Paul Vs. James - An 8-Day Study On Faith & Works By Chris BrunoSample

 

DAY FIVE

After he was baptized in Damascus, Paul traveled to Arabia and then again to Damascus (Gal. 1:17).  When he returned  to Damascus, there was a plot to kill him, but he escaped in a basket let down outside city walls (Acts 9:23–25). Neither Acts nor Paul’s letters tell us what he was doing in Arabia, but we have a clue in one of his later letters. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul says that he escaped from Damascus because King Aretas was trying to arrest him (2 Cor. 11:32). We know from other sources that King Aretas was the king of the Nabatean kingdom in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Do you see how these pieces might fit together? The king from northern Arabia was trying to arrest Paul after he returned from a season in Arabia. Based on what we know about the rest of his life, what was Paul typically arrested for doing?

Most likely, from the early days of his Christian life, Paul was proclaiming the gospel—in Damascus, in Arabia  (Nabataea), and everywhere else he went. Because of this, the Jews and the Nabateans colluded to arrest him, but he slipped through their fingers and went back to Jerusalem.

Paul’s visit to Jerusalem was about three years after his conversion, and it was his first time back to the city since he   had left to go drag Christians back from Damascus (Gal. 1:18). Unsurprisingly, the Christians in Jerusalem were a little skeptical of Paul. After all, this is the guy who “persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it” (Gal. 1:13). However, the apostles trusted Barnabas, and he intervened to vouch for Paul. After Barnabas saved the day, Paul stayed with Peter for about fourteen days and, as we saw earlier, met James for the first time (Gal. 1:18–19). From there, the church in Jerusalem sent him back to Tarsus, possibly because the Jewish leaders who still opposed the Christians had caught wind that the traitor Paul was back in the city. We don’t know much about Paul’s life from his return to Tarsus around AD 37 until the beginning of his first “missionary journey” around AD 46. He was near his family, supporting himself with his leather-working, living a faithful Christian life, and certainly proclaiming the good news to everyone around him.

Mission to the West

We’ll be somewhat brief in our flyover of the rest of Paul’s life, because there has been a lot written about Paul’s missionary journeys and ministry. Also, I’m afraid if we go too far down that particular rabbit hole, we may not find the way back out again. We’ll have to leave out various details, but I want to remind us  of a basic overview of the rest of Paul’s life. He suffered in many ways through his life. He was persecuted and shipwrecked and stoned (2 Cor. 11:23–27). He had a lifelong disability of some sort  that  God  used  to  make  him  more  dependent  on  Him  (2 Cor. 12:7–10). In the midst of all these trials, Paul continued to faithfully labor for the sake of the gospel.

After Paul had been in Tarsus for almost a decade, his friend Barnabas traveled there to bring him back to Antioch, where he quickly became a teacher in the church (Acts 13:1). From there, the Holy Spirit sent Paul and Barnabas on a mission to Cyprus and southeastern Asia Minor. And the rest, as they say, is history. Over the next two decades, Paul traveled through much of the Mediterranean world, proclaiming the gospel to Jews and Gentiles alike, establishing churches, and ordaining elders to lead those churches.

As he preached the gospel among the Gentiles, the church began to wrestle with how these Gentile converts should relate to the mostly Jewish church. Before his conversion, Paul had devoted his life to keeping Israel distinct from the Gentiles. Many Jews continued to hold tightly to these distinctions, including some Jewish Christians. But there was a problem. As Gentiles believed and were baptized, they received the Holy Spirit without being circumcised and becoming full citizens of Israel.

In the Old Testament, any Gentile convert who wanted to become part of the people of God had to be circumcised and keep the Law (Ex. 12:48–49). In the new-covenant people of God, things were different. Gentiles were receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, which had been promised as part of Israel’s restoration. Both saw that God was saving Gentiles as Gentiles, without them having to become part of Israel. The gospel was going to the nations!