Acts 15

1. Paul parts company with Barnabas and takes Silas as his colleague (15:36-41)

The story of the disagreement between Paul and Barnabas does not make pleasant reading. But Luke's realism in recording it helps us remember the two men, as they themselves said to the people of Lystra, were "human beings with feelings like" any other. Luke does not relate the dispute to put Paul in the right and Barnabas in the wrong. In view of Luke's restraint, it is idle to try to apportion blame.

When Paul proposed to Barnabas they should revisit churches planted during their tour of Cyprus and central Anatolia, Barnabas agreed, and suggested they take Mark along as they had done on the former occasion. But Paul, believing Mark's departure from Perga during their journey was unjustified, and probably reckoning it revealed some defect of character which made him unsuitable for such work, refused to take him again.

It would have been unwise for Mark to join another missionary expedition of which Paul was one of the leaders. On the other hand, Barnabas probably discerned promising qualities in his cousin which could be developed under his care rather than under Paul's. It did Mark good to spend more time in the company of such a "son of encouragement"; in the event his latent qualities reached full maturity and were appreciated in due course by Paul himself (Col. 4:10; Philem. 23: 2 Tim. 4:11)

It's a pity the dispute was allowed to generate such bitterness. It might have been done so but the memory of the incident at Antioch when "even Barnabas," as Paul says, followed Peter's example in withdrawing from the society of Gentile Christians. After that, it's doubtful if Paul and Barnabas could be as happy in their association as they had once been. The old mutal confidence had been damaged and could not be restored: "never glad confident morning again."

It's not Luke's policy to record such disagreements on points of principle, but the disagreement on a personal matter which he does record here can be read with greater understanding in the light of Paul's account to the Galatians. Even so, the present issue was overruled  for good. Instead of one missionary and pastoral expedition there were two. Barnabas took Mark and went back to Cyprus to continue evangelizing his native land; Paul visited the young churches of Anatolia.

Paul now had to find a new travel companion. He had an opportunity, during the recent visit to Antioch of Judas and Silas, to assess Silas, and found him to be a kindred spirit. Luke intends his readers to identify the Silas whom Paul chose as his companion with the Silas who, with Judas Barsabbas, had carried the apostolic letter from Jerusalem to Antioch, and there is no good reason to question the identification. Not only did he commend himself to Paul as a congenial colleague; it would be advantageous to have a leading member of the Jerusalem church as his companion. 

It appears from the story of their adventures in Philippi that Silas, like Paul himself, was Roman citizen (16:37-38); Paul would be spared the embarrassment of claiming for himself civic privileges or exemptions which his colleague could not share. Commended afresh to the divine grace by the Antiochene church, as on the earlier occasion when he set out with Barnabas (13:3), Paul went with Silas through the cities of Syria and Cilicia, encouraging believers and restrengtheningthe churches.

 

Acts 16

2. Paul and Silas in south Galatia and Timothy joins them (16:1-4)

Having passed through Cilicia, Paul and Silas crossed the Taurus range by the pass called the Cilician Gates, and after traversing part of the territory of Antiochus IV, king of Commagene, they entered the southeastern region of the province of Galatia. There they visited the cities which had been evangelized by Paul and Barnabas two or three years previously -- Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, and (probably) Pisidian Antioch.

At Lystra . . . Paul decided to take along as his personal companion a young man named Timothy who with his mother had come to faith in Christ during the previous missionary visit and who had since then made promising progress in the Christian life. That the brothers in Lystra and Iconium should have known him better than those in Lystra and Derbe is quite natural: Lystra was much nearer to Iconium than to Derbe, although Lystra and Derbe were Lycaonian cities and Iconium was in Phrygia.

The statement that Timothy's mother (Eunice by name, according to 2 Tim. 1:5) had married a Gentile suggests that there was less rigid social segregation among the Jews of central Asia Minor than among those of Palestine. In Phrygia, says Ramsay, "there can be little doubt that the Jews married into the dominant families"; and the same may well have been true in Lycaonia.

