We Have a Reasonable Faith - Acts 18-19

Acts 18:4 (ESV)

And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks.

Acts 17:2 (ESV)

And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures,

Acts 17:17 (ESV)

So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.

Acts 18:19 (ESV)

And they came to Ephesus, and he left them there, but he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews.

Paul had a style.   Having been taught at the highest levels of Pharisaical methods, he was not afraid to open the Old Testament and explain that Jesus was the Christ (the Messiah).   The way he explained the Gospel was through the thought of reasoning.  The word used in these passages for reasoned is explained as follows in Vine’s Dictionary: 

(Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary) dialegomai (διαλέγομαι, 1256) primarily denotes “to ponder, resolve in one’s mind” (dia, “through,” lego, “to say”); then, “to converse, dispute, discuss, discourse with”; most frequently, “to reason or dispute with.”

We often think of the Gospel and faith in it as simply a blind belief.   We don’t typically think of it as a reasoning approach.   Most rational thinking people often reject the Gospel because they don’t see how a faith in something you can’t see or prove sounds rational, reasonable, or logical.   Paul was able to use the objective nature of the Old Testament prophets and writers to show them, from documents, written hundreds of years prior, that Jesus fulfilled all the requirements stated by these writers about the Messiah, the Savior of the world.   We do ourselves much harm when we, too, fall into the elementary thought that faith in Christ is simply a blind religious feel good faith.  It is not!   We can, like any other truth, show people the objective nature of our evidence and that we trust in God and His Son based upon sound reasoning.  In order to accept anything you must have faith in something.  It might be the evidence you see right in front of you (like creation).  It might be evidence shown to you (like documents written in history).   But we must present the Gospel without fear of using our reasoning to show that Jesus is the savior of the world.  The writer of Acts (Luke) uses this word several more times in Acts. 

• Acts 19:8

• Acts 20:7

• Acts 20:9

• Acts 24:12

• Acts 24:25

Paul’s style was to put faith in Jesus for His salivation.  But that didn’t mean he left his logic in the church parking lot, or, in this case, the Synagogue.