Acts chapter 19 tells a series of stories about Paul’s time in Ephesus. I’ll describe the plot of the chapter first and then describe how these stories give us insight into the nature of Paul’s gospel, and the gospel of the early Christian movement.

First, we read that Paul arrives in Ephesus and finds disciples of John the baptist there. We should remember that John preached in Israel before Jesus, and his message was that the people should repent, because the Kingdom of God was at hand. Jesus himself began as one of John’s disciples, and John recognized Jesus as his successor in their shared work. When Jesus began preaching, Jesus adopted John’s message and preached it as his own. The message of Jesus changed in tone and content over time as Jesus began to grapple with his inevitable clash with and rejection by the leaders of the people. In any case, this original message of John—the early message of Jesus—had reached Ephesus.

John is famous for saying of his successor, “I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mark 1:8). Paul asks if this portion of John’s message has reached Ephesus and finds that it has not. The disciples of John in Ephesus say “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit” (Acts 19:2). They would have heard of the concept of the Spirit of God from their exposure to the Hebrew scriptures. But these disciples have not heard of the Spirit of God as the Spirit of Jesus, as the Spirit that conveys the personal presence and power of the one who succeeded John is his mission to the people of Israel. They had not heard that the Kingdom they await has arrived in the work of God through the man Jesus of Nazareth. But they are nevertheless receptive to this news! John’s message has prepared the way, and they are willing to have Paul baptize them in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Then, as John foretold, the Holy Spirit is manifest among them through speaking in tongues and prophesying—a confirmation that the name of Jesus is powerful.

Paul spends about two years in Ephesus, proclaiming his message about the work of God through the man Jesus of Nazareth, about the Spirit of God as the Spirit of the crucified and risen Jesus. Many people received his message and others opposed him, but we are told that “all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord” (Acts 19:10).

Paul’s message, as he wrote to the church in Corinth, is a message of power. “For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power” (1 Cor 4:20). As we will see shortly, Ephesus was a place full of magic and commerce with the spiritual world. I understand that in those days magical books were called “Ephesian scripts”, which suggests that magic and spiritual power were central to the Ephesian brand. In fact, magic was a central to the Ephesian economy and way of life.

In this context—in a city where magic and spiritual powers were taken for granted as a normal and even necessary part of life, culture, and industry—we read that “God did extraordinary miracles through Paul” (Acts 19:11). Miracles are extraordinary by definition. Yet these miracles are strange ones. Things that Paul had touched, like handkerchiefs or aprons, began to act as magic charms. Those who could obtain them were healed from sickness or released from the grip of evil spirits. Paul was fitting in as yet another Ephesian peddler of spiritual power and magic charms, at least in the eyes of many.

Naturally, the magical quality of Paul’s success gets attention. We then read that seven Jewish exorcists in Ephesus seek to employ the magical powers that they perceive in Paul’s teaching and person. They know that Paul preaches about a man named Jesus and that this name of Jesus has spiritual power. Could this Jesus be understood along the same lines as other spiritual powers of Ephesus? The name of Jesus has proven effective through many extraordinary miracles, that is in many of the ways Ephesians would expect of a spiritual power—through the magic charms that Paul has touched.

This group of seven exorcists approach a person controlled by an evil spirit and say, “I adjure you by the Jesus who Paul proclaims” (Acts 19:13). The evil spirit replies, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” (Acts 19:15). The one evil-spirit possessed man then leaps upon these seven exorcists and “masters them”. They are driven away naked and wounded. To their surprise, the Spirit of Jesus plays by different rules than other powers available in Ephesus. Despite the extraordinary (albeit predicable) miracles, the name of Jesus cannot be controlled or employed like other names on the magic market. Jesus is a manifestly different power, as this failed exorcism makes known.

We then read that,

When this became known to all residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, everyone was awestruck; and the name of the Lord Jesus was praised. Also many of those who became believers confessed and disclosed their practices. A number of those who practiced magic collected their books and burned them publicly; when the value of those books was calculated, it was found to come to fifty thousand silver coins. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. (Acts 19:17-20).

Soon after, a silver smith named Demetrius perceived that Paul’s message posed a major economic threat to the city. He gathered his fellow tradesmen and made his case:

Men, you know that we get our wealth from this business. You also see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost the whole of Asia this Paul has persuaded and drawn away a considerable number of people by saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be scorned, and she will be deprived of her majesty that brought all Asia and the world to worship her (Acts 19:25-27).

To make a longer story short, the tradesmen take this threat to heart and a massive public backlash erupts in response to the economic threat of Paul’s message. This involves a riot that pushes the city to the brink of chaos, but a shrewd town clerk disperses the crowd.

