NT Doctrine — Acts 11:15-30

Peter had used his last key; the Gentile treasury of souls had been opened to the Lord. It was one thing to go into all the world and preach the gospel, and we can be sure the Jewish believers were thinking that meant chasing down Jews wherever they traveled. But the Lord said to make disciples of all nations, using the word that typically referred to Gentiles. There were no ethnic boundaries to the Kingdom of Heaven.

They still believed that Gentiles had to convert to Judaism first, before embracing Christ. When Peter got back to Jerusalem, he caught flak from his fellow Jewish Christians. So Peter took the time to explain the whole story in detail. We begin with the punchline: The Holy Spirit fell on these Gentiles. It was God’s choice. All they could say to that was a subdued celebration that God had redeemed Gentiles, too.

Luke drops back a few months on the timeline to add something important. He mentions the Diaspora Jews driven out of Jerusalem by Paul. Those Greek-speaking Christian Jews from Cyprus and what is today the coast of Libya turned out to be very energetic evangelists. At first they shared the gospel with only their fellow Greek-speaking Jews. They did so in Lebanon, up the coast of Syria, and back home in Cyprus. Of particular interest here is that they clustered in Antioch; Turkish Antakya is the modern city. It was founded by the Seleucids and had become the third largest city in the Roman Empire, and the imperial headquarters for that region.

At some point, it was impossible to keep a lid on the gospel, and Christian faith began to blossom among the Gentiles there. The leadership in Jerusalem got wind of this after Peter shared his experience with Centurion Cornelius, and decided they should send their own ambassador to the growing community there to make sure things were on track. They chose Barnabas, the wealthy Cypriot who would carry some weight with the evangelists who had planted the church there.

Passing through the smaller Christian churches along the way, Barnabas arrived in Antioch and was delighted by the progress. Luke notes that the label “Christian” was first coined here to refer to someone who followed Christ. But Barnabas felt they needed someone strong enough to keep them on the path. He traveled up the coast a ways to Tarsus and persuaded Paul to join the work there in Antioch. The Christian community there grew massively.

After hearing how well things were going there, the believers in Jerusalem sort of adopted Antioch as family. In particular came a prophet named Agabus. At some point, he prophesied that there would be a famine in the Roman Empire. Luke notes this came true in AD 46 during the reign of Emperor Claudius, helping us to peg a date to his narrative as shortly before that. With the warning in their ears, the believers in Antioch, living in a very wealthy city, decided to gather a love offering for the first Christians back in Jerusalem, who had been driven underground. Things would be a lot tougher for them because of their situation, but also because the land itself was more vulnerable to famine in Judea.

They dispatched Paul and Barnabas back to Jerusalem with the relief funds.