“Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
— Acts 14:22
Context & Key Themes
The first missionary journey continues. Paul and Barnabas have been driven out of Pisidian Antioch and are now moving east through the interior of Asia Minor—Iconium, Lystra, Derbe. The pattern Luke established in chapter thirteen tightens here. Enter a city. Preach. See some believe. Watch opposition gather. Get driven out. Move to the next city. Plant a church. The chapter is compressed, almost breathless, covering four cities and a return journey in thirty-some verses.
What gives the chapter its particular weight is the extremity of the reactions Paul encounters. In Lystra, a single healing brings the whole city out to worship Paul and Barnabas as the gods Zeus and Hermes come down in human form. A few days later, the same city is stoning Paul and dragging his body outside the walls. The gospel produces both reactions at once, sometimes in the same crowd. Luke is showing his readers that ministry at this level is not for the emotionally fragile. It requires the kind of settled anchoring that can receive worship without taking it and receive stones without losing heart.
Iconium
At Iconium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. The pattern from Pisidian Antioch repeats almost verbatim. The synagogue is the beachhead. The gospel draws both Jews and Gentiles. Opposition organizes, usually through the unbelieving Jews inciting the broader Gentile population.
Paul and Barnabas remain for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands. The city is divided. Some side with the Jews, some with the apostles. When an attempt is made by both Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to mistreat them and to stone them, Paul and Barnabas learn of it and flee to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country. And there they continued to preach the gospel.
Luke’s note is important. They flee, but they do not stop preaching. They do not take a sabbatical. They simply move the venue and keep the mission going.
The Healing at Lystra
Now at Lystra there was a man sitting who could not use his feet. He was crippled from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul speaking. And Paul, looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made well, said in a loud voice, Stand upright on your feet. And he sprang up and began walking.
The echo is deliberate. At the Beautiful Gate in Acts 3, Peter healed a man lame from birth whose healing launched a sermon. Here, Paul heals a man lame from birth whose healing will launch something considerably stranger.
When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycaonian, The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men. Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes, because he was the chief speaker.
Lystra had a local legend. An old story held that Zeus and Hermes had once visited the region disguised as travelers, had been welcomed only by an elderly couple named Philemon and Baucis, and had punished the rest of the region for its inhospitality. The people of Lystra had no intention of making that mistake twice. When a healing occurs and two strangers have performed it, the conclusion is immediate. Zeus and Hermes have come again. The priest of Zeus brings oxen and garlands to the city gates. Sacrifices are about to be offered to Paul and Barnabas.
When the apostles hear of it, they tear their garments—the ancient sign of grief and horror at blasphemy—and rush into the crowd, crying out. Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.
Paul’s sermon here is the first recorded sermon to a purely pagan audience, and it is structured accordingly. He does not begin with Abraham, because Lystra has never heard of Abraham. He begins with creation. He speaks of the God who allowed the nations to walk in their own ways in past generations but has not left himself without witness—giving rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying hearts with food and gladness. The argument is that the true God has been speaking through his provision all along. The idols the crowd wants to credit with the harvest were never the source. The Creator was.
Even with these words, Paul and Barnabas could scarcely restrain the people from offering sacrifice to them. Luke’s wording is almost comedic. The apostles are pleading, preaching, tearing their clothes, and the crowd is still trying to slaughter an ox in their honor. Paganism has deep grooves. It does not redirect easily.
The Stoning
But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.
The turn is violent. The same crowd that was trying to worship Paul hours or days earlier now stones him and drags his body outside the city walls. Luke does not explain the shift. He does not need to. Mob emotion runs in both directions. The opponents from Pisidian Antioch and Iconium have followed Paul across the region. They persuade the Lystra crowd that the man they wanted to worship is actually a fraud, and the crowd swings from adoration to execution in the space of a few speeches.
The detail that they supposed Paul was dead is worth pausing over. Stoning by a mob typically was fatal. They did not drag his body out casually. They dragged it out because they believed they had killed him. Paul later refers to this moment in 2 Corinthians 12 when he speaks of being caught up to the third heaven—many interpreters have read that passage as a reference to this stoning, though Paul himself does not make the connection explicit.
