A figure who has inspired me with his work and teaching is Saul of Tarsus who became known as Paul the Apostle. We will consider the life, teaching and work of Paul.
PAUL: APOSTLE OF THE HEART SET FREE is the title of a great work on the life, work and thought of Paul by F.F. Bruce. Much of the organization of this material comes from this book.
A key text to understand Paul is 2 Cor. 3:17 "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." (NIV) This assertion is made by F.F. Bruce because of the early life of Paul as a teacher of the law and what he discovered in the freedom that comes in Christ.
So we look to some autobiographical texts which will shed some light for us in Paul's life: Gal 1.11-24, 2 Cor. 11.16-12.9, Acts 22:3-21, Acts 26:2-23. From these texts and studying the history of the time of his life, we can understand the man and then better understand his writing.
EARLY LIFE
Paul was born with the Hebrew name Saul. It is asserted that he was about the same age as Jesus and was born in Tarsus, circa. (about) 3 AD. We know that his family was of the tribe of Benjamin but that he was a Roman citizen by birth. Some surmise that because of being from Tarsus that perhaps his grandfather was awarded citizenship because of service to the empire during a war that took place in that region. Of course the citizenship could have been purchased. Whatever the case, we know that Saul was born a citizen of the empire and that became important on several occasions. Tarsus was a cosmopolitan trading city on a crossroads ten miles from the Mediterranean Sea. It was a provincial capital during the Persian and Roman empires, it was also a place of learning. Saul would have not only been trained in Judaism but also in the Hellenism of the day. The influence of the Greeks would have been strong in Tarsus. We may understand that young Saul was well versed in Greek, the learning of philosophy, rhetoric and logic as well as in his native religion of Judaism. We also know that young Hebrew men were also taught a trade and Saul's was the making of tents.
TRAINING IN JUDAISM
We know that young Saul was a student of Gamaliel in Jerusalem. We know that because of this he was a fairly strict Pharisee. We use our knowledge of the history and traditions of the time to extrapolate that Saul would have left Tarsus at about thirteen or fourteen years of age and gone to study. Gamaliel was a fairly well known teacher of the school of Hillel (his grandfather) and was well thought of among the members of the Sanhedrin. Thus, young Saul was well placed among the powers that were in charge during the time of Jesus. For all this to have happened, we may further surmise that his family was of some means to enable him to do so well.
We know from Paul's words and from the history of the time that he would have been a strict teacher of the law. As a Pharisee, he would have held to the many extra-biblical rules and regulations in place by the scribes and Pharisees of the day. Further, we know that he was associated with the Sanhedrin (the ruling council) because of his role in the stoning of and death of Stephen who was the first Christian martyr. Following this we see in Scripture that he became a feared, key persecutor of "The Way" (the earliest name for Christianity) until his conversion.
CONVERSION TO FOLLOWING JESUS
As a feared persecutor of 'The Way', Saul sought and received permission to carry his mission to Damascus where followers of Jesus were growing in number. After receiving this permission, Saul and the guard assigned to travel with him set off to Damascus. On the way there, God called on him. He was blinded, spoken to by Jesus himself and taken on to Damascus where God had prepared a greeting. He was touched by Ananias, and through this God healed him of his physical blindness to go with his newly forsaken spiritual blindness. After a brief time, Saul began to preach that Jesus is the Messiah in Damascus, the movement of the followers of Jesus was blessed by Saul.
NEW VOCATION: APOSTLE
An apostle is someone who is "called" to be a messenger. So this begs the question: How did Saul make such a change? I would propose that this took place because of what I refer to as the 'Arabia Theory'. In this theory, Saul would have taken key scrolls (perhaps Isaiah, Psalms, others?) into the desert to make sense of all he knew from his training to date in light of the direct revelation he received from Jesus on the Damascus road. Following this time of study and contemplation, according to the theory - three years or so, Saul now clearly understood how Jesus "fulfilled the law" and came as the promised Messiah, fulfilling a huge number of prophesies of the prophets. With this preparation, he was ready to begin to take the message of Jesus to the world.
Saul traveled to visit the leaders and was feared by the followers of Jesus. This was because of his previous activity as a man who represented the Sanhedrin and jailed and oversaw the killing of Jesus' followers. Someone needed to step up and help Saul find acceptance, this task fell to Barnabas who encouraged Saul and through that association Saul gained further acceptance by 'The Way'.
After a while, back home in Tarsus (according to some writers), the time had come to take the gospel (the good news about Jesus) to new places. Saul began his missionary journeys.
MISSIONARY JOURNEYS
The team on the first trip were Saul, Barnabas & John Mark. This trip originated in Antioch (which becomes the base of Paul's work) as the church there "sent" them out to take the message about Jesus to people who had not heard of him yet.
