Paul and the Gentiles

Saul of Tarsus

No one did more to turn the Jesus movement outward than Paul of Tarsus. Yet he began as its enemy. Born Saul in Tarsus, a Greek-speaking city in what is now southern Turkey, he was a Jew of the diaspora who also held Roman citizenship, a valuable privilege. He was educated as a Pharisee, perhaps in Jerusalem, and was zealous for the law. When the followers of Jesus began claiming that a crucified man was the Messiah, Saul saw it as blasphemy. The law itself said that anyone hanged on a tree was cursed. He approved the stoning of Stephen and hunted down believers.

The road to Damascus

Around AD 34, on his way to arrest Christians in Damascus, Saul had an experience that turned his life around. Acts describes a blinding light and a voice: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Paul himself, in his letters, simply says that God "was pleased to reveal his Son to me." He saw the risen Jesus and was called to take the message to the Gentiles.

The word "conversion" can mislead here. Paul did not think he was leaving Judaism for a new religion. He believed the God of Israel had done what he had promised, through Jesus the Messiah. What changed was his understanding of what God required. If God had raised the cursed, crucified Jesus, then the law was not the way to be right with God. Something new had happened.

After his conversion Paul spent some years in Arabia and Damascus. He visited Peter in Jerusalem, then worked from Tarsus and later Antioch, where Barnabas recruited him to help lead the mixed Jewish-Gentile church.

The journeys

From Antioch, Paul set out on the travels that made him the model of the Christian missionary. Acts describes three main journeys, followed by a final voyage to Rome as a prisoner. His strategy was shrewd. He went to major cities on trade routes, often starting in the local synagogue, where Jews and Gentile "God-fearers" gathered. When he was thrown out, as often happened, he moved to a private home or rented hall. He supported himself by tent-making, so that no one could accuse him of preaching for money. He stayed long enough to found a community, appointed leaders, then moved on, keeping in touch by letters and messengers.

Paul's journeys

His journeys were dangerous. He listed his sufferings: beaten with rods three times, stoned once, shipwrecked three times, "in danger from rivers, danger from bandits." He was jailed in Philippi and run out of Thessalonica. In Ephesus, silversmiths who made images of the goddess Artemis started a riot because his preaching was hurting their business. On his second journey he crossed from Asia into Macedonia (northern Greece), the moment Christianity first entered Europe.

He did not work alone. His letters mention dozens of co-workers, among them Barnabas, Silas, Timothy and Titus. There were women too: Lydia, a businesswoman in Philippi, and Priscilla (Prisca) and her husband Aquila, tent-makers who taught the brilliant preacher Apollos. Phoebe, a deacon who carried his letter to Rome, and Junia, whom he called "prominent among the apostles," also appear.

The great question: must Gentiles become Jews?

As Gentiles joined, a crisis came. Some Jewish Christians from Judea insisted that Gentile believers must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, including the food laws and the Sabbath. After all, they argued, Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. To belong to his people, you had to join Israel.

Paul passionately disagreed. He argued:

• People are made right with God (the technical word is "justified") by trusting in Christ, not by performing "works of the law."
• Abraham himself was declared righteous by faith, before he was circumcised.
• In Christ, the dividing walls between peoples come down: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).
• Gentiles could be fully part of God's people as Gentiles, without becoming Jews.

The quarrel got personal. In Antioch, Peter had been eating with Gentile believers. When visitors from James arrived, he withdrew, and even Barnabas followed him. Paul publicly confronted Peter for hypocrisy, an incident he describes, still angry, in his letter to the Galatians.

The Council of Jerusalem

Around AD 49, leaders met in Jerusalem to settle the matter. Acts 15 describes the gathering often called the Council of Jerusalem, sometimes counted as the church's first council. Peter spoke of how God had given the Spirit to Gentiles. Paul and Barnabas reported on their mission. Then James, as leader of the Jerusalem church, gave the decision. Gentile believers would not be required to be circumcised. They were asked only to avoid a few practices especially offensive to Jews, such as eating food sacrificed to idols and sexual immorality.

It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this decision. If it had gone the other way, Christianity might have remained a small sect within Judaism. Instead, the door was opened for it to become a faith for every nation. As Shelley puts it, the gospel was freed to cross cultural boundaries [check]. That ability to "translate" itself into new cultures has been a mark of Christianity ever since.

Paul's letters and ideas

Paul kept in touch with his churches by letter. Thirteen letters in the New Testament bear his name. Scholars agree that at least seven are genuinely his (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon) and debate the others. Written between about AD 50 and 60, they are the oldest Christian documents we have, older than any of the Gospels.

The letters were written to deal with real problems: divisions, sexual scandals, disputes about meat offered to idols, disorderly worship, grief over believers who had died before Jesus returned. But in addressing them Paul set out ideas that shaped all later Christian thought:

• Grace and faith: salvation is God's free gift (grace), received by trust (faith), not earned. Fifteen centuries later these ideas inspired Martin Luther.
• The cross: Christ's death was not a defeat but the means by which God dealt with sin and reconciled the world to himself.
• "In Christ": believers are united with Christ, sharing his death and new life. Baptism enacts this.
• The church as a body: each member has different gifts, all needed, under Christ the head.
• Love: his hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13 ("Love is patient, love is kind...") is among the most-read passages in literature.

Arrest and death

Around AD 57 Paul returned to Jerusalem with a collection of money from his Gentile churches for the poor believers there, a symbol of unity between Jewish and Gentile Christians. In the Temple he was attacked by a mob and taken into Roman custody. After two years in prison in Caesarea, he appealed, as a Roman citizen, to have his case heard by the emperor. Acts ends with him under house arrest in Rome, preaching "boldly and without hindrance."

What happened next is not recorded in the Bible. Early Christian tradition holds that Paul was beheaded in Rome (as a citizen, he was spared crucifixion) during Nero's persecution in the mid-60s. Peter is said to have been crucified there at about the same time. Their tombs became places of pilgrimage. Rome's claim to be the church of both Peter and Paul gave it unique prestige.