Untitled Sermon (2)

Thank God for The Acts of the Apostles! The New Testament would be greatly impoverished without it

Live in that book, I exhort you: it is a tonic, the greatest tonic I know of in the realm of the Spirit

The question, however, is how are we going to interpret these narrative passages? For some of them are not self-interpreting, and contain within themselves few if any clues as to what we are intended to learn from them. Are they necessarily normative? Is the behaviour or experience recorded in them meant to be copied? or perhaps avoided

the didactic must guide us in evaluating and interpreting the descriptive. We have to look for teaching on the issue, first in the immediate context (within the narrative itself), then in what the author writes elsewhere, and finally in the broader context of Scripture as a whole

why Luke wrote his two-volume work on the origins of Christianity, at least three answers may be given. He wrote as a Christian historian, as a diploma and as a theologian-evangelist

Luke claimed in his preface to the Gospel to be writing accurate history, and it is generally agreed that he intended this to cover both volumes. For ‘it was the custom in antiquity’, whenever a work was divided into more than one volume, ‘to prefix to the first a preface for the whole

The truth probably lies at neither of these extremes. Although Luke’s medical background cannot be proved by his vocabulary, yet some residue of medical interest and terminology does seem to be discernible in his writing

Paul was held a prisoner in Caesarea (24:27), while Luke was a free man. How did he use this time? It would be reasonable to guess that he travelled the length and breath of Palestine, gathering material for his Gospel and for the early Jerusalem-based chapters of the Acts. He will have familiarized himself as a Gentile with Jewish history, customs and festivals, and he will have visited the places made sacred by the ministry of Jesus and the birth of the Christian community

He tells us about Peter, John, James the Lord’s brothers and Paul, but nothing about the other apostles, except that James the son of Zebedee was beheaded. He describes the spread of the gospel north and west of Jerusalem, but writes nothing about its progress east and south, except for the conversion of the Ethiopian. He portrays the Palestinian church in the early post-Pentecost period, but then follows instead the expansion of the Gentile mission under the leadership of Paul

Luke develops a political apologetic, because he is deeply concerned about the attitude of the Roman authorities towards Christianity. He therefore goes out of his way to defend Christianity against criticism. The authorities, he argues, have nothing to fear from Christians, for they are neither seditious nor subversive, but on the contrary legally innocent and morally harmless

Then Felix, Festus and Agrippa all failed to convict him of any offence—three acquittals corresponding to the three times Luke says Pilate had declared Jesus innocent

the Roman authorities conceded that Christianity was a religio licita (a lawful or licensed religion) because it was not a new religion (which would need to be approved by the state) but rather the purest form of Judaism (which had enjoyed religious freedom under the Romans since the second century BC

The second example of Luke’s ‘diplomacy’ is that he was a peacemaker in the church. He wanted to demonstrate by his narrative that the early church was a united church, that the peril of division between Jewish and Samaritan Christians, and between Jewish and Gentile Christians, was providentially avoided, and that the apostles Peter, James and Paul were in fundamental agreement about the gospel

There is really no evidence that in the early church there were two Christianities (Jewish and Gentile) headed by two apostles (Peter and Paul) in irreconcilable opposition to each other

Luke did not invent this apostolic harmony, as Baur argued: he rather observed it and recorded it. It is evident that he gives prominence in his story to Peter (chapters 1–12) and to Paul (chapters 13–28). It seems very probable as well that he deliberately presents them as exercising parallel rather than divergent ministries

The value of ‘redaction-criticism’ is that it portrays the authors of the Gospels and the Acts not as unimaginative ‘scissors and paste’ editors, but as theologians in their own right, who conscientiously selected, arranged and presented their material in order to serve their particular pastoral purpose

we must not set Luke the historian and Luke the theologian in opposition to each other, for he was both, and in fact each emphasis requires the other

Salvation, wrote Howard Marshall, ‘is the central motif in Lucan theology’,31 both in the Gospel (in which we see it accomplished) and in the Acts (in which we see it proclaimed

First, salvation has been prepared by God

Far from being an afterthought, it had been planned and promised for centuries. The same emphasis recurs throughout the Acts

Secondly, salvation is bestowed by Christ

Thirdly, salvation is offered to all peoples

The prominence given to the universal offer of the gospel comes with particular appropriateness from the pen of Luke. For he is the only Gentile contributor to the New Testament.34 Well-educated and widely travelled, he is the only Gospel-writer who calls the Sea of Galilee a ‘lake’, because he is able to compare it with the Great Sea, the Mediterranean

the contrasting parallel he draws between his two volumes was not between Christ and his church, but between two stages of the ministry of the same Christ

