The apostles sat silent with the rest of the assembly, while the Law and the Prophets were read. Thej' and their audience were united in reverence for the sacred books. Then the rulers of the synagogue sent to invite them, as strangers but brethren, to speak any word of exhortation which might be in them to the people. Paul stood up, and beckoning with his hand, he spoke. (The speech is given in Acts xiii, 10-41.) The charac- teristics we observe in it are these : The speaker be- gins by acknowledging " the God of this people Israel." He ascribes to him the calling out of the nation and the conduct of its subsequent history. He touches on the chief points of that history up to the reign of David, whom he brings out into prominence. He then names Jesus as the promised Son of David. To convey some knowledge of Jesus to the minds of his hearers, he re- counts the chief facts of the Gospel history ; the pre- paratory preaching and baptism of John (of which the rumor had spread perhaps to Antioch) ; the condemna- tion of Jesus by the rulers " who knew neither him nor the prophets." and his resurrection. That Kesurrection is declared to be the fulfilment of all God's promises of life, given to the fathers. Through Jesus, therefore, is now proclaimed by God himself the forgiveness of sins and full justification. The apostle concludes by draw- ing from the prophets a warning against unbelief. If this is an authentic example of Paul's preaching, it was impossible for Peter or John to start more exclusively from the Jewish covenant and promises than did the apostle of the Gentiles. How entirely this discourse resembles those of Peter and of Stephen in the earlier chapters of the Acts ! There is only one specially Pau- line touch in the whole — the words in ver. 39, " B}^ Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." "Ev- idently foisted in," says Baur (p. 103), who thinks we are dealing with a mere fiction, " to prevent the speech from appearing too Petrine, and to give it a slightly Pauline air." Certainly, it sounds like an echo of the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. But is there therefore the slightest incongruity between this and the other parts of the address? Does not that "forgive- ness of sins" which Peter and Paul proclaimed with the most perfect agreement connect itself naturally, in the thoughts of one exercised by the law as Saul of Tarsus had been, with justification not by the law but by grace ? If we suppose that Saul bad accepted just the faith which the older apostles held in Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah of the Jews, crucified and raised from the dead according to the teaching of the prophets, and in the remission of sins through him confirmed by the gift of
the Holy Ghost; and that he had also had those ex- periences, not known to the older apostles, of which we see the working in the Epistles to the Romans and Ga- latians, this speech, in all its parts, is precisely what we might expect: this is the very teaching which the apostle of the Gentiles must have everywhere and al- ways set forth, when he was speaking " God's Word" for the first time to an assembly of his fellow-countrj'raen.
The discourse thus epitomized produced a strong im- pression; and the hearers (not "the Gentiles," which the best MSS. omit) requested the apostles to repeat their message on the next Sabbath. During the week so much interest was excited by the teaching of the apostles that on the Sabbath-day "almost the whole city came together to hear the Word of God." It was this concern of the Gentiles which appears to have first alienated the minds of the Jews from what they had heard. They were filled with envy. They probably felt that there was a difference between those efforts to gain Gentile proselytes in which they had themselves been so successful and this new preacliing of a Jlessiah in whom a justification which the law could not give was offered to men. The eagerness of the Gentiles to hear may have confirmed their instinctive apprehen- sions. The Jewish envy once roused became a power of deadly hostility to tlie Gospel; and these Jews at Antioch set themselves to oppose bitterly the words which Paul spoke. We have here, therefore, a new phase in the history of the Gospel. In these foreign countries it is not the cross or Nazareth which is most immediately repulsive to the Jews in the proclaiming of Jesus. It is the wound given to Jewish importance in the association of Gentiles with Jews as the receivers of the good tidings. If the Gentiles had been asked to become Jews, no offence would have been taken. But the proclamation of the Christ could not be thus gov- erned and restrained. It overleaped, by its own force, these narrowing methods. It was felt to be addressed not to one nation only, but to mankind.
The new opposition brought out new action on the part of the apostles. Rejected by the Jews, they be- came bold and outspoken, and turned from them to the Gentiles. They remembered and declared what the prophets had foretold of the enlightening and deliver- ance of the whole world. In speaking to the Gentiles, therefore, they were simply fulfilling the promise of the Covenant. ^I'he gift, Ave observe, of which the Jews were depriving themselves, and which the Gentiles who believed were accepting, is described as " eternal life" (»/ aiihvioq K<^>)). It was the life of which the risen Jesus was the fountain, which Peter and John had de- clared at Jerusalem, and of which all acts of healing were set forth as signs. This was now poured out largely upon the Gentiles. The Word of the Lord was published widely, and had much fruit. Henceforth Paul and Barnabas knew it to be their commission, not the less to present their message to Jews first, but in the absence of an adequate Jewish medium to deal directly with the Gentiles. But this expansion of the Gospel work brought with it new difficulties and dan- gers. At Antioch now, as in every city afterwards, the unbelieving Jews used their influence with their own adherents among the Gentiles, and especially the women of the higher class, to persuade the authorities or the populace to persecute the apostles, and to drive them from the place.