We see a clear pattern emerge in Paul's missionary endeavor that will be noticed in much of the missionary work on the trips. We see that Saul went first to the community of the Synagogue first (the gospel went first to the Jews). He appealed to their knowledge of the Old Testament and their (supposed) looking for the coming of the Messiah. On the occasions when he was not welcomed in the synagogue, Paul would go to house of someone who was interested. My take is that, after presenting the message about Jesus being the Messiah, Paul seemed to focus on the people who were willing to listen.
Two items that I want to glance at on the first journey (there is a ton more, but we are not writing a detailed biography here). First is the incident with John Mark. We really do not know why he did it, but John Mark bailed on the trip. Maybe he missed the people back in Jerusalem, maybe the pace was too rigorous, maybe he couldn't deal with Paul's travel rules, or maybe it was culture shock... but whatever the reason, John Mark left. Paul was not happy about this. We know that for sure and will see more when we get to the beginning of the 2nd journey. But there is a point that I want to make here that is really important for us to understand. Even if it takes time, we need to be reconciled to people. It apparently took Paul and John Mark awhile to get their relationship mended, but they did. Look at what Paul says to Timothy when writing later in life. Not only had Paul mended the relationship with John mark, but he asked for him to join him in ministry. We should not be grudge holders. And if we are especially hard headed, we can learn from a guy who was pretty hard headed that we need to "get right with people."
The second thing that I want to point out about the first trip is that Paul was stoned and left for dead. So, was he dead? The question is, like the above point about John Mark, a minor point. But there is an interesting section of the autobiographical text of Paul which would fit here. Did God call Paul out of time and space for a brief moment to further His calling on Paul's life? Perhaps.
The next point that I would like make about the missionary endeavors is the fact that Paul always brought the message of God to his listeners in a manner that was culturally informed. To Jews, he usually spoke using the following components in his talk: The Gospel (death-burial-resurrection of Jesus), quoted Scripture, and used the history of the Jews to show that Jesus is the Messiah (Christ). There are a couple of other points that should be made about the trips, they included signs and wonders, conversions, and threats against Paul (often by Jews).
As mentioned above, the Apostle was careful to speak to people within their cultural understanding. Today this is called "contextualization." Finally, from the first trip, we note that Paul returned to places where he has visited previously and worked to encourage the churches he helped start. Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch and then after a visit to Jerusalem they sought to embark on their second journey.
The second missionary journey was a trip that began with Paul and Barnabas having a disagreement over the status of John Mark. The solution to this disagreement was that Barnabas decided to travel with John Mark and return to Cyprus while Paul was joined by Silas and traveled over land to revisit the cities in southern Asia Minor that were visited on the first trip. Following the visit to these cities in Southern Galatia, Paul headed north toward the Black Sea. But the Holy Spirit directed Paul to turn west after which he wound up on the northwestern coast of what is now Turkey. Like southern Asia Minor, this region had several large cities, many of which have existing ruins today. By the time Paul arrived, he would have been visiting cities that had strong Hellenistic influences while being firmly Roman. Before we go much further into the Roman Empire, I want us to consider some works of the New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright.
"When Paul was converted, the Roman empire as such was two generations old. The ancient and venerable Roman Republic had collapsed into civil war following the murder of Julius Caesar. Several years of bloody and divisive conflict had eventually led to the emergence of Octavian, Caesars' adopted heir, who took the title August and reigned supreme over Rome and its burgeoning empire for the last two decades BC and he first fourteen years AD. His adopted heir Tiberius carried on and consolidated his work, being followed by the disastrous Gaius Caligula and the shrewd but weak Claudius. Claudius' death in AD 54 left the way clear for Nero, who came to the throne in a blaze of optimism as a bright new hope, and left it, mourned by some, loathed by many, in 68, precipitating the so-called ' year of the four emperors', a few brief months of total chaos ended by Vespasian establishing a new dynasty. During this period the empire stretched right around the Mediterranean world and some distance into much of the hinterland. Having seen off its main rival, Carthage, some centuries before, Rome sat in luxury at the middle of a web of power, influence and money." (Paul, p. 62-3) This was the Roman Empire that Paul traveled in.
When Paul arrived in Troas on the west coast of today's Turkey, God spoke to him in a vision. In a dream, Paul saw a man from Macedonia (the home of Alexander the Great) calling to him "Come over here." Paul was headed for Europe. But in Troas, something else happened, Paul and Silas were joined by Luke, who would be a part of Paul's team off-and-on for the remainder of Paul's travels. The text in question is the first of what are called "we" passages (texts where the writer includes himself in the group he writes about).