In order to make better sense of these stories about Paul in Ephesus, I reread a book by historian Larry Hurtado entitled “Destroyer of the Gods.” It is important to appreciate that magic and commerce with the spiritual world was a normal and expected part of civic, family, and even professional life in the ancient Roman empire. It was normal and expected that a person would offer sacrifices to whichever god or spiritual power was thought to have domain over a particular aspect of one’s life. There wasn’t a sense of loyalty to a particular god, but a willingness to give honour to any particular god as the situation or context warranted. This means that a person would sacrifice to their family gods, the gods of their city, the gods of their trade, and so on. It wasn’t necessary for a person to worship every available god, but it was frowned upon to hold some particular god in contempt by denying worship or sacrifice when that god was relevant to the current situation or group of people.

It is important to remember that the early Christian movement was a Jewish sect. Jewish people were permitted to worship the God of their people within the Roman empire—indeed, no god was off limits in public life. But Jewish people practiced monolatry, the exclusive worship of one God (without denying the existence of others). This was considered a quirk of the Jewish people, and Jewish monolatry was tolerated within the Roman empire. It wasn’t a threat to Roman public life if one small ethnic group refused to partake in the normal spiritual commerce.

The early Christian movement inherited this monolatry as part of its Jewish roots. Indeed, as Paul writes,

Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist (1 Cor 8:5-6).

The main innovation in this passage is that Christians worship the one God of Israel by or through their worship of the one Lord Jesus Christ. That is, they believe that God has commanded the worship of Jesus, that Jesus is worthy of the worship once reserved solely for his Father. In short, to honour the Son is to honour the Father, and that is what the Father requires.

If that was the whole story there would be no uproar in Ephesus. But Hurtado observes in his work is that the early Christian movement was not merely monolatry, but a trans-ethnic monolatry movement. That is, the message that Paul proclaimed insisted on monolatry, but further invited people of all ethnic groups and social stations to practice that monolatry. If we follow the money, Jewish monolatry alone wasn’t a threat to the silversmiths of Ephesus. It is Paul’s trans-ethnic universal invitation to monolatry that poses a major economic and social threat.

What then does it mean to have a universal invitation to monolatry as a central component of the Christian proclamation? What does an exhortation to universal trans-ethnic Jesus-based monolatry look like today? If our gospel is going to comport with Paul’s, what must it include?

First, our gospel must be about Jesus. We believe that the God of Israel—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—is the God and Father of Jesus of Nazareth. We proclaim that the character and purposes of God are manifest in the character and purposes of the man Jesus of Nazareth. Put another way, in a world where everyone has an opinion about God and what God is like, we proclaim that Jesus gets it right. In fact, once we get to know the Jesus of the New Testament, we find that he raises our expectations for what counts as God. As HR Mackintosh wrote, “Had we not seen Jesus, we might have been satisfied with less; but by His character He has spoiled us for any poorer or lower idea of the Divine” (God in Experience, 131). Put simply, God is like Jesus, like Father like Son.

Second, our gospel is an invitation to monolatry—the exclusive worship of the God and Father of Jesus Christ. Worship can be ceremonial or practical, but it always involves a degree of trust, dependence, obedience, and even adoration. Our gospel is an invitation to trust the God in the same way that Jesus did, to treat Jesus as the truest representation of God’s character and purposes in the world. Put bluntly, this involves refusing to recognize any other person or power that postures as worthy of our worship. For those who worship Jesus, there can be no worthy substitute or co-recipient of our unqualified trust, dependence, obedience, and adoration. This can put us in a difficult situation, as we navigate the loyalties that our relationships and institutions take for granted, much like the magic market of ancient Ephesus.

There is no simple answer for how a Christian can follow Jesus and continue to live in the domain of other powers. A good place to start is to consider Paul’s advice about eating meat sacrificed to idols in Corinth and Rome. Paul doesn’t forbid eating meat that was once sacrificed to idols. But he insists, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons” (1 Cor 10:21). Our actions in and of themselves do not have an absolute meaning. The same action can mean different things to different people, and in different contexts. Monolatry can’t be a list of new rules, but a guiding loyalty to Jesus and contempt for all rival powers. This means that Paul can say,”whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:31). We would do well to consider whether our normal actions and daily patterns are rooted in a loyalty to Jesus or a habitual trust in other powers.

Finally, our gospel is universal—a trans-ethnic invitation to all people regardless of their status as defined by the powers. This is where the offense of the gospel becomes clearest. The universal gospel is the good news of God’s gift to all people, regardless of how the powers classify and categorize those people as worthy or unworthy, fortunate or unfortunate, exalted or untouchable, blessed or cursed. The systems in which we live and move and have our being quantify our worth and value in both explicit and implicit ways. You can go to a bank and they will literally tell you your net worth. Or you can experience either invisible obstacles or surprisingly good luck in your work and community on account of silent but powerful caste systems.

The gospel holds these value judgments in contempt on account of God exalting the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, a certified loser by any metric. When we live as if the gospel is universal, as if the value and worth assigned to people by the powers are illegitimate, we risk offending the powers in a way that private monolatry never could. The good news is that the power of God is universally available through the Spirit of Jesus, and that this power, the love of God “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5), defeats all other powers in the lives of those who receive it.