"Then after three years I went unto Jerusalem to get to know Cephas and I stayed toward him fifteen days... But other of the apostles I did not see if not Jacob the brother of the Lord... But what I am writing to you, behold, before God I am not lying... Then I went unto the regions of Syria and Cilicia."
-Paul did finally go up to Jerusalem, three years after either his conversion or after he returned to Damascus from Arabia. What this does mean is that Paul was no longer an infant in the faith. His message, which he had been preaching for quite some time, was already well-formed. The account in Acts does make it sound like Paul fled straight from Damascus to Jerusalem, but it is possiible that he went somewhere else in-between. Nowhere here however does Paul give us any hint of the extreme life-threatening persecution he faced in either city. He also fails to mention here the ostracism he endured from the disciples upon arriving in Jerusalem, and the role that Barnabas played in resolving that. In fact there are some discrepancies between this account and the narrative in Acts 9 to make one think that we’re reading about two different situations, two different visits to Jerusalem. And yet there are enough consistencies to suggest otherwise, specifically that he did go to Jerusalem at some point after leaving Damascus, and while in Jerusalem he met with some apostles, and afterwards he departed for the regions of Syria (Acts says Caesarea - which was in that region) and Cilicia (Acts says Tarsus, which was in that region - cf Acts 9.30). And, as we read further on in this chapter, Paul made no significant visit to Jerusalem again until much later, as part of a delegation with Barnabas and Titus (this would be the so-called Jerusalem Council about which we read in Acts 15.1-2ff)(Acts 11.29-30 and Acts 12.25 also mentions a brief visit where Barnabas and Paul took a famine relief contribution from Antioch to Jerusalem for the believers in Judea, but Paul does not find it necessary to mention that in his account here).
-It sounds here like Paul in going to Jerusalem was deliberately going in order to get to know Peter (Cephas), but that his contact with Peter (and just one other apostle - James, the brother of Jesus) was rather brief - just a couple of weeks, altho he actually did stay with Peter. In Acts, however, we have Paul the former persecutor being initially shunned by the believers in Jerusalem until Barnabas intervened and literally brought him to the apostles, where it sounds like Barnabas was the one who conveyed the details of Paul’s miraculous conversion and subsequent ministry in Damascus, after which Paul embarked on a time of preaching in Jerusalem. Reading Acts 9.26-30 might give one the impression that Paul was in Jerusalem for quite some time on that initial post-conversion visit, but Paul states that it was definitely brief - merely 15 days. In the end, the discrepancies between the account in Acts and what Paul is saying here are not irreconcilable, and in no way detract from his main point here, which is that his time in Jerusalem and contact with the apostles was in fact so brief as to contribute nothing of substance to the content of his message, one which he had already been preaching for several years. His message from the very beginning, received directly from the Lord and untainted by any human agent, was salvation for Jews and Gentiles alike by grace alone through faith alone and not by any works. That’s the Good News, and it is really good to this day...!
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