THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
THE ROMAN IMPRISONMENT
(Acts 28:16-31)
Paul's mission to Jerusalem from a human standpoint proves to be an unmitigated disaster. Although he went to Jerusalem with the relief offering in order to create unity between the Gentile and the Jewish factions of the church, Jews from Asia (western Turkey) seize him in the temple precincts and try to kill him. Such a commotion erupts in the temple precincts that the commander of the Roman forces is alerted and sends troops to rescue Paul from the mob. When it appears that Paul is going to escape the wrath of the Jews, they devise a plan to ambush and assassinate him. The commander of the Roman forces Claudius Lysias sends Paul to Caesarea the headquarters of the Roman governor Felix who imprisons him for the next 2 years. Upon his transfer from Caesarea to another post Felix leaves Paul imprisoned out of favor for the Jews.
Felix's replacement, Procius Festus, likewise, desires to do the Jews a favor by sending Paul back to Jerusalem. Although both Roman governors (Felix and Festus) recognize Paul's innocence, they try to appease the Jews. Realizing the danger that returning to Jerusalem posed for him, Paul exercises his prerogative as a Roman citizen and appeals to Caesar. Festus then sends Paul by sea to Rome to stand trial in the imperial courts, possibly before Nero Caesar himself.
PAUL'S MINISTRY IN ROME (28:16-29)
INTRODUCTION
When Paul arrives in Rome, the Romans assign him to house arrest. This involves first a situation in which he has to pay for his own apartment(s). Second, although he is not located in a prison, he is constantly chained to guards who are rotated probably every four to six hours. Third, although Paul is not free to move about freely in Rome, he is allowed to have guests. Whereas Paul's usual custom upon entering a city for the first time is to visit the local Jewish synagogue, Paul's situation in Rome prevents him from being able to do this. Instead he summons the leaders (literally "the first ones" or "primary ones") of the synagogue to visit with them.
When the Jewish religious leaders approach Paul, he informs them of the events which led to his Roman imprisonment. As you study what Paul says and response of the Jewish religious leaders, you witness the model of diplomacy. First, Paul very tactfully says that although he has done nothing against Jewish customs or the Jewish people, he was delivered over to the Roman authorities. (Notice that he does not say who "delivered him" over to the Romans—the Jews! Next, remember that he was not delivered over. In fact the Jews were not interested in delivering him over to anybody; they were trying to kill him when the Romans actually came and rescued him!)
Next, Paul claims that he is "in chains for the sake of the hope of Israel." If a Jew heard this, he would have no problems at all with Paul. Every Jew hoped that God one day would send the Messiah anointed with His Spirit to bring about the destruction of Israel's enemies, and usher in the resurrection and the reign of God. They would though have disagreed violently with Paul's application of that hope to Jesus. The very idea that the Messiah would die on a cross to defeat Israel's enemies, that Israel's enemies were none other than the Israelites themselves, and that this same Jesus had risen from the dead would have been repugnant to them. Paul "fails" to mention his application of that hope; instead he just mentions the hope itself.
Now look at the response of the Jewish synagogue officials for another example of diplomacy. They claim that they have received no news or instructions from the Jerusalem religious authorities regarding Paul, especially about how to respond to him. In fact they have not even heard about him from any Jews anywhere. Instead they are willing to give him the "benefit of the doubt" and listen to what he has to say about this “sect.” They need to warn him though that they have heard that this sect is spoken of badly in every place.
First, their claims are hard to believe. They are acting as if Christianity has not even touched their situation at all. This is puzzling because less than 10 years earlier the emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome because of the riots in the Jewish quarters regarding Christianity. Second, maybe the Roman Jews were isolated from the rest of the Jewish world; however, the fact that Jews formed a sizeable and influential portion of Roman society makes this hard to believe. What we are probably seeing here is a game of chess in which the different players are sizing each other up before making some serious moves.
PAUL'S PRESENTATION TO THE JEWISH RELIGIOUS LEADERS (28:17-29)
On an appointed day the Jewish religious leaders return to hear Paul's presentation of the gospel. Paul presents his standard version of the gospel: the OT had prophesied that the anointed Messiah would suffer in order to bring about the kingdom of God, that after His resurrection and exaltation He would bestow His Spirit upon His followers so that they could experience the life of the kingdom of God, and that one day He would return to judge the world and to consummate His reign. Paul receives the response from these Jews which he usually received from Jewish audiences—some believed while the vast majority did not believe.
For the first time in Acts Paul explains the theological reason the Jews have rejected God and the gospel about Jesus. Quoting Isaiah 6:9-10 Paul claims that the Jews are fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy that although the Jewish people would hear and see God, they would not believe. The implication is that God will harden their hearts so that they will no longer be able to repent. This way God will not have to turn and forgive them of their sins.
