plain and clear before him. But about this time, he says further, some terrible illness came upon him, which was so bad that it felt like “a thorn,” or “a stake in his body”—a piercing, racking pain that seemed to bore into his quivering flesh. It was almost more than he could endure. He begged and besought that he might be relieved of it but it lasted on and on. We do not know certainly what this painful disease was but perhaps a little later, as we go on with his life, we may get some idea of what it was, for it appears to have come back again when he was in Galatia.

What we do know is that, while he was living in Tarsus, a man named Barnabas thought of Saul and came to Tarsus to find him. Barnabas was another man something like Stephen. He saw farther than most of the others did. He was always ready for new things and he was full of faith and activity. Like Saul, he could not rest—he wanted to tell everybody what he had discovered. He heard of a new movement in the great city of Antioch, the capital of the province of Syria, and he went off to Antioch to see what this movement really was. When he got there he found that some followers of Jesus who had been forced to leave Jerusalem, because of the persecutions, had come to Antioch and had begun a little church there and were preaching to everybody who would listen. It did not make any difference to them whether the people who came to hear were Jews or not. They were as ready to tell the good news about Christ to Greeks as to the people of their own race. It was the first time and the first place in all the world that anybody had done this. In Jerusalem, “those of the way” were all Jews and they had nothing to do with anybody else. They never dreamed that peoples of all races were alike and were equally dear to God and that Christ came to bless and save all men. They made a sharp distinction between Jews and Gentiles. But in Antioch it was all different. Those who formed the church in Antioch forgot about race and thought only about brotherhood. Greeks flocked into the same room with Jews and together they worshipped God like brothers. And here in Antioch where this new spirit was born and where this new movement began, the followers of Christ were for the first time called “Christians.” In Jerusalem this word was not used or thought of, because no outside people came in and there was no need of a new name. But in Antioch where the Greeks joined the movement and where everybody discovered that a new religion was born they needed a word to name it with and so they called these persons who talked so much about Christ, “Christians.” Barnabas was filled with joy when he found what was going on in Antioch. It looked like the beginning of a movement that would sweep across the world and change the whole empire. He saw at once that he must have the best man whom he could find to help him push the work along, and as he sat thinking of the different persons who could do this great work, suddenly he remembered the young man whose persecutions had driven these first Christians to Antioch and he knew that Saul was now a changed man and a powerful champion of the truth. Whereupon he hurried off through the Syrian gate in the mountains to fetch Saul to Antioch and Saul went back with him to begin the greatest work any man has ever done in the world.

XII

THE FIRST GREAT MISSIONARY JOURNEY

Antioch, the great Syrian city, from this time on became Saul’s new home. He was henceforth to be very closely connected with the flourishing capital of Syria. This was now to be the mother-church of all his activities. From Antioch he started out on all his missionary journeys and he came back to Antioch at the end of each of his far-reaching travels. Here were faithful Christians praying for him as he worked and suffered and here, when he arrived weary and worn with labour, were dear friends to welcome him and to refresh him. Antioch was the first city in the world to have Gentile Christians in it and it was from this city that Christianity spread out over the world and conquered the Roman Empire and became a world movement, and, as we shall see, the man from Tarsus was in this great undertaking the foremost leader and the untiring worker.

For a whole year Barnabas and Saul worked in the city of Antioch, spreading the knowledge of Christ through that region, gathering in new people all the time, teaching them the truth and helping them to live the new way. It was joyous work and while they were doing it they were constantly discovering fresh light and were learning all the time how to tell the world their “good news” and how to build churches out of people who had before been heathen and idol-worshippers. At the end of the first year when the Antioch church had become strong and vigorous—full of life and power—Barnabas and Saul decided, with the approval of the entire church, to go out and tell their message to the great world around them. They felt sure that God called them to be missionaries and they resolved to go wherever He wanted them to go and to do whatever they felt in their hearts that He wanted them to do. These two men took with them as their companion and helper a third man, named John Mark, who had come from Jerusalem to Antioch and who was Barnabas’ nephew. It was probably this young man who later in life wrote the wonderful book which we call “The Gospel according to Mark.”