After arriving in what is today northeastern Greece, Paul's work in Philippi, Berea, and Thessalonica was followed by his visit to the heart of Greek democracy: Athens. As Paul made his way through the city, he could not help but see the multitude of statues that were all over the city. He was of course talking with Jews at the Synagogue and these discussions spilled over to the marketplace where Epicurean and Stoic philosophers apparently heard him. Paul found himself in the Areopagus on Mars Hill where his discourse with the philosophers included his quoting of Greek poets (probably Epimenides and Aratus). As usual, some listened, some heard, some laughed and a few wanted to hear more.
At this point we need to compare Paul's talk with the philosophers with the conversations he had with the Jews. With the Jews, Paul used the history of the Jews as a contextual basis for conversation. In Athens, Paul connected with the philosophers by referring to the statue to 'an unknown god' and connects previous knowledge to new knowledge, that of the God of Heaven who sent His Son. Paul describes God as greater than temples and not served by human hands and that this god made men and their destinies and sustained them, here probably quoting Epimenides. Again: culture, quote and then gospel, this is how Paul puts the gospel into their context.
Paul then traveled to Corinth and began what would be a long working relationship with a Jewish couple: Priscilla and Aquilla. They were 'tentmakers'[1] who had fled Rome when Claudius expelled Jews from Rome in 49. Following a confrontation with the government in Corinth, Paul ended the second mission trip in Ephesus, where he left Priscilla and Aquilla and then returned to Caesarea by sea and then back to Antioch.
Soon afterward, Paul set out on the third journey through Galatia and Phrygia and arrived in Ephesus. According to the text, Paul spent more time in Ephesus than any other place, two years. Ephesus was an important city in that day. In the 6th century B.C. the temple to Artemis had been founded. Artemis (Diana) had devotes from many places and pilgrimages were made to Ephesus. There, merchants earned income from selling small images, they set up stalls to sell these statues. During the time of the growth of the followers of Jesus, the gospel changed lives and the sales of idols fell. The guild of artisan's complaints grew into a riotous protest in the amphitheater and the riotous meeting was ended because it was unlawful. At the urging of his colleagues, Paul left Ephesus after the riot and traveled back through Macedonia and Greece.
Next, from a comparison of Acts and the Pauline letters we know that he spent three months in Corinth (where there had been trouble with the government on the second journey). Here, in Corinth, Paul was yet again in danger of his life, this time, once again, by Jews. The year was either 56 or 57 and it is at this time that Paul writes a letter to the church in Rome. Those who have studied Paul carefully believe that at this point in his life, once again under threat, he wanted to send a letter of explanation and an exhortation to the church in Rome. He wanted to encourage them to follow God and take the gospel forth to new areas of the empire, specifically, Paul mentions Spain.
Before the letter was dispatched, a copy may have been made. Some evidence from ancient MSS exists that Paul may have had an immediate copy of the letter and addressed it to the Ephesians with an additional preface. The letter made its way to Rome in the capable hands of Phoebe, a deaconess. Rome [2] was the center of the empire and Paul knew the importance of getting a clear explanation of salvation to Rome.
Paul next makes his way to see the Ephesian elders. He lands on a beach within easy travel of Ephesus and at a meeting with the elders, Paul gives his testimony, experience and encouragement. Paul then traveled by sea and eventually to Jerusalem where he was accused by Jews of breaking the Mosaic Law and held by the Romans. He used the occasion of his trail to tell Felix, Festus and King Agrippa of the person and work of the Lord Jesus. He then appealed to Caesar. He was sent with a guard to Rome, eventually he was held under house arrest awaiting trail, released, possibly traveled to Spain, back to Macedonia, re-arrested and finally executed in Rome. Paul, it seems to me, lived and breathed to spread the gospel. The letter we read to the church in Rome explains that gospel and the life the follower of the God of the gospel should live.
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[1] Today, 'tentmakers' work in countries which do not allow missionaries or in countries in which the culture is better served when the missionary is not a full time Christian. It is better in these cultures to have a platform upon which to stand to live and share the gospel. To have a real job and be part of the culture makes it easier to enter the culture and be connected to people's lives. Paul did this with Aquila and Priscilla by making tents in Corinth and Ephesus. 'Tentmakers' take the term from Paul.
[2] ROME
some facts and ideas about the city and the church
circa. 30AD, The Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:10-11), Roman "Jews and converts to Judaism" hear and respond to the gospel. They take this message back to Rome. From this we may conclude that the Gospel entered Rome very early in the history of the church.
49 AD Claudius orders all Jews to leave Rome
56-7 AD Paul writes to the Romans from Corinth
60 AD (WINTER) Paul arrives in Rome (under house arrest) later released (circa. 62), possibly (according to some tradition) travels to Spain and then travels back to Macedonia.
64 AD Rome burns, Nero blames Christians
circa. 65 AD Paul rearrested and brought to Rome, tried and executed (3 springs legend)
circa. 90s Paul's letters collected, copied and distributed by last decade of the first century