It was Timothy's mixed parentage that made Paul decide to circumcise him before taking him along as his junior colleague. By Jewish law Timothy was a Jew, because he was the son of a Jewish mother, but because he was uncircumcised he was technically an apostate Jew. If Paul wished to maintain his links with the synagogue, he could not be seen to countenance apostasy. He set his face implacably against any move to circumcise Gentile believers like Titus (Gal. 2:3-5), but Timothy was in a different situation. 

For Paul, circumcision in itself was a matter of indifference (Gal. 5:6; 6:15); only when it was regarded as a condition of acceptance with God did it involve a lapse from grace and the obligation to keep the whole law of Moses (Gal. 5:3-4).  Timothy's circumcision was a minor surgical operation carried out for a practical purpose -- his greater usefulness in the ministry of the gospel.

Those who deplore the absence of this consistency from Paul miss the higher consistency which aimed at bringing all the activities of his life and thought "into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5) and at subordinating every other interest to the paramount interests of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:23).

There are indications in the Pastoral Epistles that the leaders of Timothy's home church associated themselves with Paul in commissioning him for the gospel ministry.

4. Since Acts 15:40 the successive verbs have been in the singular number, with Paul as subject. Now the plural is used: "they handed over the decrees." This was Silas' duty, not Paul's. The decrees indeed had been addressed expressly to the Gentile believers in Antioch and of Syria and Cilicia, not of South Galatia; since, however, the cities now being visited had been evangelized from Antioch, it might have been argued that they were included by implication.

But if the churches in these cities were those to which Paul's letter to the Galatians had only recently been sent, how would they have reacted to the delivery of directives from Jerusalem by Paul's fellow traveler? Paul himsel, as we have seen, never invokes the Jerusalem "decrees" when he deals with the practices which they forbid. There are reasons for doubting if this verse is part of the original text of Acts.

The churches grow in faith and numbers (Acts 16:5)

A crucial phase of Luke's narrative is now concluded with the third of six brief reports of progress. The scene of action sifts to the Aegean world. 

1. The call from Macedonia (16:6-10)

(Verse 6) Paul's missionary journeys display an extraordinary combination of strategic planning and keen sensitiveness to the guidance of the Spirit of God, however that guidance was conveyed -- by prophetic utterance, inward prompting, or the overruling of external circumstances. On this occasion his intention had probably been, after visiting the churches planted in South Galatia by Barnabas and himself, to continue along the westward road to Ephesus.

But the Spirit forbade him and his associates to take this road. The prohibition was evidently given before they passed through the "Phrygian and Galatian region" . . . . it perhaps took the form of a prophetic utterance in the church at Lystra. The Spirit, we may observe, gave them ample warning to change their plans. 

(Verses 7-8)  If the province of Asia was not to be the field of their immediate evangelistic activity, then it was natural for them to cast their eyes farther north, and think of the highly civilized province of Bithynia in northwest Asia Minor, with its Greek cities (of which Nicomedia and Nicaea were the most important) and Jewish settlements. So, instead of continuing west to Ephesus, they turned north (probably from Pisidian Antioch), crossed the Sultan Dag range, and arrived at Philomelium (modern Aksehir). From there they struck northwest, taking one of two possible routes leading through Asian Phrygia.

We could plot the remainder of their journey more certainly if we knew where they received the second divine moniton, warning them away from Bithynia. If "over against Mysia" or "opposite Mysia" means, as Ramsay put it, "when they had reached such a point that a line drawn across the country at right angles to the general line of their route would touch Mysia," then they would have arrived at one or the other of the road-junctions of Dorylaeum (modern Eskisehir) or (more probably) Cotiaeum (modern Kutahya), and instead of continuing north into Bithynia turned west until they reached the sea at Troas. 

In saying that this second prohibition was imposed by "the Spirit of Jesus," does Luke suggest some significance in the change of terminology? It was the same Spirit who forbade them to "speak the word in Asia," but the fact that on this occasion he is called "the Spirit of Jesus" may indicate that his guidance was now given through a prophecy uttered expressly in the name of Jesus. Paul and Silas were both prophets, and available for use by the Spirit or by the exalted Lord for the declaration of his will.

