The Second Missionary Journey
The Second Missionary Journey
Armed with a letter from the Jerusalem apostles and elders, containing the decisions of the Council, Paul set out on his second missionary journey, this time accompanied by Silas.7 They revisited the Galatian churches, delivering the Council’s decree. At Lystra Paul invited Timothy to accompany them. Because he had a Gentile father, Paul even circumcised him out of deference to local Jews, for now that the principle of salvation by grace alone had been established he was ready to make such a policy concession (Acts 16:1–4; cf. 1 Cor. 9:19–20).
Forbidden by the Holy Spirit (in ways not explained) to journey either southwest towards Ephesus or due north into Bithynia, Paul and his companions were restricted to going in a northwesterly direction and so arrived at Troas on the Aegean coast. Here Paul had a dream in which a Greek begged him to go over to Macedonia and help them. He and his friends interpreted the vision as a call from God to take the gospel into Europe. And Luke, the author of Acts, by using the pronoun “we” for the first time in his narrative, quietly indicates that he sailed with them.
Macedonia was the northern province of Greece, and the missionary team preached the gospel in three of its principal towns—Philippi (where Paul and Silas spent a memorable night in prison, with their feet in the stocks), Thessalonica (where during a three-week mission a great many believed) and Berea. Paul then moved on to Achaia, the southern province of Greece, visiting its two chief cities, Athens and Corinth.
There is something very moving about the picture of Paul in Athens, the Christian apostle alone amid the glories of ancient Greece. As he walked through the city it was not the beauty which struck him, however, but the idolatry. This stirred him deeply, and first in the synagogue with the Jews, then in the marketplace with passersby, and finally before the famous Council of the Areopagus with the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, he faithfully preached Jesus, the resurrection and the judgment to come.
Timothy joined him while he was in Athens, but Paul was so concerned to discover how the Thessalonian church was faring under persecution that he sent him off again at once to find out and to encourage them to stand firm (1 Thess. 3:1–5). By the time Timothy returned, Paul had moved on to Corinth (1 Thess. 3:6; Acts 18:5). The good news he brought was the occasion of his First Letter to the Thessalonians, with the Second Letter following it soon afterwards. In these letters Paul rejoices over the Thessalonians’ faith, love and steadfastness, and over the example which they are setting to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia (1 Thess. 1). He goes on to defend his personal integrity against his Jewish detractors (1 Thess. 2). Then he exhorts his readers to earn their own living and not to give up work (which some seem to have done on the supposition that the Lord’s return was imminent); to take courage in their bereavement because the living will not take precedence over the dead when Jesus comes; and to live lives of sexual purity. Perhaps he had these three categories in his mind when he writes: “Warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak” (1 Thess. 5:14).
Paul stayed in Corinth for the best part of two years. He followed his normal custom of bearing witness to the Jews first, and won a notable convert in Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue. But when the Jews opposed and abused him, he again turned to the Gentiles and received support in his policy from an unexpected quarter, the proconsul of Achaia called Gallio. It was a truly wonderful triumph of God’s grace that a Jewish-Gentile church should arise in such a cesspool of vice as Corinth was.