The gospel of Jesus Christ is for all nations and ethnic groups. God makes this truth clear throughout the book of Acts. Each chapter reveals the Holy Spirit ensuring that the apostles would be witnesses “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8, ESV). Despite obstacles and changes in personnel, the gospel continued to spread to Jews and other Gentiles in the first 15 chapters of Acts.
This emphasis continues in Acts 16:1–18:22, a passage that describes Paul’s second missionary journey. In this journey, he and Silas first visited some of the churches that he had started with Barnabas earlier, but the Holy Spirit compelled Paul and Silas to go much farther than Paul had traveled on that earlier journey. They crossed the Aegean Sea to cities like Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth, and Ephesus. These chapters provide guidance to Christians today who care deeply about the spread of the gospel.
First, this section in Acts makes it clear that the gospel is threatening to unbelievers. Philippian slave owners lost a key revenue stream, and non-Christian Jews in several cities feared that the gospel would make their religious observance obsolete. The Athenians bristled at the way the resurrection didn’t fit with their ways of looking at the world. Consequently, Paul and Silas were beaten, imprisoned, chased, and mocked. The same gospel threatens unbelievers today. Should we not expect Spirit-filled messengers of the gospel to encounter resistance to the gospel today?
Second, God still saves people through the gospel. He used Paul and Silas to save Lydia, the Philippian jailer, noble-minded Berean Jews, well-to-do Gentile women, Dionysius the Areopagite, Damaris, and Crispus, along with an untold number of unnamed converts. God had His people in each city (Acts 18:10). Messengers of the gospel should take heart. They can be confident that God will use that same gospel to save the lost today.
Third, Paul was aware of his audience. When speaking in synagogues, Paul “reasoned with [Jews] from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead” (Acts 17:2–3, ESV). His speech at Athens, however, is unlike any other speech in Acts. He found common ground specifically with the Stoic philosophers and quoted Greek poets. Paul was cognizant of what his audience believed and how the gospel of Jesus confronted those beliefs. His purpose was ultimately to challenge some of their most basic ways of thinking about God.
Paul used Scripture with Jews to confront their view of the Messiah, and he used Greek writers to challenge Athenian idolatry. In both cases, he was clearing ground for the gospel. The message never changes, but the ground that needs clearing varies. Messengers of the gospel would do well to think about areas of common ground and ways of thinking that need challenging.
Did Paul consider the long trip a success? His letters reveal that he was deeply grateful for the converts (Phil. 1:3–6, 1 Thess. 1:2), but perhaps he told the church what we too need to focus on as we pray for the nations: “Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice” (Phil. 1:18, ESV).