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.
[Illustration: ANTIOCH]
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.
[Illustration: MAP [NORTH EAST CORNER MEDIT.]]
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.”
He drew, in his letter, a wonderful picture of the true way to live. He
gave his friends an account of his own life and told them they could
also have what had come to him. “Why,” he said, “God has revealed His
Son in my soul. I used to do wrong and go wrong. I could not keep
myself. I tried to live by the law but it would not work. Now I live by
faith—faith in Christ, and the life I now live is really the life He
lives in me. I do not care any more for the things people do to make
themselves good. I feel Christ coming into me and giving me strength and
power, just as the sun comes into the tree and builds its life from
within. You can all have that power formed in you. You can all feel the
life of Christ sweep into your lives and that will make you free. And
you will cry ‘Abba, Father,’ for you will find the life and spirit of
God in your own hearts. When that happens you will not think much about
those things which these Jews from Jerusalem have been telling you you
must do to be saved!
“There are two great forces in the world,” he told them. “One is the
force that makes people do wrong. There seems to be something in us too
strong for us to resist. We mean to do right, but often before we know
it, something seems to push us into evil. We go the way of instinct. We
fight, or we tell lies, or we take what is not ours, or we get angry, or
we do things which are not pure and clean and beautiful. How are we to
stop this force from pushing us and controlling us and spoiling us?”
“You must get a new spirit,” Paul says. “The law and the commandments
and the customs of Moses will not bring you life and power. You must
find a new and higher force which will come into you and raise you out
of your old self into a new way of life. Just that is what Christ does.
When He helps you and comes into you, a new spirit is formed and you get
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness,
and endurance in your own souls. It is like discovering a new world. It
is like a new creation. That is what Christ does. He makes people new
creatures. These people who came to you from Jerusalem cannot tell you
how to do that—but I can tell you. I bear in my body the marks of this
new creation which Christ has formed in me.”
Something like that Paul wrote to his friends in Galatia and the best of
it is, they believed him and stood by him. When they had read his
letter, they said: Paul is right. It is so. We will take his way. We
will have Christ and not the law-system—and so Paul had won his first
great battle.
XV
“COME OVER INTO MACEDONIA AND HELP US”
The old heroes of Greece were heroes because they went out to fight with
beasts and to free the world of terrible monsters. Then, again, there
were heroes who fought with giants, or with deadly enemies of their
country, and who risked their lives for their friends or for their
people. Paul was a new kind of hero. His great battle was a battle with
false ideas, a battle for the truth, a battle for the good news which
Christ had brought to the world. It is harder to be this kind of a hero.
Most people do not recognise the new kind of hero when he comes. They do
not know that he _is_ a hero. He often has to fight alone and he is
misunderstood even by his friends. Paul had many lonely hours. He could
not have stood the strain and struggle if he had not been sure of
Christ’s presence and help and if he had not known that he was the
champion of the greatest truth in the world.
Now that he had won the victory in this important contest in Galatia,
and now that he had settled the question that Christ was the Saviour of
all men of all races, he could go out again on another great
out-reaching missionary journey. Paul wanted to go again with Barnabas,
but Barnabas was determined to take Mark once more as companion and Paul
was just as determined not to have Mark, because he deserted them on
their former journey, so that they finally agreed to separate. Barnabas
went to Cyprus with Mark, and Paul took a companion named Silas, and
started out without quite knowing what country he would travel to before
his return. He and Silas went, probably by land, through the Syrian gate
in the mountains, to Tarsus and visited the Christian settlements in the
province of Cilicia, then directly on to see his friends in Galatia who
had been through so much since he saw them last. How we wish we knew
what he said to them and what they said to him! But we do not know a
single word that passed while Paul was living among the disciples of
Galatia. We only know that he decided to take one of these Galatian
Christians along with him as a helper in his work. This was a young man
named Timothy whose home was in Derbe. He became one of Paul’s greatest
friends and a wonderful help to him, clear through to the end of his
life. Being with Paul made Timothy a hero too.
After the three men had visited all the communities of Galatia, they
started off toward the north and visited the cities in the district of
Phrygia which belonged to the province of Galatia, and then they decided
to strike across west and visit the great cities of the province of
Asia, the capital of which was Ephesus, but they soon felt that the time
had not come yet for this journey. They next tried to go to the country
lying along the shores of the Black Sea, but something made them realise
that this was not the right course for them to take, so that they went
on to Troas on the shores of the Ægean Sea, without quite knowing where
they would go next. Troas was the site of the old city of Troy where the
Greeks and Trojans fought for ten years, and where some of the bravest
deeds were done that the world ever saw. Here was the tomb of Achilles.
Here Alexander the Great had come on his way to the conquest of the
world. A greater conqueror had now come to Troas. Alexander went toward
the east for his victories; the new conqueror was to go west!