(Verse 9) Troas -- Alexandria Troas was founded at the end of the fourth century B.C. and remained a free city until Augustus gave it the status of a Roman colony. It was a regular port of call for vessels journeying between proconsular Asia and Macedonia (cf. 20:5) and was an important center in the Roman system of communications. Traces of its harbor and other buildings may still be seen at Dalyan.

At Troas, then, the series of divine prohibitions gave way to a positive direction. The direction this time took the form of a night vision seen by Paul. In this vision a man of Macedonia stood appealing to Paul to cross over to Macedonia and help the people there. Macedonia, which became the dominant power in the Greek world and Western Asia under Philip II and Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C., had been a Roman province since 146 B.C. It is needless to ask how Paul recognized the man to be a Macedonian: his request, "Come over into Macedonia and help us," indicated his nationality clearly enough.

(Verse 10) At this point the narrator [Luke] shows unobtrusively that he himself now joined the missionary party as a fourth member, by continuing the story in the first person plural instead of the third. In the prologue to the Third Gospel (which was designed as the prologue to the whole of Luke-Acts), he claims to have kept in touch with the events related "for some time back" . . . . Here, then, the first of the "we" sections of Acts begins. No other explanation of them is so probable as that the "we" which characterizes them includes the "I" of the prologues of Luke and Acts.

A writer incorporating into his narrative the diary of some personal witness other than himself would scarcely have done so in such an artless way. If the narrator was Luke the physician of Col. 4:14, we may wonder if he was practicing his profession in Troas at the time, or waiting to be signed on as a ship's doctor; but we have no means of knowing. At any rate, he accompanied Paul, Silas, and Timothy to Macedonia, having taken part in the joint decision to go there in response to Paul's vision.

If Paul's original plan had been to evangelize the eastern shore of the Aegean by planting Christianity in Ephesus, "that great metropolis in which the East looked out upon the West," then the plan was only postponed, not jettisoned altogether. But first he was directed to the western shore of the Aegean, to plant the faith in Philippi, Thessalonica, Beroea, and Corinth before he settled in Ephesus.

Strategic points on the circumference of the circle of which Ephesus was the center were to be evangelized first -- in Macedonia and Achaia as well as in South Galatia -- and then he was to complete his work in that whole area by nearly three years' ministry at the center. The Spirit's interventions did not frustrate Paul's strategy, but enhanced its effectiveness.

2. Troas to Philippi (16:11-12a)

(Verse 11) The wind was favorable for the voyage across the North Aegean, and they finished it in two days. (The reverse journey took five days). On the evening of the first day they reached Samothrace, a mountainous island rising to 5,000 feet, which forms a conspicuous landmark. In religious history the chief importance of Samothrace lies in its being the seat of a widely patronized mystery cult, the worship of the Cabiri, which had been practiced there form time immemorial.

Paul and his friends did not linger there, however; the next day their ship took them to Neapolis, on the mainland. Neapolis, the modern Kavalla, was the port of Philippi, which lay some ten miles inland. At Neapolis the great Egnatian Way, a Roman road linking the Adriatic with the Aegean, reached its eastern terminus. Luke likes to note the ports of arrival and departure, and in the "we" sections he is specially careful to note the daily progress made during voyages.

(Verse 12a) Disembarking at Neapolis, the missionaries went on to Philippi along the Egnation Way. This city received its name from Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, who seized the gold mines in the vicinity and fortified what had formerly been the Thasian settlement of Crenides. . . . Luke describes Philippi as a city of the first district of Macedonia -- that is, the first of the four districts into which the former kingdom was divided by the Romans. While he refers to several other cities which are known to have been Roman colonies at the time, Philippi is the only one which he expressly calls a Roman colony . . . .

