Today's reading helps us better understand what paganism is and where it comes from. It concerns an incident in Lystra where, after Paul performed a healing, the local people took the apostles for the gods Zeus and Hermes. Consequently, the apostles had great difficulty stopping the gathered crowd and convincing them that...
Today's reading helps us better understand what paganism is and where it comes from. It concerns an incident in Lystra where, after Paul performed a healing, the local people took the apostles for the gods Zeus and Hermes (vv. 8–13). Consequently, the apostles had great difficulty stopping the gathered crowd and convincing them that they were not gods at all, but human beings (vv. 14–18). At first glance, the crowd's behaviour seems naive enough to bring only a smile. Yet what we see here reflects one of the oldest and most widespread pagan beliefs: belief in a special kind of supernatural force or energy, diffused throughout the world and manifesting itself in all sorts of natural and supernatural phenomena. Particular, chosen people could bear it; gods and spirits used it to work miracles. It is hardly surprising that the local people saw a manifestation of this force in the healing Paul performed and took the apostles for gods.
Yet the question remains: why Zeus and Hermes? These are gods, whereas those standing before the gathered crowd were ordinary people who looked nothing like gods. But the idea that gods can assume any form, including human form, was characteristic of the pagan mindset, especially in antiquity. What mattered was not appearance, but possession of power: a god or spirit that lost its power ceased to be an object of worship. Here a fundamental feature of pagan religious consciousness emerges: a pagan worships not a person but a force, and any manifestation of that force evokes reverence and worship. Of course, in its manifestation it may be associated with a particular person. Even then, however, the person remains secondary for the pagan, important not in their own right but only as a form in which that same force manifests itself.
God, by contrast, is first and foremost a Person, and only then power. Here lies the chief difference between paganism and Revelation: whenever the person comes first, God prevails; whenever an impersonal force is deified, nature and paganism triumph. It is no accident that the apostles strive so earnestly to convince the gathered people that they are human beings just like those around them (v. 15). If those around them do not learn to value a human being precisely as a person, rather than as a bearer of power, they will never be able to enter the Kingdom. Even in Christ they will see only a great master of power, and in God its supreme source. But God's love and Christ's sacrifice will remain hidden from them. Then the Kingdom of love will appear to them as a kingdom of power, and heaven will turn into hell, into the lake of fire so vividly described in the Book of Revelation of John.
One cannot understand God's love without first learning to value the human person. And without such understanding, one cannot enter the Kingdom.
13
13:42 When the Jews were going out - Probably many of them, not bearing to hear him, went out before he had done. The Sabbath between - So the Jews call to this day the Sabbath between the first day of the month Tisri (on which the civil year begins) and the tenth of the same month, which is the solemn day of expiation.
13:43 Who speaking to them - More familiarly, persuaded them to continue - For trials were at hand, in the grace of God - That is, to adhere to the Gospel or Christian faith.
13:46 Then Paul and Barnabas speaking boldly, said - Those who hinder others must be publicly reproved. It was necessary - Though ye are not worthy: he shows that he had not preachedto them, from any confidence of their believing, but seeing ye judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life - They indeed judged none but themselves worthy of it. Yet their rejecting of the Gospel was the same as saying, "We are unworthy of eternal life." Behold! - A thing now present! An astonishing revolution! We turn to the Gentiles - Not that they left off preaching to the Jews in other places. But they now determined to lose no more time at Antioch on their ungrateful countrymen, but to employ themselves wholly in doing what they could for the conversion of the Gentiles there.
13:47 For so hath the Lord commanded us - By sending us forth, and giving us an opportunity of fulfilling what he had foretold.I have set thee - The Father speaks to Christ. Isa 49:6.
13:48 As many as were ordained to eternal life - St. Luke does not say fore - ordained. He is not speaking of what was done from eternity, but of what was then done, through the preaching of the Gospel. He is describing that ordination, and that only, which was at the very time of hearing it. During this sermon those believed, says the apostle, to whom God then gave power to believe. It is as if he had said, "They believed, whose hearts the Lord opened;" as he expresses it in a clearly parallel place, speaking of the same kind of ordination, Act 16:14, etc It is observable, the original word is notonce used in Scripture to express eternal predestination of any kind. The sum is, all those and those only, who were now ordained, now believed. Not that God rejected the rest: it was his will that they also should have been saved: but they thrust salvation from them. Nor were they who then believed constrained to believe. But grace was then first copiously offered them. And they did not thrust it away, so that a great multitude even of Gentiles were converted. In a word, the expression properly implies, a present operation of Divine grace working faith in the hearers.
14
14:1 They so spake - Persecution having increased their strength.