Paul’s First Missionary Journey

Overview

• Testament: New
• Book: Acts
• Chapters: Acts 13:1-14:28
• Summary: Barnabas and Saul are set apart by the Holy Spirit and commissioned at Antioch, travel through Cyprus and southern Galatia (Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe), planting churches in the face of fierce opposition — including Paul being stoned and left for dead at Lystra — before returning to Antioch and reporting God’s opening of “the door of faith unto the Gentiles.”

Details

The first missionary journey begins with an act of worship. At Antioch (Syria), prophets and teachers — Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, and Saul — were “ministering to the Lord, and fasting” when the Holy Spirit spoke: “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them” (Acts 13:2). The laying on of hands and the sending at Acts 13:3 is the model for missionary commissioning throughout church history: the church’s corporate worship, the Spirit’s sovereign selection, and the community’s formal authorization. From the beginning, this mission is not the apostles’ initiative but God’s.

The team traveled first to Seleucia (Antioch’s port) and then sailed to Cyprus — Barnabas’s home island — where they preached through the synagogues from Salamis to Paphos. At Paphos, the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus, “a prudent man,” desired to hear the word of God. A Jewish sorcerer named Elymas (Bar-Jesus) sought to prevent this, and Saul — “also called Paul” — fixed his eyes on him and pronounced a temporary blindness that immediately fell (Acts 13:11). The result: Sergius Paulus “believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord” (Acts 13:12). This is both Paul’s first miracle and the first recorded conversion of a named Gentile on the journey. It is also the moment in Acts when “Saul” becomes “Paul” — the Roman name that will carry the gospel across the Empire.

From Cyprus, Paul and Barnabas sailed to Perga in Pamphylia, where John Mark departed and returned to Jerusalem — a departure that will cause later conflict. They moved inland to Pisidian Antioch, where Paul preached his first extended synagogue sermon (Acts 13:16-41), a Pentecost-parallel with echoes of Peter’s sermon in Acts 2: a review of Israel’s history, the announcement of Jesus’s resurrection as fulfilling Psalm 2 and Isaiah 55, and a call for response. The initial reception was warm, but when nearly the whole city gathered the following Sabbath, the Jews “were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming” (Acts 13:45). This synagogue rejection triggers one of Acts’ programmatic declarations: “Lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth” (Acts 13:46-47), quoting Isaiah 49:6. The Gentiles rejoiced and believed, and the word spread throughout the region — until opposition from the city’s leading women and men drove Paul and Barnabas out.

At Iconium, the pattern repeated: initial success in the synagogue, a divided city, a plot to stone the missionaries, and a withdrawal. At Lystra, Paul healed a man lame from birth, prompting the crowd to declare in their Lycaonian tongue that Barnabas was Zeus and Paul was Hermes. Paul and Barnabas tore their clothes and preached a foundational sermon to pagans with no knowledge of the Scriptures, arguing from creation and God’s providential goodness (Acts 14:15-17) — a different apologetic approach than the synagogue sermons, and an important precursor to the Areopagus speech. But Jews from Antioch and Iconium arrived and turned the crowd: “And they stoned Paul, and drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead” (Acts 14:19). The disciples gathered around him and he rose — recovered miraculously or simply survived — and entered the city again the next day before pressing on to Derbe.

The return journey was as deliberate as the outward one. Paul and Barnabas retraced their steps through Lystra, Iconium, and Pisidian Antioch, “confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). They ordained elders in every church — establishing the presbyteral governance pattern that Paul will later systematize in the Pastoral Epistles — before returning through Pamphylia, Perga, Attalia, and home to Antioch. The report they gave there became a template for all future missionary reports: they “rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles” (Acts 14:27).

Key People Involved

• Paul (Apostle) — the primary preacher and miracle-worker from Paphos onward; stoned at Lystra; the journey’s theological engine
• Barnabas — co-commissioned by the Spirit; Paul’s equal partner; a “son of consolation” whose encouraging character stabilizes the mission
• John Mark — accompanies them as far as Perga; his departure is the immediate cause of the later Barnabas-Paul split

Key Places

• Antioch (Syria) — base of commissioning and return; home of the church that sent and received them
• Cyprus — first field; Barnabas’s home island; conversion of Sergius Paulus
• Lystra — where Paul was stoned; hometown of Timothy who joins the mission on the second journey
• Derbe — the turning point; from here they retraced their steps to strengthen the new churches

Important Verses

“Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.” — Acts 13:2

“Lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.” — Acts 13:46-47

“And they stoned Paul, and drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead.” — Acts 14:19

“And how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles.” — Acts 14:27

Cross-References

• Related: Jerusalem Council — triggered in part by the success of this journey and the question of what to require of Gentile converts
• Related: Cornelius’s Vision — the theological precedent that the first journey enacts at scale
• Related: Paul’s Second Missionary Journey — the next phase; Paul and Silas revisit these same Galatian churches at the outset
• OT Background: Isaiah 49:6 — “a light of the Gentiles” — explicitly quoted in Paul’s Pisidian Antioch sermon as the mandate for Gentile mission