Acts 13 and 14: the Life of Paul, Receiving His fullness, Grace upon Grace.

“And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul before stoning Stephen . . .  And Saul approved of Stephen’s execution.” That is how Luke introduces us to Paul.

Next, he is ravaging the church, and entering house after house, and dragging off men and women and committing them to prison—breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, like a mad beast. Actions Paul would later describe:

I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women . . .

I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities.

A man of violence.

Not soon after his conversion, the Jews in Damascus plotted to kill Paul. They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him, but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket. And when Paul next went to Jerusalem, the Hellenistic Jews there sought to kill him.  And the believers there had to bring him down to the port city of Caesarea and send him back home to Tarsus.

The hunter had very quickly become the hunted or so it seems—ironically not by those whom he had persecuted but by his most ardent patrons and admirers. Despite his new enemies, Paul didn’t act like he was being hunted, at all.

Let’s look at Acts 13 and 14.

The Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city, stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district in Antioch in Pisidia (see Acts 13). They went to Iconium, but a conspiracy was formed to mistreat Paul and Barnabas stone them. When learned of it, they did flee to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country, and there they continued to preach the gospel. See Acts 14.

But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium to find Paul in Lystra. Having persuaded the crowds gathered there, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.  But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe. 

When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. See Acts 14 again.

Let’s think about this. In Acts 13 and 14, Paul is under threat generally, then under threat specifically, and then stoned to death. But Paul keeps bringing the Good News with power. It raises the question “who is hunting whom” doesn’t it?

This is a good story. The tables were seemingly turned on Paul on the road to Damascus by the Lord; but we see in Acts 13 and 14 that Paul retained his zeal. God didn’t take it from him. Rather, God re-directed it—invested it with a truer purpose, and grounded it in a surer foundation. That’s lovely. There’s real hope in here for us today, not just hope stored up for us in heaven, but a promise of fulfilled living and purpose in the here-and-now.

I am reminded of resurrected Jesus telling his disciples to cast their nets on the other side:

So He called out to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” “No,” they answered.  He told them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it there, and they were unable to haul it in because of the great number of fish. Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!”  See John 21:6-7.

Paul had previously, with fear and rage, cast a great dragnet for men and women of the Way. Now, at the feet of the Risen Lord, he has learned to be a fisher of men. His former determination now governed by faith in Christ Jesus and the love he has for all God’s people. A beautiful transformation, and a more profound expression of a man’s temper, tested by a more capable Master Craftsman, than Paul had ever imagined.

Here, in Paul’s example, we see that God does not want to rob us of our humanity. Submission is not the abolition of our humanity; as we witness Paul’s obedience to the faith from Antioch in Pisidia to Iconium to Lystra to Derbe and back again, we must realize that our submission will likewise elevate our individual humanity to a more complete expression of God’s purposes for us in Christ Jesus.