3. The faith of Lydia (16:12b-15)

Verse 12b-13) At Philippi, then, they spent several days. When Paul visited a new city, it was his practice, as we have seen, to attend the local Jewish synagogue on the first sabbath after his arrival and seek an opportunity to make his message known there. At Philippi, however, there does not appear to have been a regular synagogue. That can only mean that there were very few resident Jews; had there been ten Jewish men, they would have sufficed to constitute a synagogue. No number of women could compensate for the absence of even one man necessary to make up the quorum of ten. 

There was, however, a place outside the city where a number of women -- either of Jewish birth of Gentiles who worshiped the God of Israel -- met to go through the appointed Jewish service of prayer for the sabbath day, even if they could not constitute a valid synagogue congregation. Paul and his companions found this place, by the bank of the river Gangites, and sat down with the women and told them the story of Jesus.

(Verse 14-15)  One of these women, a God-fearing Gentile, came from Thyatira i the province of Asia. Her name Lydia, "the Lydian woman," reminds us that Thyatira lay in the territory of the ancient kingdom of Lydia. The people of that area were famed for their skill in the manufacture of purple dye, extracted from the juice of the madder root. This was still in use there for the dyeing of carpets at the end of the 19th century, before it was superseded by chemical dyes. Lydia had evidently come to Philippi as a trader in that dye. There is inscriptional evidence for the existence of a guild of purple merchants in Philippi. But she had possibly learned to worship the true God in her native Thyatira; there was probably a Jewish community there.

As Paul and his friends spoke, Lydia believed what they said and acknowledged Jesus as Lord. She thus became Paul's first convert in Europe. When she was baptized, together with her household (which would include her servants and other dependents as well as her family), she gave practical proof of her faith by pressing the four missionaries to become her guests.

Women in Macedonia were noted for their independence; moreover, under Roman law (which governed life in the colony) freeborn women with three children and freedwomen with four children were at this time granted a number of privileges, including the right to undertake legal transactions on their own initiative.

4. The Pythoness (16:16-18)

(Verse 16) Three specific individuals are singled out by Luke among those whose lives were influenced for good by the gospel at Philippi: they differ so much one from the other that might be thought to have selected them deliberately in order to show how the saving power of the name of Jesus was shown in the most diverse types of men and women.

The first is Lydia, the independent businesswoman of reputable character and God-fearing mind [already mentioned above] . . . . The second is a person of a very different stamp: an unfortunate demon-possessed slave girl, whose owners exploited her condition for their material gain. She is described by Luke as "having a pythonic spirit" or being a "pythoness" -- that is, a person inspired by Apollo, the Greek deity specially associated with the giving of oracles, who was worshiped as the "Pythian" god at the oracular shrine of Delphi in central Greece.

His priestess there was the Phythian prophet par excellence; the girl of whom Luke speaks was a very pale reflection of her. This girl's involuntary utterances were regarded as the voice of the god, and she was thus much in demand by people who wished to have their fortunes told or to receive information or advice which they believed could be supplied from such a source.

(Verse 17) The slave girl's deliverance demanded much more spectacular measures than Lydia's quiet turning in heart to the Lord. Day by day, as the missionaries went to the place of prayer, she followed them through the streets of Philippi, advertising them aloud as servants of God Most High, who were bringing the day of salvation to the city. The title "God Most High" provided Jews and Gentiles with a convenient common denominator for the supreme being, and "salvation" in a religious sense was as eagerly sought by Gentiles as by Jews.

(Verse 18) The missionaries, however, did not appreciate her unsolicited testimonials, aet at last Paul, vexed by her continual clamor, exorcised the spirit that possessed her, commanding it in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. The words had scarcely left his lips when she was released from its power. The superior authority which such spirits had recognized when Jesus himself himself commanded them to leave their victims was equally recognized when his name was invoked by one of his disciples, and proved as potent in exorcism as in other forms of healing.

5. Paul and Silas imprisoned (16:19-24)

(Verse 19) The good deed done to the slave girl was not at all to the liking of her owners; when Paul exorcised the spirit that possessed her, he exorcised their means of income: she could no longer tell fortunes . . . . The righteous indignation of the Philippian slave girl's owners was aroused at the missionaries' wanton attack on the sacred rights of property (as they saw it). Moreover, the men who had infringed these rights were not Roman citizens like themselves (or so they thought); they were not even Greeks, like the population around them, but wandering Jews, engaged in propagating some variety of their own perverse superstition.

