Pisidian Antioch: Paul's First Message

15 After the reading of the law and the prophets, the officials of the synagogue sent them a message, saying, ‘Brothers, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, give it.’ 16 So Paul stood up and with a gesture began to speak:....‘My brothers, you descendants of Abraham’s family, and others who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent. 27 Because the residents of Jerusalem and their leaders did not recognize him or understand the words of the prophets that are read every sabbath, they fulfilled those words by condemning him. 28 Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. 29 When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. 30 But God raised him from the dead; 31 and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they are now his witnesses to the people. 32 And we bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors 33 he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm,
“You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.”

I. Background to Understand Acts 13

The passage for today is illuminating for a number of reasons. It is Paul's first sermon or proclamation of the Apostolic message, and so we see what might be called the "completion" of his conversion, which began in ch. 9. Second, we discover through studying Pauls' sermon that there is a continuity in the Apostolic preaching. This theme is important for Luke, since he has a major theological and practical problem on his hands: how to explain the legitimacy of a Gentile ministry when Jesus was a Jew and was, apparently, sent primarily to Jews. Paul is the "link" or "hinge" figure in Luke's mind, a figure who can reach back to the very Jewishness of the early Christian message but who also has the insight on how to make the message attractive also to Gentiles. Thus, I will show below how Paul's message in Acts 13 fits together theologically with the preaching in Acts 2 and 3.

Third, Luke skillfully shows, in the passage just before this one (13: 4-12), that the new message spoken by Paul 'works' in the Hellenistic/Roman world but the new message is to be distinguished from magic. That is, one of the allegations that could have been brought against the early Christians was that the power available to them by the "Holy Spirit" was nothing other than a magical display. The fact, for example, that infirm people desperately tried to have Peter's shadow fall on them (Acts 5:15) sounds like someone thought of the Apostolic power in a magical way. But in 13:9 (and 19:11-20), Luke takes pains to differentiate the early Christian healings/speech from magic. The early Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit and enabled to preach a message of salvation and not just do wondrous works.

Finally, we have in this passage an insight into the problems and operation of the earlies Christian mission. Barnabas and Saul (13:2, note the order and the names--Saul only becomes Paul in 13:9) were set apart by the laying on of hands in a congregation they had founded in Antioch on the Lebanon coast just north of Palestine. They apparently were "resident" Apostles or leaders, but then the Holy Spirit, who is considered an active and communicative force by Luke, directs the congregation to send Barnabas and Saul on mission. They are accomplanied by John Mark, but he soon leaves them (13:13). Later on Luke tells us that he "deserted" them (15:38), so we see that all was not hunky-dory for the first Christian missionaries. Nevertheless, they arrive in another Antioch, this one in Southern Turkey, a long (100 mile) hike in from the South Turkey (ancient Cilicia) coast where they had landed. It is here, in Paul's "home country," that Paul delivers his first sermon.

II. Paul's Message and Response

It is interesting that Luke is thinking about his portrait of Paul in this first missionary speech, because he has Paul address the Jewish congregation like a Hellenistic orator rather than a Jewish rabbi. That is, in v. 16, Paul stands up and gives a gesture of the hands before beginning to speak. We know even from earlier in Luke-Acts (Luke 4:21) that when a synagogue speaker delivered a message, he sat and spoke. But Luke is aware that even though Paul is speaking to a Jewish audience, he will be moving into "Graeco-Roman" realities, and so he portrays Paul with a sort of Ciceronian style--standing with dramatic gestures.

But even if this is true, Paul's message is both Scriptural and designed to show the connection with the earliest Apostolic preaching in Acts 2 and 3. If Luke can show this continuity, he has justified Paul's Gentile mission as the "natural outgrowth" or, better said, the "Spirit-directed outgrowth" of the earliest preaching. Three points of continuity with earlier preaching are: (1) the innocence of Jesus; (2) the ignorance of the people; and (3) the use of the royal Psalms (in Acts 13 it is Ps. 2; in Acts 2 it is Ps. 110), originally associated with David, to show Jesus' superiority to his great forebear. One might think that the "innocence" of Jesus is a "no-brainer," but because there were so many topics that could have occupied the earliest preachers, this one is important. "Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed" (13:28). Though Jesus' innocence isn't explicitly mentioned in Acts 2 or 3, the fact that Pilate decided to release him (3:13) harks back to Pilate's portrayal in Luke, where he decides Jesus is innocent (Lk. 23:4).

Second is the ignorance of the hearers. This is an interesting point because one could easily have drawn from the Gospel accounts the sense of a conniving or evil-directed opposition to Jesus. Yet, Paul preaches a sort of "softer" culpability: "Because the residents of Jerusalem and their leaders did not recognize him or understand the words of the prophets..." (13:27). Peter earlier had said: "And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers" (3:17). Luke uses the same Greek word (agnoia) to express the idea.

Finally, and most significant, Luke has both Peter and Paul wrestle with the royal Psalms in their preaching: Psalms 2 and 110. Those Psalms provided a tremendously rich "treasure trove" for early Christian interpreters. Psalm 2, in our passage, presents both a picture of frustration of secular kings as they assail the Lord and the Lord's anointed as well as the triumph of God by setting God's "Son" on his throne/holy hill. Paul picks up on Psalm 2 in his Antiochene sermon (13:33). In fact, so that we won't miss it, Luke has Paul say that it is written "in the second psalm." The verse "You are my Son; today I have begotten you," was also quoted in with a different ending ("with you I am well-pleased") in Jesus' baptism (Lk. 3:21). Thus, for Luke, this passage from Ps. 2 had some "elasticity" in it; it could be used both to explain the inauguration of Jesus' ministry as well as his resurrection. Peter makes use of Ps. 110 in Acts 2:34: "The Lord says to my Lord,/ 'Sit at my right hand/ until I make your enemies your footstool.'" Thus, the Davidic character of Jesus is at the heart of the Apostolic preaching. But, in both cases, someone greater than David is here, the one who bears the title Son in an eternal way.

Conclusion

Much more could be said about this passage. For example, the long discussion on "corruption" in 13:34-37 is an example of how early Christian preaching both honored David and wanted to distinguish him from Christ--on the basis of Christ's resurrection. Then there is the reaction of the Jews in v. 45. Since Paul spoken in a synagogue to Jews, the Jews of v. 45 might have been a sort of contingent of opposition-speakers, organized to try to rebut this new and "dangerous" expression of Judaism. In any case, we are thrown into a world that is both strange and contentious, one that is "ours" to the extent that we are the spiritual descendants of these first preachers. Our message stays the same, even if the opponents (magic and the Jews) have changed.

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