According to the New Testament account of Paul’s missionary journeys, the people in two cities with the same name, Antioch, had very different reactions to the Gospel. 

Antioch of Pisidia, the smaller city, was located northeast of Ephesus in what is now modern day Turkey. In the first century, it was part of the Roman Empire and had a population of just over 50,000. Antioch on the Orontes, also known as Antioch of Syria, was about 300 miles north of Jerusalem and had a population of more than half a million.

            In Acts 13:14, Paul and Barnabas departed from Perga and arrived in Antioch in Pisidia. On the Sabbath they preached to the Jews about Christ (13:6-41) and on the following Sabbath, they preached to the whole city, focusing more on the Gentiles (13:44-47), since many of the Jews had rejected the Gospel. Eventually, these Jews stirred up the chief men of the city, persecuted Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from the city (13:50). The Jewish leaders were not satisfied with forcing the missionaries to leave town and pursued Paul and Barnabas to Lystra (Acts 14:6-8) where they stirred up the people, stoned Paul, and threw him out of the city, thinking he was dead (14:19). However, Paul lived and continued to preach the next day before departing for Derbe.

Today we remember the Jewish people at Antioch of Pisidia first “followed Paul and Barnabas” and then became envious and opposed them because they spoke to “multitudes” of Gentiles who “were glad and glorified the word of the Lord” (13:43-49).

By contrast, Antioch of Syria had a better response to the Gospel and a greater influence on the development of Christianity than any other first century city except Jerusalem. Nicknamed “Queen of the East,” this Antioch was the third largest city in the Roman Empire, after Rome itself and Alexandria in Egypt. Located on the Orontes River, which flows into the Mediterranean about fifteen miles to the west, it was an important center for trade and learning. In addition, the Roman provincial mint was located there. Today, Antioch shows few signs of its past glory. Located in Syria, it has about 28,000 inhabitants.

After Stephen was stoned, persecution intensified in Jerusalem, and many believers were scattered. Some went as far as Antioch on the Orontes, preaching the Gospel—but only to the Jews (Acts 11:19). Then men came from Cyprus and Cyrene, preaching Jesus to the Gentiles also, and “a great number believed and turned to the Lord” (11:20, 21). Apparently, Jewish and Gentile believers were able to unite peacefully in their faith in Christ. When the church at Jerusalem heard about these conversions, they sent Barnabas to encourage the young congregation (vs. 22). Barnabas recruited Saul (later Paul) and brought him from Tarsus to Antioch. Both men worked with the church for a year. “And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch” (vs. 25, 26).

Other important Christian events are connected with Antioch of Syria. One of the deacons appointed in Acts 6:5 was a proselyte from Antioch. Prophets from Jerusalem came to Antioch and warned of persecution that was coming. The Christians at Antioch then sent relief to those that were about to suffer and entrusted Paul and Barnabas to carry it to the elders (11:29-30). It is also in Antioch that Paul confronted Peter regarding Peter’s refusal to eat with Gentiles when the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem visited the church (Galatians 2:11-14).

Antioch became a base of operations for Paul and Barnabas, at first together, and then Paul alone. Directed by the Holy Spirit, the church sent them on their first journey. They departed from Antioch and returned with reports of their work in Acts 14:25-27, 15:30-35, and 18:22, 23.

An early dispute in the church arose in Antioch, when some Jewish Christians came and argued that in order to be a Christian, the Gentiles must be circumcised. They took this dispute to Jerusalem, to confer with the apostles and elders there. Peter defended Paul and Barnabas’ position that circumcision was not necessary for salvation.

The two cities called Antioch are both well known among Christians today. The source of their fame, however, is different. One is infamous for persecution; the other is a good example of an active, dedicated church, striving to do God’s will.

Life is messy, like making sausages. When you think about it, a lot of food is like this. Pretty much everything from milk to steak to lettuce to mushrooms goes through at least one not-so-pretty stage as it passes from farm to fridge. Most of us city folks are happy with the hosed-down, shrink-wrapped groceries found in the aisles of the nearest megamart. Even there, however, we dare not poke our noses behind the mysterious swinging doors. After several summers in a grocery warehouse, and cleaning up a bakery every night after school, I can personally attest to the principle that ignorance is bliss when it comes to store-bought food.

A little mess along the way is not always a bad thing, of course. A farmer, a mechanic, or a construction worker will tell you, in no uncertain terms, that getting your hands dirty is part of the job. Indeed, an entire series on the Discovery Channel is predicated on this principle. Mike Rowe, host of “Dirty Jobs,” always begins with this word of explanation: “I explore the country looking for people who aren’t afraid to get dirty—hard-working men and women who earn an honest living doing the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us.”

What about making eternal life possible for the rest of us? In one sense, the task of redemption was a very orderly business. God made a plan and stuck to it. But a lot of the people we encounter along the way are messy. There was nothing neat and tidy about David’s life. We can say the same thing about the lives of Solomon, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Rahab… well, you get the picture.

Perhaps the messiest part of God’s plan was the cross itself. Some people find this particular incident decidedly off-putting. The cross was so violent, so painful, so awkward, so bloody. They would prefer that we look at something else. They want the cross to mean something else. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins says that the Christian doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is “barking mad.”[1] In other words, the idea that the Son of God would die on the cross, in our place, for our sins, is just plain crazy.