They therefore dragged Paul and Silas before the magistrates and lodged a complaint against them. Luke and Timothy were apparently unmolested: Paul and Silas were not only the leaders of the party but also most obviously Jews (Luke was a Gentile and  Timothy a half-Gentile). Anti-Jewish sentiment lay very near the surface in pagan antiquity.

(Verse 20-21) As Philippi was a Roman colony, its municipal administration, like that of Rome itself, was in the hands of two collegiate magistrates. The collegiate magistrates of a Roman colony were commonly called duumvirs, but in some places they preferred the more dignified tile of praetors, and this is what the chief magistrates of Philippi were apparently called. Before the two praetors, then, Paul and Silas were dragged, and their accusers represented them as vagabond Jews who were causing disturbances in the city and inculcating customs which Roman citizens of all people could neither admit nor practice.

Proselytization of Roman citizens by Jews was not positively illegal, so far as the evidence indicates, but it certainly incurred strong disapproval. The magistrates were bound in any case to take cognizance of such religious activity as threatened to provide a breach of the peace or to encourage unlawful practices or organizations; and Paul and Silas were charged with precisely this kind of activity.

(Verse 22) There was great indignation that Roman citizens should be molested by strolling peddlers of an outlandish religion. Such people had to be taught to know their proper place and not trouble their betters. There was no serious investigation of the charge: Paul and Silas were summarily stripped and handed over to the lictors -- the magistrates' police attendants -- to be soundly beaten; the city jailer was then ordered to lock them up.

The lictors were the official attendants of the chief magistrates in Rome and other Roman cities. They carried as symbols of office bundles of rods, with an axe inserted among them in certain circumstances -- the fasces et secures -- denoting the magistrates' right to inflict corporal and, where necessary, capital punishment.

It was with the lictors' rods that the two missionaries were beaten on this occasion. It was not the only time that Paul had this treatment meted out to him: five or six years later he claims to have been beaten with rods three times (2 Cor. 11:25), although we have no information about the two other occasions. 

(Verse 23-24) When, after this severe beating, they were handed over to the jailer's custody, he interpreted his instructions strictly and fastened their legs in the stocks, in the inmost part of the prison. These stocks had more than two holes for the legs, which could thus be forced apart in such a way as to cause the utmost discomfort and cramping pain. It was not the jailer's business to take any thought for the prisoners' comfort, but to make sure that they did not escape.

He was possibly a retired soldier, and while service in the Roman army developed many fine qualities, these did not include the milk of human kindness. Yet this man is the third person in Philippi whom Luke describes as influenced by the saving power of Christ. He was a totally different character from both Lydia and the fortune-teller, and it took an earthquake and confrontation with death to make him take thought for his salvation; yet the same gospel as had blessed those two women now brought blessing to him.

6. Earthquake at midnight: the jailer's conversion (16:25-34)

(Verse 25) This paragraph bears the marks of being an independent narrative, inserted by Luke into the record of events at Philippi. He probably derived it from another source than its context: if verse 25 had followed immediately after verse 24, the reader would have been conscious of no hiatus. But we may be glad that Luke did add it at this point: it enriches his account of Paul's Philippian ministry. 

The double discomfort of the lictors' rods and the stocks was not calculated to fill Paul and Silas with joy, but around midnight the other prisoners, as they listened, heard sounds coming from the inmost cell -- sounds, not of groaning and cursing, but of prayer and hymn-singing . . . .

(Verse 26) Perhaps it was the awed impression which the two missionaries' behavior produced on the other prisoners that enabled them to dissuade those others from making their escape while the going was good when a sudden earthquake shook the prison foundation, threw open the doors, and loosened the staples that attached the prisoners' fetters to the walls.