Jesus’ ministry on earth, exercised personally and publicly, was followed by his ministry from heaven, exercised through his Holy Spirit by his apostles

Moreover, the watershed between the two was the ascension. Not only did it conclude Luke’s first book36 and introduce his second (Acts 1:9), but it terminated Jesus’ earthly ministry and inaugurated his heavenly ministry

if the title ‘the Acts of the Apostles’ over-emphasizes the human element, ‘the Acts of the Holy Spirit’ over-emphasizes the divine

The most accurate (though cumbersome) title, then, which does justice to Luke’s own statement in verses 1 and 2, would be something like ‘The Continuing Words and Deeds of Jesus by his Spirit through his Apostles

Luke says Jesus only began his. True, he finished the work of atonement, yet that end was also a beginning

he is both the historical Jesus who lived and the contemporary Jesus who lives. The Jesus of history began his ministry on earth; the Christ of glory has been active through his Spirit ever since

before ending his personal ministry on earth, Jesus deliberately made provision for its continuance, still on earth (through the apostles) but from heaven (through the Holy Spirit

Just as the Spirit came upon Jesus to equip him for his public ministry,1 so now the Spirit was to come upon his people to equip them for theirs

Salvation is given to be shared

the mandate to witness, the ascended Lord who directs the mission from heaven, the centrality of the apostles in this task, and the coming of the Spirit to empower them.3 Only when these four elements were in place could the mission begin

It appears, then, that Jesus’ two main topics of conversation between his resurrection and his ascension were the kingdom of God and the Spirit of God. It seems probable that he also related them to each other, for certainly the prophets had often associated them. When God establishes the kingdom of the Messiah, they said, he will pour out his Spirit; this generous effusion and universal enjoyment of the Spirit will be one of the major signs and blessings of his rule; and indeed the Spirit of God will make the rule of God a living and present reality to his people

For if the Spirit was about to come, as he had said, did this not imply that the kingdom was about to come too? The mistake they made was to misunderstand both the nature of the kingdom and the relation between the kingdom and the Spirit

For the verb restore shows that they were expecting a political and territorial kingdom; the noun Israel that they were expecting a national kingdom; and the adverbial clause at this time that they were expecting its immediate establishment

But the kingdom of God is not a territorial concept. It does not—and cannot—figure on any map. Yet this is what the apostles were still envisaging by confusing the kingdom of God with the kingdom of Israel

who ‘had hoped that he [Jesus] was the one who was going to redeem Israel’,8 but had become disillusioned because of the cross. The apostles’ hope, however, had evidently been rekindled by the resurrection

In his reply Jesus reverted to the topic of the Holy Spirit

his promise that they would receive power was part of his reply to their question about the kingdom. For the exercise of power is inherent in the concept of a kingdom. But power in God’s kingdom is different from power in human kingdoms. The reference to the Holy Spirit defines its nature

The kingdom of God is his rule set up in the lives of his people by the Holy Spirit. It is spread by witness, not by soldiers, through a gospel of peace, not a declaration of war, and by the work of the Spirit, not by force of arms

in rejecting the politicizing of the kingdom, we must beware of the opposite extreme of super-spiritualizing it, as if God’s rule operates only in heaven and not on earth. The fact is that, although it must not be identified with any political ideology or programme, it has radical political and social implications

the Old Testament perspective was one of concern for the nations (God made them, and they will come and bow down to him), but not of mission to the nations (going out to win them

Times’ (chronoi) or ‘dates’ (kairoi) together make up God’s plan, ‘the times or critical moments of its history and the seasons or epochs of its orderly development

It would be spiritual in its character (transforming the lives and values of its citizens), international in its membership (including Gentiles as well as Jews) and gradual in its expansion (beginning at once in Jerusalem, and then growing until it reaches the end of both time and earthly space). This vision and commission must have given clear direction to the disciples’ prayers during their ten days of waiting for Pentecost. But before the Spirit could come, the Son must go

He does not say that Jesus ascended from Bethany, but only that he led the apostles in that direction

Both say that Jesus ‘was taken up into heaven’, the passive voice indicating that the ascension like the resurrection was an act of the Father