There are those who count themselves as Christians who would also avert their eyes from the brutality of Golgotha. They cannot bear the weight of the cross; they cannot bear the sight of the cross. Just as we want to be shielded from the messy business of raising beef or milking cows, so they want to shield us from the messy business of Jesus’ dying for our sins. This new gospel will permit us to emphasize the love of God that brought Him to the cross. It will cite His participation in human suffering. At all costs, however, it will shield the unchurched and the disaffected postmoderns from the sheer bloodiness of the cross. Feeling guilty for our own misdeeds is bad enough, so the thinking goes; feeling guilty that someone else bore the brunt of those misdeeds is too much to bear.

Steve Chalke and Alan Mann, who actually claim to believe in God, share some of Dawkins’ skepticism on this point. If the doctrine of substitutionary sacrifice is true, then the Father is guilty of “cosmic child abuse.”[2] What we really need, they think, is a hosed-down cross for a sin-free people. We need a God who suffers with us and never for us.

“Of course,” as Robert Coleman notes, “if somehow the blood could be taken out, then the Gospel would not be so offensive to our sensibilities (cf. Galatians 5:11). It’s the horrible spectacle of Calvary – that awful sight of the Son of God nailed to the tree, His tortured body writhing in pain, red blood streaming from His wounds running red down the wooden beam—that is the scene from which the proud of this world shirk in horror.”[3]

The apostle Paul promised this would happen. The cross, he said, would be offensive, scandalous (1 Corinthians 1:23). There is no getting past the messiness of the cross and the messiness of the lives—our lives—that made it so appallingly and gloriously necessary.

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“On a hill far away…” Christians are extremely familiar with the lyrics to this song. But have we ever stopped to consider that this is a real place? A place that changed history and a physical location that still exists today. There are more than 120 locations listed in the Bible, and yet none is more important to a Christian than Golgotha. Located outside the walls of Jerusalem two thousand years ago, Golgotha would have been a spot that was passed by quite frequently. Jesus and His apostles would have all been familiar with the spot on which Jesus would draw His last breath. It was a familiar location for the Jews. In fact, Mark 15:29 says “Those passing bywere hurling abuse at Him (Jesus).” The text says that people were passing by, which means that it was probably by a road. The Romans used crucifixion as a highly visible torturous means of death  as a reminder to others. Mark 15:40 says that women were looking on from a distance, which means that it was in a highly visible place. That is where most scholars get the idea that it was set upon a hill.

How big would this hill be? Since this was right outside the city of Jerusalem, it was probably not a huge hill—especially given the geography of the area. Standing at an elevation of 2,575 feet, the city of Jerusalem was mainly built on top of hills. Seven mountains surround the city, one of which is the well-known Mount of Olives. Even though there are seven mountains, none of them would be considered massive, since the tallest mountain (Mount of Olives) stands at 2,900 feet above sea level. Through the years, the exact location of Golgotha has become lost. Many believe that a place called Gordon’s Golgotha is where it was originally located, but nobody can be sure. What we can be sure of is that it was a very important place in the history of mankind. It is where Jesus Christ our Savior died to set us free. On this hill, the prophecy of Jesus bruising Satan’s head in Genesis 3:15 was fulfilled. It is where every human being gained a hope of living with God for all eternity and the ultimate act of love occurred. Everything in Christ’s life led up to the event of His death, and everything in history up to that point led to that hugely significant event also.
Translated into Aramaic, Golgotha means “Place of the Skull.” In Latin, the words are Calvariae Locus, which is where we get the term Calvary. Many have guessed as to why this location is called Golgotha or the Place of the Skull. Out of all of the many guesses, there are four prominent theories. First, the Aramaic contraction Gol Goatha means “Mount of Execution,” and being a place of execution there are many skulls left there. Second, it is said that it was located near a cemetery and the name was derived from all of the bones that were there. Third, the skull of Adam could have been buried there. Amazingly, this is the oldest theory there is. That is why many scholars believe that this is the true reason for the name. The Global Flood would make it difficult for one to precisely pinpoint this location; however, it is interesting that many scholars have reached this same conclusion. The fourth is that the location’s landscape resembles the shape of a skull. Pictures of the landscape of the fourth make it the most known theory and also the candidate for the most likely. So many things changed at that remarkable place. History was made. At that location God gave man a reason for living. It is a place that will always hold a special reverence in the mind of Christians and will be remembered from here until the coming of Christ.

