[402] Gal. 1:17, 18. In the Acts (9:23) this journey is ignored because it belonged not to the public, but private and inner life of Paul.
[403] Comp. Gal. 4:25, where "Arabia" means the Sinaitic Peninsula.
[404] 2 Cor. 3:6-9.
[405] Thus Godet sums up his life (Romans, Introd. I. 59). He thinks that Paul was neither the substitute of Judas, nor of James the son of Zebedee, but a substitute for a converted Israel, the man who had, single-handed, to execute the task which properly fell to his whole nation; and hence the hour of his call was precisely that when the blood of the two martyrs, Stephen and James, sealed the hardening of Israel and decided its rejection.
[406] "Westward the course of empire takes its way." This famous line of Bishop Berkeley, the philosopher, express a general law of history both civil and religious. Clement of Rome says that Paul came on his missionary tour "to the extreme west" (epi to terma tes duseos), which means either Rome or Spain, whither the apostle intended to go (Rom. 15:24, 28). Some English historians (Ussher, Stillingfleet, etc.) would extend Paul's travels to Gaul and Britain, but of this there is no trace either in the New Test., or in the early tradition. See below.
[407] Rom. 1:16, "to the Jews first," not on the ground of a superior merit (the Jews, as a people, were most unworthy and ungrateful), but on the ground of God's promise and the historical order (Rom. 15:8).
[408] 2 Cor. 11:24-29.
[409] 2 Cor. 4:8, 9.
[410] Rom. 8:31-39.
[411] 2 Tim. 4:6-8. We may add here the somewhat panegyric passage of Clement of Rome, who apparently exalts Paul above Peter, Ep. ad Corinth. c. 5: "Let as set before our eyes the good Apostles. Peter, who on account of unrighteous jealousy endured not one or two, but many toils, and thus having borne his testimony (marturesas, or, suffered martyrdom), went to his appointed place of glory. By reason of jealousy and strife Paul by his example pointed out the price of patient endurance. After having been seven times in bonds, driven into exile, stoned, and after having preached in the East and in the West, he won the noble reward of his faith, having taught righteousness unto the whole world and having reached the boundary of the West; and when he had borne his testimony before the magistrates, he departed from the world and went unto the holy place, having become the greatest example of patient endurance."
§ 33. Paul's Missionary Labors.
The public life of Paul, from the third year after his conversion to his martyrdom, a.d. 40-64, embraces a quarter of a century, three great missionary campaigns with minor expeditions, five visits to Jerusalem, and at least four years of captivity in Caesarea and Rome. Some extend it to a.d. 67 or 68. It may be divided into five or six periods, as follows:
1. a.d. 40-44. The period of preparatory labors in Syria and his native Cilicia, partly alone, partly in connection with Barnabas, his senior fellow-apostle among the Gentiles.
On his return from the Arabian retreat Paul began his public ministry in earnest at Damascus, preaching Christ on the very spot where he had been converted and called. His testimony enraged the Jews, who stirred up the deputy of the king of Arabia against him, but he was saved for future usefulness and let down by the brethren in a basket through a window in the wall of the city. [412] Three years after his conversion he went up to Jerusalem to make the acquaintance of Peter and spent a fortnight with him. Besides him he saw James the brother of the Lord. Barnabas introduced him to the disciples, who at first were afraid of him, but when they heard of his marvellous conversion they "glorified God" that their persecutor was now preaching the faith he had once been laboring to destroy. [413] He did not come to learn the gospel, having received it already by revelation, nor to be confirmed or ordained, having been called "not from men, or through man, but through Jesus Christ." Yet his interview with Peter and James, though barely mentioned, must have been fraught with the deepest interest. Peter, kind-hearted and generous as he was, would naturally receive him with joy and thanksgiving. He had himself once denied the Lord--not malignantly but from weakness--as Paul had persecuted the disciples--ignorantly in unbelief. Both had been mercifully pardoned, both had seen the Lord, both were called to the highest dignity, both could say from the bottom of the heart: "Lord thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee." No doubt they would exchange their experiences and confirm each other in their common faith.
It was probably on this visit that Paul received in a vision in the temple the express command of the Lord to go quickly unto the Gentiles. [414] Had he stayed longer at the seat of the Sanhedrin, he would undoubtedly have met the fate of the martyr Stephen.
He visited Jerusalem a second time during the famine under Claudius, in the year 44, accompanied by Barnabas, on a benevolent mission, bearing a collection of the Christians at Antioch for the relief of the brethren in Judaea. [415] On that occasion he probably saw none of the apostles on account of the persecution in which James was beheaded, and Peter imprisoned.
The greater part of these four years was spent in missionary work at Tarsus and Antioch.
2. a.d. 45-50. First missionary journey. In the year 45 Paul entered upon the first great missionary journey, in company with Barnabas and Mark, by the direction of the Holy Spirit through the prophets of the congregation at Antioch. He traversed the island of Cyprus and several provinces of Asia Minor. The conversion of the Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus, at Paphos; the rebuke and punishment of the Jewish sorcerer, Elymas; the marked success of the gospel in Pisidia, and the bitter opposition of the unbelieving Jews; the miraculous healing of a cripple at Lystra; the idolatrous worship there offered to Paul and Barnabas by the superstitious heathen, and its sudden change into hatred against them as enemies of the gods; the stoning of the missionaries, their escape from death, and their successful return to Antioch, are the leading incidents of this tour, which is fully described in Acts 13 and 14.
