To the Ends of the Earth

Read it: Acts 9; 15; Romans 8

The church in Jerusalem grew fast, and so did the opposition. A young leader named Stephen was put on trial for his preaching and stoned to death, the first Christian to die for Jesus. Watching, and approving, was a young man named Saul. “And Saul was there, giving approval to Stephen’s death. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem” (Acts 8:1). The believers scattered, talking about Jesus wherever they went. Persecution meant to stamp out the church spread it.

The enemy who became an apostle

Saul came from Tarsus, a city in what is now southern Turkey. He was a Pharisee, a brilliant student of the law, convinced that Jesus’ followers were dangerous heretics. He was “still breathing out murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1) and set off for Damascus, in Syria, with letters authorising him to arrest any believers he found there.

Near the city, “suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him” (Acts 9:3). He fell to the ground and heard a voice: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” (Acts 9:4). “Who are You, Lord?” Saul asked. The answer turned his world upside down: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5).

Saul got up blind, and for three days he didn’t eat or drink. Then God told a believer named Ananias to go and pray for him. Ananias was terrified; he knew Saul’s reputation. But the Lord said, “This man is My chosen instrument to carry My name before the Gentiles and their kings, and before the people of Israel” (Acts 9:15). Ananias went, called him “Brother Saul,” and something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes. He was baptized, and almost at once “Saul promptly began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues” (Acts 9:20), declaring that Jesus is the Son of God. He became known by his Roman name, Paul, and he never got over the grace that had found him. Years later he wrote, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst” (1 Timothy 1:15).

The big argument

Meanwhile non-Jews, called Gentiles, were believing in Jesus. Peter saw the Holy Spirit come on a Roman officer named Cornelius and his household. In the city of Antioch in Syria, a mixed church of Jews and Gentiles grew so quickly that “The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch” (Acts 11:26). From there Paul and his friend Barnabas set off on journeys across Cyprus and Asia Minor, and later Paul crossed into Greece.

This raised a huge question. Did Gentiles have to become Jews first, keeping the whole law of Moses, to belong to God’s people? Some teachers insisted: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). The argument was so serious that the church held a meeting in Jerusalem, around AD 49, to settle it.

Peter stood up and told them what he had seen. God had given the Spirit to Gentiles “just as He did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for He cleansed their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:8–9). Then he said the line that decided the matter: “we believe it is through the grace of the Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are” (Acts 15:11). James, the brother of Jesus and a leader in the Jerusalem church, agreed: “we should not cause trouble for the Gentiles who are turning to God” (Acts 15:19). They sent a short letter with a few practical requests to help Jewish and Gentile believers share a table, and the church in Antioch was overjoyed.

This was the promise to Abraham coming true: all nations blessed, not by becoming one nation, but by faith in Abraham’s greatest descendant.

Letters and Romans 8

Paul couldn’t be everywhere, so he wrote letters. Thirteen of the New Testament’s books carry his name. (Scholars debate whether he wrote every one himself; many Christians hold that he did.) His letter to the Christians in Rome, written before he had ever been there, is his fullest explanation of the gospel, and chapter 8 is its summit.

It begins, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Not less condemnation. None. God’s Spirit lives in believers and makes them His children. He is the “Spirit of sonship,” by whom we call God “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15). That’s the word Jesus used in Gethsemane.

Paul is honest that life still hurts. The whole creation, broken since Genesis 3, is “groaning together in the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8:22). But groaning in childbirth means something new is being born. “I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). And then the famous promise: “And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

Paul had been beaten, imprisoned and shipwrecked, so when he asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Romans 8:35), he means it. His answer: “neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).

Acts ends with Paul in Rome, under house arrest, still preaching: “Boldly and freely he proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 28:31). The book stops, but the story doesn’t. You are part of what happens next.

Where Jesus is in this

Notice what the risen Jesus said to Saul: not “Why do you persecute My followers?” but “why do you persecute Me?” (Acts 9:4). Jesus is so joined to His people that what happens to them happens to Him. Paul spent the rest of his life explaining that union: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

And Romans 8 reaches back to one of the oldest scenes in the story. When Abraham was ready to offer Isaac, God said, “you have done this and have not withheld your only son” (Genesis 22:16). Paul uses the same picture of God Himself: “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). On Mount Moriah, God stopped Abraham’s hand. At the cross, He did not spare His Son.

Think about it: Paul went from hunting Christians to being one of the greatest of them. Is there anyone you’ve written off as too far from God, maybe even yourself?

Go deeper: All Things for Good by Thomas Watson — Watson takes Romans 8:28 seriously enough to apply it to the worst things, and argues one by one that affliction, temptation, the times God seems far away, and even our own sin are overruled by God for the good of those who love Him, not because they are good in themselves but because of His wise hand. Start with chapter 4, “The worst things work for good to the godly”.