What was the message Paul preached to the Gentiles?

Answer 1

Paul most often preached to some combination of Jews and Gentiles, but one of his sermons, delivered in Athens, had only the Greek audience in mind. This much of it is preserved in Scripture:

Acts 17:22-31 - Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you:

God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.

And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring.'

Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead." [NKJV]

Answer 2

We do not really know what Paul preached to the Gentiles. In his epistles, Paul says that he received the gospel from no man, but by direct revelation from God (Galatians 1:11-12: But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel that was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ).

Later, Paul went to Jerusalem to communicate to the brethren that gospel that he taught among the Gentiles, because he did not know whether the gospel he taught accorded with that of the Jerusalem church (Galations 2:2: "And I went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privily to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run , or had run, in vain."). Paul may have sought an exchange of beliefs, because of other missionaries who were turning up in his churches, preaching 'another Jesus' or 'another gospel'.

Acts of the Apostles, written several decades later, says that Paul was taken to Damascus, where he learnt the gospel from the other apostles. As a result, the modern assumption is that Paul taught the same message as we see in the New Testament gospels, but evidence in Paul's epistles suggests that this was not really the case.

Answer 3

Paul preached that salvation was available to both Jews and Gentiles through faith in Jesus Christ. He emphasized that the Gentiles did not need to follow Jewish laws and customs to be saved, but rather they could receive salvation by believing in Christ's death and resurrection. He also emphasized the need for repentance and living a life in accordance with the teachings of Jesus.