This is where the letters begin. From here on the story runs on two tracks at once — where Paul is, and what he is writing — and the two explain each other. James · Galatians · 1 & 2 Thessalonians

The question

Men come down from Judea to Antioch teaching that unless the Gentile believers are circumcised and keep the law of Moses, they cannot be saved. Put plainly, the question is this: to follow the Jewish Messiah, must you first become a Jew?

Everything hangs on it. Answer yes, and the church remains a movement within Judaism. Answer no, and a Gentile can belong on the same terms as anyone else. Paul and Barnabas are sent to Jerusalem to settle it.

The Council

After much debate, Peter stands and points back to Cornelius — God gave them the Spirit exactly as He gave it to us, and made no distinction. Paul and Barnabas describe what they have seen among the Gentiles. Then James — the brother of Jesus, now leading the Jerusalem church — gives the judgment: do not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. A short letter goes out asking only that they avoid a few practices that would make table fellowship impossible.

It is a remarkably generous decision by men who had every cultural reason to decide otherwise. It did not end the argument on the ground — Paul is still fighting it in Galatians, and confronts Peter to his face over it at Antioch — but it settled the principle.

Acts 15:1–35 · Galatians 2:11–21

James — the earliest letter

James, about A.D. 46–49. Probably the first New Testament book written, and the most Jewish in flavor — short, blunt, practical, closer to Proverbs or to the Sermon on the Mount than to anything of Paul’s. Faith that produces nothing, he says, is dead. Watch your tongue. Do not flatter the rich man and shame the poor one. Written by the brother who had not believed Him during His lifetime, and who now calls himself simply a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Galatians

Galatians, about A.D. 48–51. The angriest letter Paul wrote, and the one with no thanksgiving at the start — he goes straight to the point. Someone has come in behind him telling his converts they must be circumcised after all. His answer is that if righteousness could come through the law, Christ died for nothing.

A note on the date. Galatians is dated anywhere from 48 to 57 depending on which region “Galatia” means and whether it was written before or after the Council. Nothing in the letter’s argument depends on settling that, but you will see different years in different books, and now you know why.

The Second Journey

It begins with a quarrel. Barnabas wants to take John Mark again; Paul, remembering that he had abandoned them, refuses. They part ways — Barnabas takes Mark to Cyprus, Paul takes Silas overland. Luke does not take sides, and the outcome is two missions instead of one. Years later Paul asks for Mark by name as useful to him, so it healed.

Paul picks up Timothy at Lystra, and somewhere in Troas a man from Macedonia appears in a vision asking him to come over — and the mission crosses into Europe. From this point Luke starts writing “we,” which is generally taken to mean he joined them here.

Then Philippi: Lydia the dealer in purple cloth, a slave girl freed from a spirit, and Paul and Silas singing in the jail at midnight until an earthquake opens the doors — and the jailer, who had been about to fall on his sword, is baptized before morning. Then Thessalonica, where the trouble follows; Berea, where they check the Scriptures daily to see whether it is true; Athens, where Paul reasons with the philosophers from an altar to an unknown god; and finally Corinth, where he stays a year and a half, making tents with Priscilla and Aquila.

Acts 15:36–18:22

1 and 2 Thessalonians

Written from Corinth, about A.D. 51–52. Paul had been run out of Thessalonica after only a few weeks and had been worrying about the young church ever since. Timothy brings back good news, and Paul writes — warm, relieved, and answering the question they had sent back to him: what happens to believers who have already died before the Lord returns? The second letter follows soon after, correcting a rumor that the day had already come, and telling the ones who had quit working in expectation of it to get back to their jobs.

Next: three years in Ephesus, a riot, and the letter he writes to a church he has never met.