Whatever happened in those moments—death and resurrection, coma and recovery, supernatural preservation—Luke records only the outcome. When the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe.
Paul got up. That simple. He walked back into the city that had just tried to kill him. He did not stay overnight to make a point, but he did not run from the city either. He finished what needed finishing and left for Derbe the next morning. This is the kind of courage that only the Spirit produces. The apostle who rose from being stoned did not have his nerves intact in the normal sense. He had a calling that would not let him retreat.
Derbe and the Return Trip
At Derbe, they preach the gospel and make many disciples. Derbe is the eastern terminus of this missionary journey. Luke’s note is short. The city was apparently free of significant opposition, and a church was planted in relative peace.
Then Paul and Barnabas do something that looks impractical on first glance. They turn around and retrace their route. Back through Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch. The city that stoned Paul. The city that tried to stone him and drove him out. The city that drove him out after his first sermon. They went back to each of them.
Why? Luke is clear. They strengthened the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.
The return trip is for the sake of the new believers. Paul and Barnabas will not leave infant churches unsheltered. They go back to strengthen, to teach, to warn, to appoint elders. The tribulations warning in particular matters. These young believers are going to face the same opposition that just drove Paul out of their cities. They need to know ahead of time that suffering is not evidence the gospel is failing. It is, if anything, evidence the gospel is working.
Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia. And when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia, and from there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had fulfilled.
They come home. And when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. And they remained no little time with the disciples.
The language is pastoral. Paul and Barnabas report what God had done. Not what they had done. God opened the door. They walked through it. The Antioch church hears the report, probably with a mixture of awe, alarm, and joy—awe at the stories, alarm at the cost, joy at the fruit. And the two apostles stay for a while. The first missionary journey is over. The second will come after a controversy neither man can see yet.
Reflection
Acts 14 is a sober chapter. The gospel produces miracles and mobs, worship and stonings, sometimes from the same crowd within a matter of days. Luke does not edit the pattern. He records it. A healthy reader of Acts has to receive both sides honestly. Ministry in the power of the Spirit can produce extraordinary breakthroughs. It can also produce extraordinary opposition. Any theology of mission that promises one without the other is selling a product Paul did not sign for.
The Lystra scene is one of the most pointed lessons the New Testament gives about the relationship between Christian leaders and the praise of crowds. Paul and Barnabas do not just decline the sacrifice. They tear their clothes. They run into the middle of the crowd pleading with people not to do what they are doing. Their reaction is not modesty. It is horror. Receiving worship that belongs to God is not an embarrassment to be waved away. It is blasphemy to be rejected violently. Modern church culture, with its celebrity pastors and platform building, could learn a great deal from how quickly Paul and Barnabas tore their garments. The moment a servant of Christ starts receiving the honor that belongs to the Master, something has gone seriously wrong, and the only adequate response is the tearing of garments.
The return trip is the other lesson the chapter teaches about what faithful ministry looks like. Paul could have skipped the three cities that had driven him out. No one would have faulted him. He had been stoned once, persecuted twice, and driven out three times in the space of a few weeks. But the new believers in those cities needed him more than his safety needed him. So he went back. The best missionaries of every age have shared this instinct. The mission is not complete when the sermon is preached. It is complete when the church is planted with elders, taught the faith, and prepared for the suffering that is coming. Every revival that has not done follow-up has eventually evaporated. The churches Paul strengthened on this return trip were still there a generation later because he came back.
Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. Paul does not sugarcoat the gospel to the new believers. He tells them plainly that following Christ will cost them. This is a line the prosperity-gospel industry does not repeat. But every generation of Christians who has faced real persecution has found these eight words worth clinging to. The tribulations are not the contradiction of the kingdom. They are the doorway. The church that is not prepared to bleed a little will not bear much fruit.
And Paul rose up and entered the city. That sentence alone is worth the chapter. Stoned, dragged out for dead, surrounded by disciples who had probably gathered to bury him, and he simply got up and walked back into the city that had just tried to kill him. The Spirit does not only rescue his servants. Sometimes he resurrects them on the spot. And when the resurrection has happened, there is only one posture left. You get up, dust yourself off, and keep going. Paul did. The gospel did. The church has, more or less continuously, ever since.