Our understanding of even the most familiar stories of the New Testament can be enhanced by applying knowledge and experience acquired in fields of study other than theology. As a law professor, I enjoy studying and lecturing about the early Jewish and Roman legal systems. It brings out many meaningful details in the story of the trial of Jesus. Take, for example, the events recorded in Matthew 26:59-64:

1.      The trial of Jesus was the most unjust, illegal trial in history. The term council (Matthew 26:59) refers to the Great Sanhedrin consisting of seventy-one men, including the high priest. Established in Jerusalem during the intertestamental period, the council was the highest court of Israel—the equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court. These important Jewish leaders were supposed to be acting as impartial judges during Jesus’ trial. According to Matthew, however, they resorted to soliciting false testimony to convict Jesus (Matthew 26:59). They likely did so by bribing and assuring the witnesses that they would not be subject to any penalty for perjury. Under Jewish law, a false witness was supposed to be punished with the same penalty that was being sought for the defendant (Deuteronomy 19:16-19). In Jesus’ case, the false witnesses should have been sentenced to death for lying. Instead, they were encouraged to say anything that might incriminate Jesus.

Soliciting false witnesses was just one of many illegalities committed during Jesus’ trial. Under Jewish law a capital case was subject to strict legal procedures and evidentiary standards. Yet legal scholars estimate more than two dozen laws and procedures were ignored or violated during the trial of Jesus. There is only one plausible explanation for such an excessive number of judicial errors: the council members had already made up their minds. The trial was part of a larger plot to kill Jesus (Matthew 26:12; Luke 22:2; John 7:19; 8:37). Since the outcome was predetermined, there was little reason for the council to be concerned with legal safeguards.

2.      The trial of Jesus was one of the greatest proofs of Jesus' innocence. Under Jewish law, two credible witnesses were required to convict someone of a capital offense (Deuteronomy 17:6; 19:15). Each witness was required to provide detailed testimony concerning exactly who said or did what as well as when and where. If the witness accounts did not agree in every particular, both testimonies were thrown out.

The fact that the council had so much difficulty soliciting false testimony against Jesus speaks volumes about the blameless life Jesus lived. According to Matthew, many individuals were willing to testify but none of them had anything incriminating to say against Jesus (Matthew 26:60). Eventually two false witnesses testified to what Jesus had purportedly said about destroying the temple (Matthew 26:60-61).

According to Mark’s account, “their testimonies did not agree” (Mark 14:56). One witness apparently testified that Jesus said He is “able to destroy the temple” (Matthew 26:60-61). The other witness, however, claimed Jesus said, “I will destroy this temple” (Mark 14:58). It was unclear from these witnesses whether Jesus said that He would destroy the temple or that He coulddestroy it and then rebuild it in three days. Furthermore, one witness alleged Jesus referred to “the temple” while the other quoted Jesus as saying “this temple.” While both likely presumed Jesus was speaking of the actual temple in Jerusalem, the second witness’s account leaves open the possibility that Jesus was speaking metaphorically and was referring to His own body as the temple in question. Given the contradictions in their accounts, their testimony should have been excluded and the case against Jesus dismissed. 

The most amazing thing about their testimony was that it was apparently the worst thing anyone, even Jesus’ enemies, could drudge up about Jesus. If Jesus had been a mere human, imagine the testimony that might have been elicited. Every misstatement He made in His public ministry would have been scrutinized; every public misstep would have been twisted into a felony case. Despite the relentless efforts of the council to solicit all manner of lies, this flawed testimony about a relatively harmless statement was the best evidence that could be mustered against Him. This alone is powerful evidence that Jesus was in fact the perfect Son of God.

3.      The trial of Jesus was further evidence of Jesus' sacrificial love for mankind. Because of the obvious discrepancies in their testimony, the two false witnesses were not credible enough to satisfy the legal burden of proof in the capital case against Jesus. Therefore, all Jesus had to do was remain silent and the Sanhedrin would have had no evidence to convict Him. The Jewish ecclesiastical rule in this regard was similar to our modern constitutional right against self-incrimination. In capital cases, the Jewish rule was later interpreted to go even further than the U.S. Constitution and prohibited a guilty verdict based solely on a defendant’s confession, even a voluntary confession (Mishnah Torah, Sanhedrin 18:6). Therefore, Jesus was well within His legal rights to remain quiet. For a time Jesus did remain silent in the face of His accusers (Matthew 26:63). In so doing, He not only demonstrated His knowledge of the law but also fulfilled Messianic prophesy (Isaiah 53:7).

However, Jesus loved the souls of men too much to invoke the first century equivalent of the Fifth Amendment. While men had no compunction about treating Jesus unjustly, He still willingly paid the ultimate price for them to satisfy God’s perfect justice. When pressed by the high priest about whether He was the Christ, the Son of God, Jesus spoke the fatal words, “It is as you said” (Matthew 26:64). Instantly, the high priest construed Jesus’ statement as blasphemy, the penalty for which was death under Jewish law (Matthew 26:65-66). Of course, such a statement was only blasphemy if it were untrue. Yet, the chief priest and the rest of the council refused to entertain the possibility that Jesus was truly the Son of God. In the end, Jesus’ undeserved sentence was not only the result of the Jewish leaders’ refusal to acknowledge the law but was also the result of their refusal to acknowledge the Judge of all the earth who now sits at the right hand of God (Matthew 26:64; Acts 10:42; Romans 2:16; 2 Timothy 4:1; 2 Corinthians 5:10). Today, men are still guilty of making the same mistakes. As Christians it is our responsibility to uphold both. We must fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2) and continually confess before men that Jesus Christ is Lord (Matthew 10:32-33; Romans 10:9-10).