(Verse 27) The earthquake that rocked the prison foundations wakened the jailer out of his midnight sleep. Immediately the went to investigate his charge. The worst  had happened: the prison doors were open; the prisoners, of course, had seized the opportunity and escaped. For a man brought up to a Roman's soldier's ideals of duty and discipline, only one horrible course was open -- suicide.

(Verse 28) But as he stood there, by the outer door of the prison, about to drive the point of his short sword into his throat or heart, his hand was arrested by a voice form the darkness from within: "Don't harm yourself; we are all here!" While he could see nothing as he looked into the darkness, those inside could see his figure silhouetted in the doorway and could see what he was about to do. Not only were Paul and Silas still there, but they had apparently restrained the other prisoners also. There was something uncanny about these two men!

(Verse 29-30) So, calling for light, he rushed into the prison and brought Paul and Silas out. First, according to the Western reviser (who probably imagined what he himself would have done had he been in the jailer's shoes), he prudently secured the other prisoners again. Then he earnestly asked Paul and Silas, "What must I do to be saved?"

How much he meant by this question it would be difficult to determine. He might have heard (or heard about) the fortune-teller's announcement that these men had come to proclaim a "way of salvation"; if so, he might have seen in the earthquake a supernatural vindication of them and their message. What was involved in this salvation would not have been clear to him, but he was thoroughly shaken, in soul as well as in body, and if anyone could show him the way to peace of mind, release from fear, and a sense of security, Paul and Silas (he was convinced) could do so. 

(Verse 31-32) There and then the two missionaries assured him that faith in Jesus, the Lord whom they proclaimed, ws the way of salvation for himself and his family. What was meant by faith in Jesus as Lord they proceeded to make plain to the whole household, presenting the gospel to them in terms which they could readily grasp.

(Verse 33-34) This was the message they had lived for! With joy they embraced it at once. The jailer bathed the wounded backs of the two men, probably at a well in the prison courtyard, and there too he and his household were baptized. "He washed and was washed," says Chrysostom: "he washed them from their stripes, and was himself washed from his sins." If nothing is said explicitly of their receiving the Holy Spirit, is is implied in the emphasis on the rejoicing which filled the house.

There, in the jailer's house, into which Paul and Silas were brought up, they received hospital treatment: food was set before them, and hosts and guests exulted together, united in Christian faith and love. The jailer was guilty of no dereliction of duty in thus taking two prisoners into his house; his responsibility was to produce them when called upon to do so. He had no reason to fear that they would run away and leave him in the lurch. Luke's third example of the power of the gospel at Philippi is the most wonderful of all. And perhaps Paul and Silas reckoned the rods and the stocks well worth enduring for the joy that they shared in the jailer's house.

7. Paul and Silas leave Philippi (16:35-40)

(Verse 35) By the next morning the excitement of the previous day had died down. The praetors decided that the two vagabond Jews had been taught the necessary lesson by the lictors' rods and the night in the lock-up. All that was required now was to release them and send them out of town; they would be in no hurry to come back. Imprisonment in itself was not a common penalty for breaches of civil law; by having Paul and Silas locked up overnight after their beating, the praetors had simply exercised their police right of coercitio -- summary correction or chastisement. They now sent the lictors to the jail with orders to the jailer to set the two prisoners free.

(Verse 36-37) But when the jailer reported this message to Paul and Silas and told them they were at liberty to depart, Paul demurred. An injustice had been committed, and it must not be covered up. He and his companion were Roman citizens -- as the colonists and magistrates of Philippi -- and their rights as such had been violated. The charges against them ought to have been properly investigated, but they had been beaten and imprisoned without any inquiry. 

By a series of Valerian and Porcian laws enacted between the beginning of the Roman Republic and the early second century B.C., Roman citizens were exempted from degrading punishment and had certain rights established for them in relation to the law. These privileges had been reaffirmed under the empire by a Julian law dealing with public disorder.

Why then did not Paul appeal to his Roman citizenship the day before? The answer sometimes given, that it would have been embarrassing for him to have to claim privileges which Silas could not share, seems to be excluded by the plain implication of the present passage, that both Silas and he were Roman citizens. It may be they did protest at the moment. A Roman citizen claimed his legal rights by the affirmation ciuis Romanus sum, "I am a Roman citizen."

