Beyond the Edge of the Known World: Paul's Vision for Spain

From Paul’s “road to Damascus”, the gospel light first ignited his world. Then onward to Antioch, where believers were first called Christians. From there, Paul's sandals carved paths through Galatia's highlands—westward. Through Ephesus, where the Word of God mightily spread for three years—west. Across the Aegean to Macedonia, Europe's first gospel foothold—west. Down to Corinth, then around to Illyricum's Adriatic coast—further and further west. With each missionary trip, like a river rushing toward the sea, Paul's journeys trace a relentless westward current, each journey pushing beyond the previous boundary of Christ's proclaimed name.

Now his finger hovers over the map's final westward edge. Spain. The end of the world as Rome knew it, where the Mediterranean empties into an endless and mysterious ocean and where the sun drowns each evening in waters no ship dared fully explore.

But Rome—the empire's glittering heart—already pulsed with gospel life planted by other hands. Perhaps Aquila and Priscilla carried the message there after Claudius expelled the Jews, their tentmaker's needles stitching Christ's name into conversations across the city's workshops. Perhaps believers scattered like seeds after Stephen's stoning took root in Rome's synagogues and other public places. However it happened, a church now thrives where Paul has never set foot.

This is precisely why he's coming to Rome. Not to preach where Christ is already named—his lifelong ambition won't allow it—but to pass through, to embrace brothers and sisters whose faith he's only heard about, to be "helped forward" by them toward untouched territory beyond.

"I have often been hindered from coming to you," he writes. Each time his heart pulled westward, the Spirit redirected him. Unfinished work. Churches needing foundation. But now, "from Jerusalem round about to Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel." The apostle surveys his life's labor like a farmer viewing harvested fields stretching to the horizon. The gospel foundation has been laid: the eastern empire seeded with churches.
So now, Spain beckons with that same pioneer call that once drew him from Antioch.

Imagine Paul envisioning the journey: Roman roads giving way to rougher paths, Atlantic salt replacing Mediterranean brine, tribal dialects replacing Greek and Latin, faces that have never heard Jesus's name looking up as he speaks it for the first time.

Rome is his waystation, not his destination. There he'll find fellowship, provisions, and blessing from a church built on another's foundation—a church whose existence frees him to push further west, where Christ has never been named, where the gospel light has never broken through pagan darkness.

The westward current, after years of divine delay, finally flows unhindered toward the world's edge.