The whole church came together for a very solemn meeting and prayed for the travellers and then the three men, full of joy and enthusiasm, set out on their journey down the river to Selucia, where they took ship for the island of Cyprus which lies west of the Syrian coast. They visited all the cities of the island, going from the eastern end across to the western edge, to the city of Paphos where the governor of the island lived. This governor was greatly impressed with the message and the extraordinary power of the missionaries and he, Roman as he was, believed the wonderful new truths which they told him about God and about the Christ who had come to reveal Him.

From Paphos the little band of travellers struck out for a new field of work. They had been so successful in Cyprus that they now decided to attack a still larger and more difficult region of the earth. They sailed almost north from Paphos, to the shores of the Mediterranean, lying west of the Taurus mountains over which Saul gazed as a boy. They landed in the district of Pamphilia and came to the city of Perga, a little way in from the Sea. From this time on, our hero is never called Saul any more. His name suddenly changes here to Paul. It is probably due to the fact that the field of his work is now widening out to the Gentile world. He is leaving behind the narrow circle of his own people who always called him by his Jewish name and he is going out among the Greeks who henceforth call him by his Greek name, that has become so familiar to us.

Three things that concern our story seem to have happened at Perga. Paul appears to have been taken ill here with some dangerous disease. It was probably a return of the trouble which he had a few years before and which he called “a stake in his flesh.” The reason why we think he was taken ill here is that he wrote afterwards to his friends in Galatia that he came to them because he had an illness, and he seems to have gone directly to Galatia now from Perga. The illness may quite likely have been malaria, though there is no way to prove it. The few references to his trouble have made some scholars think that it was malaria—a disease which comes back again and again and is dreadfully annoying to a person who wants to do a great work. The low land of Pamphilia may quite likely have brought on a new attack and compelled our travellers to move up to a higher and healthier region. Anyway, whether this theory is correct or not, Paul and Barnabas decided to push on farther north to the hill country of Pisidia. This was the second of the three things. And the third was that Mark refused to go on with them. Something about the undertaking disturbed and frightened him. He turned back and went off home. Paul did not like Mark’s desertion, but Barnabas, who was his uncle, did not treat it as quite so serious.

The two men now started off alone up over the hills and through the dangerous robber-infested country to the finely situated city of Antioch in Pisidia, which my reader must remember is very different from the other Antioch in Syria, from which Paul started on his journey. This second Antioch is in the Roman province of Galatia and we must now realise that on this first great missionary journey of his life Paul came to one of the cities of Galatia where, so far as we know, he founded the first of his missionary churches.

He began his work in the Jewish Synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia and he and Barnabas preached to the Jews of that city and to the other people who sympathised with them and who were called “God-fearers” because they were eager to learn about the God of the Jews. But after a little time the Jews disagreed with the message which the missionaries brought them and so Paul and Barnabas gave up trying to convince the Jews and set to work to tell their good news to the Greeks, just as they had done in Syrian Antioch, and these people flocked to hear them and believed their message with great joy, and were ready almost to pluck out their eyes and give them to Paul. From this first city of the Galatian province they went on to other important cities of the same province—Iconium, Derbe and Lystra. These four cities, we shall now assume, were the four centres of the churches of Galatia. One remarkable incident happened while Paul and Barnabas were working in the city of Lystra. The simple country people here made up their minds that Paul and Barnabas must be gods come down from heaven to visit them and they brought out their oxen and were ready to sacrifice them to Barnabas and Paul, who they thought were Jupiter and Mercury. It was here in this very region around Lystra that Baucis and Philemon once lived. And according to the old Greek stories, Jupiter and Mercury came down to earth on a visit. They came looking like common men and nobody knew that they were gods and when they came to men’s houses asking to be taken in and entertained, nobody would receive them. Finally they came to the poverty-stricken home of Baucis and Philemon, who received their visitors with much joy. They killed their only chicken for the supper and did the best they could to show true hospitality. Suddenly the two visitors stood forth as mighty gods. They blessed and thanked Baucis and Philemon and turned their humble dwelling into a splendid temple and glorified the two poor people who had received them so kindly.

