St. Paul the Hero

by Rufus M. Jones

Intense and eager and determined as he was, he was also tender and loving. This letter is all full of passages in which you can almost feel this great man’s heart throb. “You are,” he tells them, “just like my own children. I came to you when you were living in sin and ignorance and, like a father full of love, I helped you into a new life. I brought you to Christ and I showed you how to get free from your old bondage and how to rise into a life of joy and power. I cannot bear to see you drop back into bondage again. If you believe what these visitors have told you, you will never be free again, you will have to carry burdens all your days.” “When I came first among you,” he wrote, “you were full of joy. You loved me and believed me, as though I had been an angel or a god come to visit you. You would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me, if you could have done it. I want now to be your friend and I want you to believe that what I tell you is the truth.” Then he showed them how foolish was the story which the Jews from Jerusalem had told them. They had said that only those who were “sons of Abraham” could share in the promises of Christ. “Sons of Abraham,” Paul cried out to them, “who are the real sons of Abraham!” “Not those who become Jews and keep the law but those who are full of faith, who trust Christ and live by His power. The most wonderful thing about Abraham was his faith. He believed God. He trusted God. He walked with God. He did not keep the law, because the law was not given until many centuries after Abraham had died. If you want to be ‘a son of Abraham’ you must live by faith. You must trust God and take Christ for your leader, your helper, your inward strength.”

He drew, in his letter, a wonderful picture of the true way to live. He gave his friends an account of his own life and told them they could also have what had come to him. “Why,” he said, “God has revealed His Son in my soul. I used to do wrong and go wrong. I could not keep myself. I tried to live by the law but it would not work. Now I live by faith—faith in Christ, and the life I now live is really the life He lives in me. I do not care any more for the things people do to make themselves good. I feel Christ coming into me and giving me strength and power, just as the sun comes into the tree and builds its life from within. You can all have that power formed in you. You can all feel the life of Christ sweep into your lives and that will make you free. And you will cry ‘Abba, Father,’ for you will find the life and spirit of God in your own hearts. When that happens you will not think much about those things which these Jews from Jerusalem have been telling you you must do to be saved!

“There are two great forces in the world,” he told them. “One is the force that makes people do wrong. There seems to be something in us too strong for us to resist. We mean to do right, but often before we know it, something seems to push us into evil. We go the way of instinct. We fight, or we tell lies, or we take what is not ours, or we get angry, or we do things which are not pure and clean and beautiful. How are we to stop this force from pushing us and controlling us and spoiling us?” “You must get a new spirit,” Paul says. “The law and the commandments and the customs of Moses will not bring you life and power. You must find a new and higher force which will come into you and raise you out of your old self into a new way of life. Just that is what Christ does. When He helps you and comes into you, a new spirit is formed and you get love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and endurance in your own souls. It is like discovering a new world. It is like a new creation. That is what Christ does. He makes people new creatures. These people who came to you from Jerusalem cannot tell you how to do that—but I can tell you. I bear in my body the marks of this new creation which Christ has formed in me.”

Something like that Paul wrote to his friends in Galatia and the best of it is, they believed him and stood by him. When they had read his letter, they said: Paul is right. It is so. We will take his way. We will have Christ and not the law-system—and so Paul had won his first great battle.

XV
“COME OVER INTO MACEDONIA AND HELP US”

The old heroes of Greece were heroes because they went out to fight with beasts and to free the world of terrible monsters. Then, again, there were heroes who fought with giants, or with deadly enemies of their country, and who risked their lives for their friends or for their people. Paul was a new kind of hero. His great battle was a battle with false ideas, a battle for the truth, a battle for the good news which Christ had brought to the world. It is harder to be this kind of a hero. Most people do not recognise the new kind of hero when he comes. They do not know that he is a hero. He often has to fight alone and he is misunderstood even by his friends. Paul had many lonely hours. He could not have stood the strain and struggle if he had not been sure of Christ’s presence and help and if he had not known that he was the champion of the greatest truth in the world.