This passage taps into one of the 2 most important issues Christianity has had to address—the problem of suffering and the reason the Jewish people rejected Jesus as their Messiah. This last issue is important because many Jews claim that Jesus is not the Messiah because the vast majority of the Jewish people rejected Him and still reject Him. It stands to reason that if God was going to send the Messiah to the Jewish people then they would have recognized Him and accepted Him. The fact that they rejected Jesus then proves that He is not the Messiah.
Although Paul touches upon this issue here in these verses, he addresses it at length in Romans 9-11. Paul argues first that the Jewish people rejected God because God rejected them (Rom. 9:6-29). Whereas we might recoil in horror at this thought, Paul responds that since God is the Creator He is free to do with His creation whatever He wants to do. If God wants to reject His creation, He is free to do so and we have no right to complain.
In the next stage of his argument Paul says though that when it is all said and done that Israel was the one who initially rejected God and not vice versa (Rom. 9:30-10:21). Israel was simply intent on achieving righteousness in her own strength and power. God then rejected Israel because Israel rejected Him.
Paul is not the only one who taught this. Too many times when we read the OT we look at it through rose-colored glasses. We really kowtow to the Jews, treating them like something they are not. In Stephen's sermon we see the NT view of the history of the Jewish people. Whenever God raised up a deliverer for His people, they rejected him. We see this in the history of Joseph (Acts 7:9-10) and in the history of Moses (7:23-28, 39-41). In fact Stephen based upon Amos 5:25-27 paints a much different picture of the wilderness wanderings than what we have been taught. According to Stephen the tabernacle in the wilderness became in the eyes of most of the Israelites the tabernacle of the Amorite (Ammonite) god Moloch, while they carried along with them the star of the Egyptian (Coptic) god Rompha. The rejection of Jesus, God's ultimate deliverer by the Jewish people, was not a blip on the screen of their relations with God; it was the conclusion of a long history of their rejecting God.
Where did Stephen and Paul get such an interpretation of the OT (other than from a serious reading of the OT itself)? From Jesus. In Jesus' parable of the keepers of the vineyard God continually sends messengers to the keepers of the vineyard who reject not only the messengers but ultimately God Himself. This rejection climaxes when the keepers reject and even kill the Son of God the owner of the vineyard. The passage in Isaiah implies that God is "fed up" with the Jewish people. For centuries He has reached out to them, and for centuries they have rejected Him. Whenever He disciplined them, they exercised shallow repentance. The moment things got good, they rejected Him once more by turning to idols. God finally said, "Enough is enough." He would not allow for shallow repentance. Instead He would harden their hearts after so many years of shallow repentance that they wouldn't even fake repentance any more. It is not a picture we like to paint of God; however, it is an accurate one which shows not how cruel God is but how stubborn the Jewish people have been over the centuries.
In the third stage of his argument (Rom. 11:1-36) Paul claims that the hardening of Israel is both partial and temporary. It is partial in that not all of Israel rejected Jesus. Before people run off and say that the Jewish people rejected Jesus, they need to remember that many Jews indeed have accepted Jesus. Paul reminds his readers that he just happens to be a Jew. (In fact the first Christians were Jews.) If people claim though that it is only a small minority of the Jews who accepted Jesus, then they also need to remember that it has always only been the small minority of the Jews who have accepted God and His messengers. When Elijah complains that he alone out of all Israel is left to worship God, God informs him that 7000 men have not bowed the knee to Baal (Rom. 11:4). The idea is that it has always been only the small remnant of Jews who have accepted God. The fact that only a small portion of the Jewish people has accepted Jesus then confirms the fact that He is the Messiah. We would need to question Jesus being the Messiah if the vast majority of the Jews indeed had accepted Him.
The hardening of Israel though is temporary. Who knows what Paul thought when he claimed that this hardening was temporary since the hardening has existed for ~2000 years? The NT though does claim that after the period of the Gentiles (that period in which a vast number of Gentiles proclaim Jesus as the Messiah), then God will turn one final time in a dramatic way to save Israel. The salvation of the Jewish people will be so massive that Paul says, “[in effect] All Israel will be saved" (Rom. 11:25).
When will this occur? Many well-meaning Christians claim that this will occur right after the rapture takes place at the beginning of the Great Tribulation. They claim that when the Jewish people see that the Christians have been raptured just like the Christians claimed they would, then they will accept Jesus (these Jews will then be the 144,000 spoken of in Rev. 7). Although this does seem logical, it is not found in the Bible; therefore, we need to be very careful about promoting it too strongly. Although all actions from God are logical, not all logical actions are from God.
