Reflections on Acts 22

Acts 22 (Contemporary English Version)


1. "My friends and leaders of our nation, listen as I explain what happened!"
   
2. When the crowd heard Paul speak to them in Aramaic, they became even quieter. Then Paul said:
   
3. I am a Jew, born and raised in the city of Tarsus in Cilicia. I was a student of Gamaliel and was taught to follow every single law of our ancestors. In fact, I was just as eager to obey God as any of you are today.
   
4. I made trouble for everyone who followed the Lord's Way, and I even had some of them killed. I had others arrested and put in jail. I didn't care if they were men or women.
   
5. The high priest and all the council members can tell you that this is true. They even gave me letters to the Jewish leaders in Damascus, so that I could arrest people there and bring them to Jerusalem to be punished.
   
6. One day about noon I was getting close to Damascus, when a bright light from heaven suddenly flashed around me.
   
7. I fell to the ground and heard a voice asking, "Saul, Saul, why are you so cruel to me?"
   
8. "Who are you?" I answered. The Lord replied, "I am Jesus from Nazareth! I am the one you are so cruel to."
   
9. The men who were traveling with me saw the light, but did not hear the voice.
   
10. I asked, "Lord, what do you want me to do?" Then he told me, "Get up and go to Damascus. When you get there, you will be told what to do."
    
11. The light had been so bright that I couldn't see. And the other men had to lead me by the hand to Damascus.
    
12. In that city there was a man named Ananias, who faithfully obeyed the Law of Moses and was well liked by all the Jewish people living there.
    
13. He came to me and said, "Saul, my friend, you can now see again!" At once I could see.
    
14. Then Ananias told me, "The God that our ancestors worshiped has chosen you to know what he wants done. He has chosen you to see the One Who Obeys God and to hear his voice.
    
15. You must tell everyone what you have seen and heard.
    
16. What are you waiting for? Get up! Be baptized, and wash away your sins by praying to the Lord."
    
17. After this I returned to Jerusalem and went to the temple to pray. There I had a vision
    
18. of the Lord who said to me, "Hurry and leave Jerusalem! The people won't listen to what you say about me."
    
19. I replied, "Lord, they know that in many of our meeting places I arrested and beat people who had faith in you.
    
20. Stephen was killed because he spoke for you, and I stood there and cheered them on. I even guarded the clothes of the men who murdered him."
    
21. But the Lord told me to go, and he promised to send me far away to the Gentiles.
    
22. The crowd listened until Paul said this. Then they started shouting, "Get rid of this man! He doesn't deserve to live."
    
23. They kept shouting. They waved their clothes around and threw dust into the air.
    
24. The Roman commander ordered Paul to be taken into the fortress and beaten with a whip. He did this to find out why the people were screaming at Paul.
    
25. While the soldiers were tying Paul up to be beaten, he asked the officer standing there, "Is it legal to beat a Roman citizen before he has been tried in court?"
    
26. When the officer heard this, he went to the commander and said, "What are you doing? This man is a Roman citizen!"
    
27. The commander went to Paul and asked, "Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?" "Yes," Paul answered.
    
28. The commander then said, "I paid a lot of money to become a Roman citizen." But Paul replied, "I was born a Roman citizen."
    
29. The men who were about to beat and question Paul quickly backed off. And the commander himself was frightened when he realized that he had put a Roman citizen in chains.
    
30. The next day the commander wanted to know the real reason why the Jewish leaders had brought charges against Paul. So he had Paul's chains removed, and he ordered the chief priests and the whole council to meet. Then he had Paul led in and made him stand in front of them.

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Our first inclination in reading this account is to assume that Paul was attempting to make a defense for himself before this Jewish crowd. When they hear how devote a Jew he was himself and how dramatic was his conversion experience they will surely understand and will calm down and let him go. But on second thought, Paul by this time had spoken in many synagogues giving this testimony and had on nearly every occasion been rejected, and on several occasions been beaten or even stoned. Thus it becomes doubtful that Paul spoke for his own defense since he knew reasonably well that this crowd would not accept his defense.

As stated in my reflections of the previous chapter, Paul was resolute in his determination to go to Jerusalem, even though he knew persecution awaited him there. He knew God had a mission for him and he was not going to back away from it regardless of the danger. This leads me to think that Paul's purpose in speaking to the crowd on this day was to use the opportunity given him to speak for Christ. He had on nearly every occasion been rejected by the Jews to whom he spoke for Christ, but also, on most of those occasions, there had been a few who received his message and believed. I suspect it was for those few that he spoke on this day.

Just as Paul was not to be deterred from preaching the gospel message by fear of personal harm, neither was he to be sidetracked by fighting for his personal rights. He spoke up for his rights on more than one occasion when he was beaten and or imprisoned unjustly for his preaching, but he didn't use those rights as a weapon, but rather as a trump card. On this occasion he quietly allowed himself to be arrested and placed in chains in preparation for a flogging before he calmly asked, "Is it legal for you to scourge a man who is a Roman citizen and is uncondemned?" I'm afraid I might have been taken away by the soldiers kicking and screaming that I was a Roman citizen and they couldn't do this to me. Not Paul. At the moment it would have its greatest impact, he calmly brought his citizenship to the attention of the commander. Learning this fact after he had arrested Paul and had also placed him in chains, the commander was then fearful for himself. At that point he was very interested to get to the bottom of this situation, as we see by his order the next day for a convening of the Sanhedrin.

Paul clearly understood his purpose and mission and was not to be swayed from it. There might be an occasion when it would benefit the gospel for Paul to fight for his rights, but if he were to do so, his motivation would be for the benefit of the gospel and not his rights. On this occasion he evidently considered it most beneficial to the gospel not to fight but merely to make strategic use of his rights as a means of prolonging his opportunity to be a witness for Christ.