Well, these simple people at Lystra evidently thought when they listened to Paul and Barnabas and saw their wonderful deeds that Jupiter and Mercury had come back again and they were resolved not to make a second mistake and miss the blessing. Paul and Barnabas had no desire to be treated as gods nor to have sacrifices made to them, but they had difficult work getting the simple hearted people to treat them as men and to drive their oxen home.

XIII

THE FIRST GREAT PROBLEM

Paul and Barnabas had another experience at Lystra which was very different from that of being taken for gods. Paul’s own people, the Jews, had begun to see now that he was not like them. He did not care for the things which were as important to them as life. His entire interest lay in telling not about Moses and his law but about Christ and the new life which men could live in His power. To the faithful Jews he seemed like a traitor. They did not want to hear him preach and they were determined to make him stop telling these new things to the people, if they possibly could.

The Jews got together from the cities which Paul and Barnabas had visited and they came in a body to Lystra and stirred up the fickle, changeable peasants and set them against the missionaries who had come to help them. They dragged them out of the city and stoned them until they thought they were dead. Paul must have thought of Stephen as the stones rained down upon him and he knew now how it felt to be stoned by the very people he wanted most to help. Fortunately the stones did not kill him. They only wounded him severely and when the mob had gone away he got up and came back into the city and preached again to his friends who had learned to love him and to believe in him. The next day he and Barnabas left Lystra and went to Derbe. Then they returned and revisited all the churches they had started in Galatia—in Derbe, Lystra, Iconium and Antioch of Pisidia, after which they went back to their home-church in great Antioch. It must have been a happy moment, as the two travellers sat in the midst of the group at Antioch and told of the wonderful events of their long and dangerous journey and as they related how in the far-away province of Galatia they had built up new and flourishing churches out of people who just before had been ignorant heathen. But the happiness and joy were not long undisturbed, for some members of the church in Jerusalem came to Antioch and told the Christians there that Paul was wrong in his ideas and in his teaching, that Barnabas was wrong and that the church there in Antioch was wrong. These men insisted that nobody except Jews could be Christians. If any Gentile wanted to be a Christian and come into the church, they said that he must first be circumcised and become a Jew and he must keep the whole law of Moses. Christ came only for Jews, they said. If anybody went about teaching that Greeks and barbarians and men of all races and all customs could be Christ’s followers, that man was wrong and was a dangerous teacher. What these people said struck right against everything Paul was doing. According to their views most of the people in the church at Antioch were not real Christians. They would have to change all their ways of living. They would need to accept the whole system of Moses and all the sacrifices set forth in the Old Testament before they could have any part in Christ and His “good news.”

Paul was determined not to yield to these men from Jerusalem and he saw that he must go to Jerusalem himself and prove to the whole church there that this idea that only Jews could be Christians was false. He must make them see that the new idea which he and the Christians at Antioch held was true and right; the idea that all men everywhere, of every race and of every colour and of every custom could follow Christ and come to God through Him and live by the power of His Spirit without becoming Jews at all.

Paul and Barnabas, with one of their new converts, Titus, who was a Greek and who had never become a Jew, went together to Jerusalem to have a council with the church there and to settle forever, if they could, this important and difficult question. Paul threw himself into the discussion with all the earnestness and fire that were in his nature. He brought in Titus, as a specimen and exhibit of the kind of Christians the Greeks made when they gave their lives to Christ. Paul refused to let Titus be circumcised. He declared that Titus was already a full Christian without doing anything to make himself a Jew. As Paul talked and showed what Christ meant to him and told of the wonderful things Christ had done through him the men in Jerusalem who had been disciples of Christ were convinced that he was right and they gave him their hands as a token of their faith in him and of their regard for him. But the other members of the church were not yet ready for the new teaching and the new ideas. They were old-fashioned people who could not change their habits. They listened to Paul and were impressed with his shining face and his glowing words, but when he was done speaking they thought just as they did before!