The Biblical response to this seems to be in Rev. 11 (the period of the 6th trumpet) where Christian witness is given in the city of Jerusalem (specifically identified as such because it is the place where the Lord was put to death). Two witnesses (literally 2 men or symbolical of strong witness) with characteristics of Moses and Elijah give strong witness to Christ. After a period in which they give dynamic testimony to Jesus the Antichrist destroys them. After a period of 3 1/2 days they are raised from the dead and ascend into heaven (is this literal or symbolic of triumphant Christian witness?). At that time an earthquake hits Jerusalem leveling a 10th of the city and killing 7000 people. When that happens, John says that the rest of the people in Jerusalem (Jews) glorify God, in other words, they become Christians. (Glorifying God elsewhere in Revelation always points to people in a right relationship with God. There is no reason to use it differently here.) After the acceptance of Christ by the Jewish people, the 7th trumpet is sounded, thus opening the door for the end to the Tribulation and the return of Christ.
(Just a final note. Rom. 9-11 has been misused to support Calvinism. This passage is not about the predestination of individual believers but about God's dealings with the Jewish people.)
CONCLUSION (28:30-31)
Here Luke concludes not only this passage but also the entire book of Acts. This passage has been so debated by NT scholars not for what it says but for what it does not say. What Luke says is easy to understand. Luke is writing that Paul remained in a Roman prison for about 2 years, implying that at the end he was either released or put to death. The former seems the more likely because of the upbeat tone of the passage and also because of what we read about Paul's later history in other writings. (According to Clement of Rome Paul eventually was able to preach the gospel to Spain—the westernmost part of the Roman empire. Eusebius informs us that he and Peter later suffered martyrdom during Nero's purge of the Christians in Rome which occurred approximately 3 years after Paul's release.) During those 2 years under house arrest Paul is able to preach the gospel to all who would hear him without any hindrance. Now what kind of conclusion is that?
It's a brilliant conclusion which fits in well with NT thought. First, notice that within a short span of 30+ years the early church carried out Christ's commission. The gospel has been preached to Jerusalem (Acts 1-7), to Judea and Samaria (8-12), and to the remotest parts of the earth (13-28). When the gospel reaches Rome, the "whole world" has been evangelized. Rome, the center of the known world, was the most fitting place for the gospel to be last preached. Luke is implying that just as this first generation fulfilled its charge to evangelize the whole world, then each succeeding generation including ours is to do the same.
Next, the message that the early church proclaimed is the message each succeeding generation of Christians should proclaim—the kingdom of God ushered in by the suffering Messiah Jesus. In our desire to be relevant or in our desire to minister to felt needs, we don’t have to but we can lose focus of the main thing—the rule of God established through the ministry of Jesus Christ. It is wonderful to teach English to the Hispanics in our community; however, if we don’t present Jesus to them, then we might as well perform these volunteer services at the YMCA or at the local community college. We need to extend benevolence to hurting families in our community; however, if we don’t offer them Jesus also, we might as well just operate out of the Good Will centers. We are neither a local community college or a Good Will center; we are a church charged with the task of bringing all people beneath the lordship of Jesus Christ. Whereas we need to be about these things, we are about them primarily in order to present Jesus to people in creative ways. We are not to promote strictly God since 95% of the world believes in God; there’s nothing really commendable about that. We need to be about Jesus. When we are about God, we are not necessarily about Jesus. When we are about Jesus, we are necessarily about God.
Finally, this passage confirms our belief in the universal lordship of Christ. The last word in the book of Acts is “unhindered.” This word does not apply to Paul since at that moment he was chained to a Roman soldier. He was being hindered. It refers to the gospel. Whatever else Acts is about, it is the story of the gospel overcoming every kind of conceivable barrier: persecution (Acts 4, 5, 7,8, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, etc.), internal divisions (5, 6), greed (8), theological barriers (11, 15), racial barriers (10, 15, 16), etc. Whatever barrier the gospel faced in those early years, it overcame. How can this be? The gospel overcomes all barriers and obstacles because of the power which is behind it—the power of the resurrected Christ who is Lord over all things, even barriers. All it takes for the gospel to be successful is a man or woman fully committed to the Lord who will allow the Lord to work through them. The ending of Acts therefore is really a beginning. It challenges each succeeding generation of Christians to rise up to the challenge of the risen Lord (1:8) to witness to their Jerusalems, their Judeas, their Samarias, and their remotest part of the earth. The supernatural power behind the gospel—the Spirit of the Risen Lord—ensures their success.