'And it came to pass, that, after three days, Paul called the chief of
the Jews together: and when they were come together, he said unto them,
Men and brethren, though I have committed nothing against the people or
customs of our fathers, yet was I delivered prisoner from Jerusalem
into the hands of the Romans; 18. Who, when they had examined me, would
have let me go, because there was no cause of death in me. 19. But when
the Jews spake against it, I was constrained to appeal unto Caesar; not
that I had ought to accuse my nation of. 20. For this cause therefore
have I called for you, to see you, and to speak with you: because that
for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain. 21. And they said
unto him, We neither received letters out of Judaea concerning thee,
neither any of the brethren that came shewed or spake any harm of thee.
22. But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning
this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against. 23. And when
they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging;
to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them
concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the
prophets, from morning till evening. 24. And some believed the things
which were spoken, and some believed not. 25. And when they agreed not
among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word,
Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esias the prophet unto our fathers, 26.
Saying, Go unto this people, and say. Hearing ye shall hear, and shall
not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: 27. For the
heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of
hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with
their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart,
and should be converted, and I should heal them. 28. Be it known
therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the
Gentiles, and that they will hear it. 29. And when he had said these
words, the Jews departed, and had great reasoning among themselves. 30.
And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all
that came in unto him, 31. Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching
those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence,
no man forbidding him.'--ACTS xxviii. 17-31.
We have here our last certain glimpse of Paul. His ambition had long
been to preach in Rome, but he little knew how his desire was to be
fulfilled. We too are often surprised at the shape which God's answers
to our wishes take. Well for us if we take the unexpected or painful
events which accomplish some long-cherished purpose as cheerfully and
boldly as did Paul. We see him in this last glimpse as the centre of
three concentric widening circles.
I. We have Paul and the leaders of the Roman synagogue. He was not the
man to let the grass grow under his feet. After such a voyage a pause
would have been natural for a less eager worker; but three days were
all that he allowed himself, and these would, no doubt, be largely
occupied by intercourse with the Roman Christians, and with the
multitude of little things to be looked after on entering on his new
lodging. Paul had gifts that we have not, he exemplified many heroic
virtues which we are not called on to repeat; but he had eminently the
prosaic virtue of diligence and persistence in work, and the humblest
life affords a sphere in which that indispensable though homely
excellence of his can be imitated. What a long holiday some of us would
think we had earned, if we had come through what Paul had encountered
since he left Caesarea!
The summoning of the 'chief of the Jews' to him was a prudent
preparation for his trial rather than an evangelistic effort. It was
important to ascertain their feelings, and if possible to secure their
neutrality in regard to the approaching investigation. Hence the
Apostle seeks to put his case to them so as to show his true adherence
to the central principles of Judaism, insisting that he is guiltless of
revolt against either the nation or the law and traditional
observances; that he had been found innocent by the Palestinian
representatives of Roman authority; that his appeal to Caesar, which
would naturally seem hostile to the rulers in Jerusalem, was not meant
as an accusation of the nation to which he felt himself to belong, and
so was no sign of deficient patriotism, but had been forced on him as
his only means of saving his life.
It was a difficult course which he had to steer, and he picked his way
between the shoals with marvellous address. But his explanation of his
position is not only a skilful piece of _apologia_, but it embodies one
of his strongest convictions, which it is worth our while to grasp
firmly; namely, that Christianity is the true fulfilment and perfecting
of the old revelation. His declaration that, so far from his being a
deserter from Israel, he was a prisoner just because he was true to the
Messianic hope which was Israel's highest glory, was not a clever piece
of special pleading meant for the convincing of the Roman Jews, but was
a principle which runs through all his teaching. Christians were the
true Jews. He was not a recreant in confessing, but they were deserters
in denying, the fulfilment in Jesus of the hope which had shone before
the generation of 'the fathers.' The chain which bound him to the
legionary who 'kept him,' and which he held forth as he spoke, was the
witness that he was still 'an Hebrew of the Hebrews.'
The heads of the Roman synagogue went on the tack of non-committal, as
was quite natural. They were much too astute to accept at once an _ex
parte_ statement, and so took refuge in professing ignorance. Probably
they knew a good deal more than they owned. Their statement has been
called 'unhistorical,' and, oddly enough, has been used to discredit
Luke's narrative. It is a remarkable canon of criticism that a reporter
is responsible for the truthfulness of assertions which he reports, and
that, if he has occasion to report truthfully an untruth, he is
convicted of the untruth which he truthfully reports. Luke is
responsible for telling what these people found it convenient to say;
they are responsible for its veracity. But they did not say quite as
much as is sometimes supposed. As the Revised Version shows, they
simply said that they had not had any official deputation or report
about Paul, which is perfectly probable, as it was extremely unlikely
that any ship leaving after Paul's could have reached Italy. They may
have known a great deal about him, but they had no information to act
upon about his trial. Their reply is plainly shaped so as to avoid
expressing any definite opinion or pledging themselves to any course of
action till they do hear from 'home.'