It is uncertain if there was any documentary evidence which could be produced on the spot in confirmation of the claim. Paul was probably registered as a Roman citizen in the public record office at Tarsus, and a certified cop of the registration might be obtained, but did he carry this around with him wherever he went? At any rate, on this occasion Paul's claim neatly turned the tables on the self-important complaint of his accusers, that respectable Roman citizens should not be disturbed by wandering Jews. If the praetors wanted them to leave Philippi, he said, let them come and show the courtesy due them, and not expel them in this the hole-in-the corner manner.

(Verse 38-39) The lictors brought Paul's message back to the praetors, who were dismayed to learn what, in yesterday's excitement, they had failed to ascertain -- that these two Jews were as good Roman citizens as themselves. It a complaint about their illegal treatment of these men reached the ears of the authorities in Rome, they would be in an awkward position. Their self-importance was deflated, as they went to the jail and requested Paul and Silas to leave Philipp . . . They therefore apologized to Paul and Silas and escorted them out of the prison precincts, asking them to be good enough not to remain in Philippi any longer.

(Verse 40) Being released from prison, they went to Lydia's house and spoke words of encouragement to the Christians gathered there. Paul's insistence on an official apology may have served in some degree as a protection to them for the time being . . . . Then Paul and Silas, with Timothy, departed from Philippi in the westward direction along the Egnation Way. Luke perhaps stayed behind. At any rate he reappears in Philippi in Acts 20:5-6, at the beginning of the second "we" section of Acts. He is possibly the "true yokefellow" to whom Paul addresses a special request in Phil. 4:3. 

The later history of the Philippian church makes pleasant reading. The same kindness as provided Paul and his friends with hospitality during their first visit to the city was shown in repeated gifts to Paul during his subsequent travels and Roman imprisonment (Phil. 4:20-16).

 

Acts 17

1. Arrival at Thessalonica (17:1-4)

(Verse 1) From Philipp Paul and Silas, with Timothy, took the Egnation Way westward through Amphipolis on the Strymon (formerly an important strategic point on the Thraco-Macedonian frontier) and then, a second day's journey on, through Apollonia, and arrived at Thessalonica, then as now the principal city of Macedonia. 

Thessalonica was founded in 315 B.C., on the wite of the earlier settlement of Therme, by Cassader, who named it after his wife, a half-sister of Alexander the Great. The three travelers apparently halted only for a night at Amphipolis and again at Apollonia, but at Thessalonica (about 62 miles west of Philippi) they made a longer stay: the importance of this city commenced it as a suitable pladfe for intensive evangelism. 

(Verse 2-3) In accordance with his regular practice, Paul visited the local synagogue, and (having been invited to address the congregation, as previously at Pisidian Antioch) he expounded the Old Testament scriptures on the next three sabbath days. He brought forward as evidence of their fulfillment the historical facts recently accomplished in the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus, setting these events alongside the predictions in order that the force of his argument might be readily grasped. 

According to these predictions, the Messiah was appointed to suffer and then rise again from the dead. Both these experiences had been fulfilled in Jesus, and in nobody else; therefore, said Paul, this Jesus of whom I tell you is the promised Messiah.

(Verse 4) As had happened in the synagogues of South Galatia, so also in Thessalonica some of Paul's Jewish hearers were convinced by what he said, but the majority of his converts during these three weeks were God-fearing Gentiles. Among these were a considerable number of women of high station. Macedonian women had a well-earned reputation for their independence and enterprising spirit. If some of the women who believed the gospel at this time were the wives of leading citizens, the initiative as theirs, not their husbands'.

Jason, who is mentioned as the missinaries' host in verse 5, was presumably one of the Jews who believe (the Greek name Jason was assumed by many Jews who were originally named Joshua); Aristarchus and Secundus, described as Thessalonians in 20:4, were probably also converted to the Christian faith at this time.

