This post is written by Leslie Hudson as a companion for Unit 35, Session 3 of The Gospel Project for Adults, Volume 12: From This World to the World to Come (Summer 2024).
Many great stories are based on someone making a promise. Whether a promise of love, protection, camaraderie, or victory, the protagonist makes a bold promise and the rest of the story is asking the tense question: Will it happen? Really?
My favorite movie of all time is The Princess Bride, and it follows this tension of a promise kept. It starts with a classic, almost cheesy, premise: a young farm boy (Westley) falls in love with a maiden (Buttercup). But he has no money for marriage, so he “packed his few belongings and left the farm to seek his fortune across the seas.”* Obviously, the young Buttercup realizes this will be a dangerous undertaking and fears she’ll never see him again. But then he makes this promise: “Hear this now: I will always come for you.”
But almost immediately, Buttercup receives word that Westley never made it to his destination; his ship had been attacked by pirates, and this particular pirate never left captives alive. So Buttercup becomes a shell of herself, loses hope, and gives up on all her hopes and dreams. Tragic.
So what in the world does this movie and its plot have to do with Paul sitting in a courtroom in Caesarea? Everything. You see, Paul’s life story follows the same premise about a promise: After being blinded by the presence of Jesus en route to take Christians to trial in Jerusalem, Paul was given a promise through the messenger Ananias: “This man is my chosen instrument to take my name to Gentiles, kings, and Israelites. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name” (Acts 9:15-16). Paul had been given a personalized promise from Jesus: Yes, he would suffer, but he would carry the name of Jesus to every type of people in Paul’s word: Israelites, non-Israelites, and even royalty.
Not only that, but Paul also understood that Jesus is the Son of God, and therefore, “every one of God’s promises is ‘Yes’ in him [Jesus]” (2 Corinthians 1:20). Paul, a devout Jew and student of the Jewish Scriptures, knew the many promises that God had made throughout the Law and the Prophets, and upon believing in Jesus, he saw that those promises of God were guaranteed by the Son of God Himself. Paul lived the rest of his days as a walking testimony to the fact that the promises of God and Jesus are true.
Like Buttercup, though, we can be certain that Paul had been given a reason to doubt. In fact, he had many reasons to doubt: the Jews themselves rejected him and tried to kill him; some of the Christians feared him and didn’t live out their faith; he encountered persecution, struggles, bad luck, and even forces of nature that would have made even a strong believer question whether it was all real and whether it was all worth it. Paul faced a variety of beliefs in his day, from Gnostics to Judaizers and beyond, who professed that Paul’s beliefs weren’t valid.
Unlike Buttercup, though, Paul had confidence in the promises of Jesus. Regardless of the outcome, Paul was basing his entire life on the fact that God’s promises are true. Buttercup’s hope was in the promise of a human being, limited in knowledge and strength. But Paul’s hope was in the promise of the Son of God Almighty: omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. Paul knew that Jesus had conquered sin and death; he had no reason to doubt if Jesus would make good on His promises. The only thing he had to wait for was how, exactly, Jesus would make it happen.
In this week’s passage, we’ll see that original promise in Acts 9 come to fulfillment: Paul is going to speak to the king. And he takes the name of Jesus as his topic.
*All The Princess Bride quotes were taken from https://screencraft.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/The-Princess-Bride.pdf.
Leslie Hudson loves her mornings of silence, coffee, and Jesus—not in that order. She lives with her husband and kids in White Bluff, Tennessee, where they raise blueberries, figs, and bees. She loves to spend her free time reading, writing, journaling, and helping others know and follow Jesus.
