On their first missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas had great breakthroughs in several cities, including Iconium. Fleeing persecution there, they arrived in Lystra and preached the gospel there. The impact was so powerful that the idolatrous people wanted to make kings of them and took them for an incarnation of their pagan gods. It took tearing their clothes and additional preaching to dissuade them.

Worthy of note is the presence of a crippled man in a service at Lystra (Acts 14:7-10). He was born that way, revealing it was a birth defect. Living with a problem from birth makes it a mental stronghold. It is difficult to imagine a change of circumstances when you grow up with a problem and the condition is what you have been used to all your life. It is a wonder to see such a man having faith to be healed. The man must be commended for being able to make a mental shift from an acceptance of the status quo to the possibility of change. The Bible describes such an attitude variously.

The Berean Christians were commended for being more noble than those of Thessalonians because they received the Word of God with all readiness of mind (Acts 17:11). We can commend this young mind for openness of mind that did not condemn the gospel he heard. Negative attitudes never allow truth to take root in the heart. The writer of Hebrews describes how some to whom the gospel was preached did not profit from it because they did not mix faith with it. The man in Lystra certainly mixed faith with what he heard.

This leads me to the overarching question in my mind; ‘What did Paul preach?’ What did the man hear? Faith comes by hearing, according to Romans 10:17. We just know that he preached the gospel but the details are not stated. However, we can deduce that whatever he preached gave him Faith to be healed. I can safely assume Paul’s sermon showed the man that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross of Calvary provided not just a way of salvation but also of healing. A gospel that does not include healing is not the full gospel of Jesus Christ. Sickness came into the world through sin as the inception of death in the body. The redemptive work of Christ which paid for our sins, therefore, paid for our sicknesses also (1 Peter 2:24).

I still feel my expression of the message is inadequate and underwhelming. How did Paul preach it that made a man who was crippled from birth to have a conviction he could be healed? However, 1 Thessalonians 1:5 holds a clue when Paul described how the gospel came to them in the Holy Spirit, in power, and much assurance or deep conviction as the NKJV puts it. The deep conviction of the Apostle Paul was transmitted to the hearer by the supernatural power of God. We’d look into that verse in more detail in my next article.

Victor Adeyemi