2. Trouble in Thessalonica (17:5-9)

(Verse 5) It was not only in the synagogue preaching and the making of many converts that the pattern of events in the South Galatian cities was reproduced at Thessalonica. Here too the Jews who did not believe the gospel, incensed at the readiness of so many potential proselytes to embrace the missionaries' message and adhere to them, incited the city rabble against Paul and his companions. 

By the time the rabble assaulted the house where the missionaries had been staying, they had succeeded in making their escape; no doubt some of their converts, getting wind of what was afoot, hid them where they were not likely to be found. The mob was thus unable to drag them before the civic assembly, as it had hoped to do.

(Verse 6-7) But if Paul and his colleagues were not there, Jason himself, the owner of the house, was at home, and he, together with some other new Christians, was dragged before the magistrates. The magistrates of Thessalonica are called "politarchs," a title known from many inscriptions to have been given to the chief magistrates of Madcedonian cities.

A most serious complaint was lodged against the missionaries and their hosts. Jason and his friends were charged with harboring Jewish agitators, political messianists such as had stirred up unrest in other cities of the Roman Empire and Alexandria had recently experienced such trouble; now, said the accusers, the troublemakers had come to Thessalonica. Their seditious and revolutionary activity was not only illegal in itself; they were actually proclaiming one Jesus as a rival emperor to him who ruled in Rome. This was a subtle charge: even an unfounded suspicion of this kind was enough to ruin anyone against whom it was brought. 

In the present instance there was just enough color of truth in the charge tomake it plausible and deadly. The missionaries proclaimed the kingdom of God -- a very different kingdom, to be sure, from any secular empire -- and they may even have given Jesus the Greek designation basileus ('king"), which was accorded to the Roman emperor by many of his Greek-speaking subjects. This Jesus, moreover, had been executed for sedition by the sentence of a Roman judge.

It may be that more than straightforward sedition was implied in the charge that Paul had his colleagues contravened "Caesar's decrees." Sedition (maiestas) as an offense against public law and required no special decree of Caesar to make it illegal. But it is plain from the summary of the apostolic message which the Thessalonians accepted (1 Thess. 1:9-10), and from other references in the Thessalonian correspondence, that there was a strong eschatological emphasis in the preaching.

Such teaching as reflected in 2 Thess. 2:5-7, which its veiled allusion to the removal of the imperial power, might well have been construed as infringing one or more of Caesar's decrees. Augustus and Tiberius had been very sensitive about the activities of astrologers and other prognosticators and had issued decrees forbidding predictions or inquiries affecting affairs of state or the emperor's personal well-being.

(Verse 8-9) On hearing these charges, the politarchs shared the crowd's perturbation. It was their responsibility to make sure the imperial decrees were respected in the city. The provincial administration, not to speak of the imperial authorities in Rome, would not be pleased if they treated such grave accusations lightly. But, unlike the magistrates at Philippi (who reacted so violently to a much less serious charge), they behaved very sanely.

The evidence for the charge was scanty, and the men against whom it was really brought could not be found. Jason and his associates were made responsible for seeing there was no more trouble; they had to give security for the missionaries' good conduct, and this meant in practice the missionaries had to leave the city quietly and not return. 

Paul and his friends had no choice in the matter. Paul wanted to stay and strengthen his converts with further teaching. By this time his converts from outright paganism outnumbered those who had believed the gospel when they heard it in the synagogue: the clear testimony of the Thessalonian correspondence is that those who received it had "turned to God form idols" (1 Thess. 1:9).

Would such people's faith survive Paul's sudden departure (leaving them, as it might appear, in the lurch) and the pressure which was bound to be exerted on them to return to their former way of life? It is probably with regard to this situation that Paul told them, some weeks later, that he was eager to go back and see them, "but Satan hindered us" (1 Thess. 2:18). He might well discern satanic machinations behind the politarchs' decision, while they themselves would regard their decision as mild but effective. In the event, the newly planted church of Thessalonica was subjected to open persecution and more subtle forms of discouragement, yet it maintained its faith and witness in a manner that filled the hearts of Paul and his companions with unbounded joy when they learned of it.

 

(to be continued...)