Now that he had won the victory in this important contest in Galatia, and now that he had settled the question that Christ was the Saviour of all men of all races, he could go out again on another great out-reaching missionary journey. Paul wanted to go again with Barnabas, but Barnabas was determined to take Mark once more as companion and Paul was just as determined not to have Mark, because he deserted them on their former journey, so that they finally agreed to separate. Barnabas went to Cyprus with Mark, and Paul took a companion named Silas, and started out without quite knowing what country he would travel to before his return. He and Silas went, probably by land, through the Syrian gate in the mountains, to Tarsus and visited the Christian settlements in the province of Cilicia, then directly on to see his friends in Galatia who had been through so much since he saw them last. How we wish we knew what he said to them and what they said to him! But we do not know a single word that passed while Paul was living among the disciples of Galatia. We only know that he decided to take one of these Galatian Christians along with him as a helper in his work. This was a young man named Timothy whose home was in Derbe. He became one of Paul’s greatest friends and a wonderful help to him, clear through to the end of his life. Being with Paul made Timothy a hero too.

After the three men had visited all the communities of Galatia, they started off toward the north and visited the cities in the district of Phrygia which belonged to the province of Galatia, and then they decided to strike across west and visit the great cities of the province of Asia, the capital of which was Ephesus, but they soon felt that the time had not come yet for this journey. They next tried to go to the country lying along the shores of the Black Sea, but something made them realise that this was not the right course for them to take, so that they went on to Troas on the shores of the Ægean Sea, without quite knowing where they would go next. Troas was the site of the old city of Troy where the Greeks and Trojans fought for ten years, and where some of the bravest deeds were done that the world ever saw. Here was the tomb of Achilles. Here Alexander the Great had come on his way to the conquest of the world. A greater conqueror had now come to Troas. Alexander went toward the east for his victories; the new conqueror was to go west!

While they were here in Troas without any clear plan of action, Paul felt in his soul that the next course was to sail across the Ægean Sea into Europe. He felt it so clearly and strongly that it seemed to him as though he heard a man from the European side of the sea calling to him and saying: “Come across into Macedonia and bring us help.” But it was more than Macedonia that was calling. It was the whole of Greece. It was more than Greece that was calling. It was the whole of Europe. It was more than Europe that was calling. It was undiscovered America that was stretching out its hands that night and saying: “Come over and help us.” You see, if Paul had not gone into Europe, across the Ægean, perhaps we who live in America and in England would never have been followers of Christ, so that this call meant very much! Paul heard it and he was “ready” at once. He answered: “Yes, I will come.” The next morning he set sail from Troas on the eastern shore to Philippi on the western shore of the Ægean. Silas and Timothy were with him and he also found here a new companion. This new travelling-companion kept a Diary and wrote the account of this journey and of other journeys, too. You can find his Diary in the sections of the Book of Acts that say “we”—“the We Narratives.” Philippi in Macedonia is the first spot in Europe on which Paul set his foot and so far as we know the people in Philippi were the first people of all Europe who heard of Christ. They were not as eager to hear as you might expect. If they were calling to Paul to come over and help them, they did not recognise him when he arrived, for they very soon seized him and put him in prison and beat him with rods. Some of the people in Philippi, however, did recognise him. They were very glad to hear him and they were full of love for him and for his truth. They joined him and worked with him and a new church was formed—perhaps the first in all Europe. These Christians in Philippi were very dear to Paul’s heart and they loved him as though he had been their own father, and they remembered him later when he lay in prison in Rome and was lonely. When he left Philippi, he went on through the great cities of Macedonia, preaching and building up churches, wherever he could find people ready to listen to his message. In the city of Thessalonica, which is now called Salonika, Paul found many listeners and formed a successful church to which a little later he wrote two epistles. He found another splendid group in the city of Berœa and formed a church there. But in all these cities of Macedonia he had serious trouble, just as he had had in the province of Galatia. The Jews hated him and everywhere he came they raised a riot and tried to drive him out of the city or to get him into prison. They set the mob against him in some of the cities and in others they had him arrested and badly treated. But in spite of all their efforts to hinder him, he succeeded in doing a great work and in forming Christian churches all up and down the famous province of Macedonia.

From the time Paul heard the voice calling him over into Macedonia, most of the rest of his life was to be lived and most of his future work in the world was to be done around the shores of the Ægean Sea. All the churches which he gathered after this time were around the Ægean and all his epistles from this time were written either to Ægean cities, or written while he was living in Ægean cities. It was Paul who shifted the centre of Christianity from Jerusalem to the Western World and during his life-time the great centres were around the shores of this famous Sea. The most famous of all the cities around the coasts of this Sea was Athens, the home of Socrates and Plato and of a hundred other great men, and to this wonderful city of the ancient world Paul now came.