They are politely cautious, but they cannot help letting out some of
their bile in their reference to 'this sect.' Paul had said nothing
about it, and their allusion betrays a fuller knowledge of him and it
than it suited their plea for delay to own. Their wish to hear what he
thought sounded very innocent and impartial, but was scarcely the voice
of candid seekers after truth. They must have known of the existence of
the Roman Church, which included many Jews, and they could scarcely be
ignorant of the beliefs on which it was founded; but they probably
thought that they would hear enough from Paul in the proposed
conference to enable them to carry the synagogue with them in doing all
they could to procure his condemnation. He had hoped to secure at least
their neutrality; they seem to have been preparing to join his enemies.
The request for full exposition of a prisoner's belief has often been
but a trap to ensure his martyrdom. But we have to 'be ready to give to
every man a reason for the hope that is in us,' even when the motive
for asking it may be anything but the sincere desire to learn.
II. Therefore Paul was willing to lay his heart's belief open, whatever
doing so might bring. So the second circle forms round him, and we have
him preaching the Gospel to 'many' of the Jews. He could not go to the
synagogue, so much of the synagogue came to him. The usual method was
pursued by Paul in arguing from the old revelation, but we may note the
twofold manner of his preaching, 'testifying' and 'persuading,' the
former addressed more to the understanding, and the latter to the
affections and will, and may learn how Christian teachers should seek
to blend both--to work their arguments, not in frost, but in fire, and
not to bully or scold or frighten men into the Kingdom, but to draw
them with cords of love. Persuasion without a basis of solid reasoning
is puerile and impotent; reasoning without the warmth of persuasion is
icy cold, and therefore nothing grows from it.
Note too the protracted labour 'from morning till evening.' One can
almost see the eager disputants spending the livelong day over the
rolls of the prophets, relays of Rabbis, perhaps, relieving one another
in the assault on the one opponent's position, and he holding his
ground through all the hours--a pattern for us teachers of all degrees.
The usual effects followed. The multitude was sifted by the Gospel, as
its hearers always are, some accepting and some rejecting. These double
effects ever follow it, and to one or other of these two classes we
each belong. The same fire melts wax and hardens clay; the same light
is joy to sound eyes and agony to diseased ones; the same word is a
savour of life unto life and a savour of death unto death; the same
Christ is set for the fall and for the rising of men, and is to some
the sure foundation on which they build secure, and to some the stone
on which, stumbling, they are broken, and which, falling on them,
grinds them to powder.
Paul's solemn farewell takes up Isaiah's words, already used by Jesus.
It is his last recorded utterance to his brethren after the flesh,
weighty, and full of repressed yearning and sorrow. It is heavy with
prophecy, and marks an epoch in the sad, strange history of that
strange nation. Israel passes out of sight with that dread sentence
fastened to its breast, like criminals of old, on whose front was fixed
the record of their crimes and their condemnation. So this tragic
self-exclusion from hope and life is the end of all that wondrous
history of ages of divine revelation and patience, and of man's
rebellion. The Gospel passes to the Gentiles, and the Jew shuts himself
out. So it has been for nineteen centuries. Was not that scene in
Paul's lodging in Rome the end of an epoch and the prediction of a sad
future?
III. Not less significant and epoch-making is the glimpse of Paul which
closes the Acts. We have the third concentric circle--Paul and the
multitudes who came to his house and heard the Gospel. We note two
points here. First, that his unhindered preaching in the very heart of
the world's capital for two whole years is, in one aspect, the
completion of the book. As Bengel tersely says, 'The victory of the
word of God, Paul at Rome. The apex of the Gospel, the end of Acts.'
But, second, as clearly, the ending is abrupt, and is not a satisfying
close. The lengthened account of the whole process of Paul's
imprisonments and hearings before the various Roman authorities is most
unintelligible if Luke intended to break off at the very crucial point,
and say nothing about the event to which he had been leading up for so
many chapters. There is much probability in Ramsay's suggestion that
Luke intended to write a third book, containing the account of the
trial and subsequent events, but was prevented by causes unknown,
perhaps by martyrdom. Be that as it may, these two verses, with some
information pieced out of the Epistles written during the imprisonment,
are all that we know of Paul's life in Rome. From Philippians we learn
that the Gospel spread by reason of the earlier stages of his trial.
From the other Epistles we can collect some particulars of his
companions, and of the oversight which he kept up of the Churches.
The picture here drawn lays hold, not on anything connected with his
trial, but on his evangelistic activity, and shows us how,
notwithstanding all hindrances, anxieties about his fate, weariness,
and past toils, the flame of evangelistic fervour burned undimmed in
'Paul the aged,' as the flame of mistaken zeal had burned in the 'young
man named Saul,' and how the work which had filled so many years of
wandering and homelessness was carried on with all the old joyfulness,
confidence, and success, from the prisoner's lodging. In such
unexpected fashion did God fulfil the Apostle's desire to 'preach the
Gospel to you that are at Rome also.' To preach the word with all
boldness is the duty of us Christians who have entered into the
heritage of fuller freedom than Paul's, and of whom it is truer than of
him that we can do it, 'no man forbidding' us.