Soon after he had returned from the great conference in Jerusalem, when he thought he had convinced the church in Jerusalem that his position was the right one, he heard that men from Jerusalem had gone to the cities in Galatia and had told his new converts there—in Derbe and Lystra and Iconium and in Pisidia—that the two missionaries, who had recently visited them and had told them about Christ, were false teachers and had led them astray. These Jerusalem men worked upon the simple-minded Galatian people until they made them really believe that Paul and Barnabas were wrong. Their new visitors told the people in Galatia that they must go on now and become Jews. They must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses and they said that if they did that they could have the privilege of enjoying Christ. But if they did not do _that_, then they could have no part in Christ.

It was an unspeakable shock to Paul when this piece of news reached him about his Galatian friends. He saw how helpless they had been. He realised how hard it would be to answer their visitors and he knew that these simple peasants were not to blame for being confused. But he quickly saw that he must save them. He must not let them go astray. He must come to their help and he must write them a letter that would open their eyes and show them the full truth. I am inclined to think this letter was the first of all his wonderful epistles. We must turn and see how the great leader wrote to his beloved friends and young disciples in the hill country of Galatia.

XIV

A LETTER TO HIS CHURCHES

When Paul sat down to write to the churches in the province of Galatia he was facing one of the greatest crises of his life. If he could not convince them that he was right in his teaching and that all men everywhere could follow Christ and become His disciples, then his missionary work was ended and his career was over. He had been proud once to be a Jew. He had gloried in the privilege of belonging to the chosen people and he had hoped to become perfectly righteous by keeping all the law and the commandments. He had tried this plan with all his energy and it had miserably failed. He had never made himself perfect and he had discovered that nobody ever could reach perfection that way. Just at the moment when he realised his failure most, he had suddenly found Christ and through His life and power he had learned how to live in joy and peace and triumph. It was the most wonderful discovery! The whole world seemed new and all nature seemed changed! The whole business of his life was to go out and tell people everywhere about his discovery and what it meant.

And now these men from Jerusalem had gone out to his new churches and made them think that all his work was wrong, that all that he told them was false. They must become Jews. They must try with all their might to keep the law. They must do what Paul had endeavoured to do before he found Christ. They must strain and struggle on, all their lives, to make themselves good, and then, if they succeeded, they could enjoy Christ. It seemed to Paul a pitiful drop from his great and wonderful message. _He_ could never go out and tell people that. If his discovery and his message were not true, then he could never go out again on a missionary journey. There was nothing left for him but to go back to Tarsus and make tents and then to die and be buried like the rest of men. Now if ever he must make his new converts see and understand his discovery and he must absolutely convince them that he was right and that God was with him. That is what the Epistle to the Galatians was written for.

Intense and eager and determined as he was, he was also tender and loving. This letter is all full of passages in which you can almost feel this great man’s heart throb. “You are,” he tells them, “just like my own children. I came to you when you were living in sin and ignorance and, like a father full of love, I helped you into a new life. I brought you to Christ and I showed you how to get free from your old bondage and how to rise into a life of joy and power. I cannot bear to see you drop back into bondage again. If you believe what these visitors have told you, you will never be free again, you will have to carry burdens all your days.” “When I came first among you,” he wrote, “you were full of joy. You loved me and believed me, as though I had been an angel or a god come to visit you. You would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me, if you could have done it. I want now to be your friend and I want you to believe that what I tell you is the truth.” Then he showed them how foolish was the story which the Jews from Jerusalem had told them. They had said that only those who were “sons of Abraham” could share in the promises of Christ. “Sons of Abraham,” Paul cried out to them, “who are the real sons of Abraham!” “Not those who become Jews and keep the law but those who are full of faith, who trust Christ and live by His power. The most wonderful thing about Abraham was his _faith_. He believed God. He trusted God. He walked with God. He did not keep the law, because the law was not given until many centuries after Abraham had died. If you want to be ‘a son of Abraham’ you must live by faith. You must trust God and take Christ for your leader, your helper, your inward strength.”