This period closes with the important apostolic conference at Jerusalem, a.d. 50, which will require separate consideration in the next section.
3. From a.d. 51-54. Second missionary journey. After the council at Jerusalem and the temporary adjustment of the difference between the Jewish and Gentile branches of the church, Paul undertook, in the year 51, a second great journey, which decided the Christianization of Greece. He took Silas for his companion. Having first visited his old churches, he proceeded, with the help of Silas and the young convert, Timothy, to establish new ones through the provinces of Phrygia and Galatia, where, notwithstanding his bodily infirmity, he was received with open arms like an angel of God.
From Troas, a few miles south of the Homeric Troy and the entrance to the Hellespont, he crossed over to Greece in answer to the Macedonian cry: "Come over and help us!" He preached the gospel with great success, first in Philippi, where he converted the purple dealer, Lydia, and the jailor, and was imprisoned with Silas, but miraculously delivered and honorably released; then in Thessalonica, where he was persecuted by the Jews, but left a flourishing church; in Beraea, where the converts showed exemplary zeal in searching the Scriptures. In Athens, the metropolis of classical literature, he reasoned with Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, and unveiled to them on Mars' Hill (Areopagus), with consummate tact and wisdom, though without much immediate success, the "unknown God," to whom the Athenians, in their superstitious anxiety to do justice to all possible divinities, had unconsciously erected an altar, and Jesus Christ, through whom God will judge the world in righteousness. [416] In Corinth, the commercial bridge between the East and the West, a flourishing centre of wealth and culture, but also a sink of vice and corruption, the apostle spent eighteen months, and under almost insurmountable difficulties he built up a church, which exhibited all the virtues and all the faults of the Grecian character under the influence of the gospel, and which he honored with two of his most important Epistles. [417]
In the spring of 54 he returned by way of Ephesus, Caesarea, and Jerusalem to Antioch.
During this period he composed the two Epistles to the Thessalonians, which are the earliest of his literary remains excepting his missionary addresses preserved in the Acts.
4. a.d. 54-58. Third missionary tour. Towards the close of the year 54 Paul went to Ephesus, and in this renowned capital of proconsular Asia and of the worship of Diana, he fixed for three years the centre of his missionary work. He then revisited his churches in Macedonia and Achaia, and remained three months more in Corinth and the vicinity.
During this period he wrote the great doctrinal Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, which mark the height of his activity and usefulness.
5. a.d. 58-63. The period of his two imprisonments, with the intervening winter voyage from Caesarea to Rome. In the spring of 58 he journeyed, for the fifth and last time, to Jerusalem, by way of Philippi, Troas, Miletus (where he delivered his affecting valedictory to the Ephesian presbyter-bishops), Tyre, and Caesarea, to carry again to the poor brethren in Judaea a contribution from the Christians of Greece, and by this token of gratitude and love to cement the two branches of the apostolic church more firmly together.
But some fanatical Jews, who bitterly bated him as an apostate and a seducer of the people, raised an uproar against him at Pentecost; charged him with profaning the temple, because he had taken into it an uncircumcised Greek, Trophimus; dragged him out of the sanctuary, lest they should defile it with blood, and would undoubtedly have killed him had not Claudius Lysias, the Roman tribune, who lived near by, come promptly with his soldiers to the spot. This officer rescued Paul, out of respect for his Roman citizenship, from the fury of the mob, set him the next day before the Sanhedrin, and after a tumultuous and fruitless session of the council, and the discovery of a plot against his life, sent him, with a strong military guard and a certificate of innocence, to the procurator Felix in Caesarea.
Here the apostle was confined two whole years (58-60), awaiting his trial before the Sanhedrin, uncondemned, occasionally speaking before Felix, apparently treated with comparative mildness, visited by the Christians, and in some way not known to us promoting the kingdom of God. [418]
After the accession of the new and better procurator, Festus, who is known to have succeeded Felix in the year 60, Paul, as a Roman citizen, appealed to the tribunal of Caesar and thus opened the way to the fulfilment of his long-cherished desire to preach the Saviour of the world in the metropolis of the world. Having once more testified his innocence, and spoken for Christ in a masterly defence before Festus, King Herod Agrippa II. (the last of the Herods), his sister Bernice, and the most distinguished men of Caesarea, he was sent in the autumn of the year 60 to the emperor. He had a stormy voyage and suffered shipwreck, which detained him over winter at Malta. The voyage is described with singular minuteness and nautical accuracy by Luke as an eye-witness. In the month of March of the year 61, the apostle, with a few faithful companions, reached Rome, a prisoner of Christ, and yet freer and mightier than the emperor on the throne. It was the seventh year of Nero's reign, when he had already shown his infamous character by the murder of Agrippina, his mother, in the previous year, and other acts of cruelty.