First, miracles do not need precedents to validate them. The classical argument of the eighteenth-century deists was that we can believe strange happenings outside our experience only if we can produce something analogous to them within our experience

no alternative explanation is available of the cessation of the resurrection appearances and of the final disappearance of Jesus from the earth. What happened to him, them, and why did his appearances stop

The reason for a public and visible ascension is surely that he wanted them to know that he had gone for good. During the forty days he had kept appearing, disappearing and reappearing. But now this interim period was over. This time his departure was final. So they were not to wait around for his next resurrection appearance. Instead, they were to wait for somebody else, the Holy Spirit (1:4). For he would come only after Jesus had gone, and then they could get on with their mission in the power he would give them

In his Gospel, Luke has recorded the ministry of angels at several crucial moments in his story

Yet there will also be important differences between his going and his coming. Although his coming will be personal, it will not be private like his ascension. Only the eleven apostles saw him go, but when he comes ‘every eye will see him’.40 Instead of returning alone (as when he went), millions of holy ones—both human and angelic—will form his retinue.41 And in place of a localized coming (‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’), it will be ‘like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other.’42

Secondly, the angels implied, until Christ comes again, the apostles must get on with their witness, for that was their mandate. There was something fundamentally anomalous about their gazing up into the sky when they had been commissioned to go to the ends of the earth. It was the earth not the sky which was to be their preoccupation

the apostles committed two opposite errors, which both had to be corrected. First, they were hoping for political power (the restoration of the kingdom to Israel). Secondly, they were gazing up into the sky (preoccupied with the heavenly Jesus). Both were false fantasies. The first is the error of the politicist, who dreams of establishing Utopia on earth. The second is the error of the pietist, who dreams only of heavenly bliss. The first vision is too earthy, and the second too heavenly

It was a healthy combination: continuous praise in the temple, and continuous prayer in the home

Professor Howard Marshall suggests that the reason why the number is mentioned is that ‘in Jewish law a minimum of 120 Jewish men was required to establish a community with its own council

God’s promises do not render prayer superfluous

If the early church was to be accepted as enjoying direct continuity with, indeed as being the fulfilment of, Old Testament Israel, the number of its founders must not be depleted. A few years later it was not deemed necessary to replace James, for he had not defected, but had been faithful unto death

the remaining three (Scripture, common sense and prayer) constitute a wholesome combination through which God may be trusted to guide us today

Day of

As a body without breath is a corpse, so the church without the Spirit is dead

Luke is well aware of this. Of the four evangelists it is he who lays the heaviest emphasis on the Spirit. Near the beginning of each part of his two-volume work he demonstrates the indispensability of the Holy Spirit’s enabling

Yet this reality is multi-faceted, and there are at least four ways in which we may think of the Day of Pentecost. First, it was the final act of the saving ministry of Jesus before the Parousia

Pentecost was the inauguration of the new era of the Spirit

Although he equipped the apostles to be the primary witnesses, he also equips us to be secondary witnesses

Fourthly, Pentecost has been called—and rightly—the first ‘revival’, using this word to denote one of those altogether unusual visitations of God, in which a whole community becomes vividly aware of his immediate, overpowering presence

We must be careful, however, not to use this possibility as an excuse to lower our expectations, or to relegate to the category of the exceptional what God may intend to be the church’s normal experience. The wind and the fire were abnormal, and probably the languages too; the new life and joy, fellowship and worship, freedom, boldness and power were not

it was when the day of Pentecost came (1). This feast had two meanings, one agricultural and the other historical

Towards the end of the inter-testamental period, however, it began also to be observed as the anniversary of the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, because this was reckoned as having happened fifty days after the Exodus

It is tempting, therefore, to find the double symbolism of harvesting and law-giving in the Day of Pentecost

So we cannot be sure whether it was important to him, even though Jewish tradition associated wind, fire and voices with Mount Sinai,8 the three phenomena which he is about to describe

it seems that these three signs at least represented the new era of the Spirit which had begun (John the Baptist had bracketed wind and fire9) and the new work which he had come to do. If so, the noise like wind may have symbolized power (such as Jesus had promised them for witness, Lk. 24:49; Acts 1:8), the sight like fire purity (like the live coal which cleansed Isaiah, 6:6–7) and the speech in other languages the universality of the Christian church

Yet the speakers were known to be Galileans (7), who had a reputation for being uncultured.11 They also ‘had difficulty pronouncing gutturals and had the habit of swallowing syllables when speaking; so they were looked down upon by the people of Jerusalem as being provincial’.12 It is not surprising, therefore, that the crowd’s reaction was one of bewilderment

was not a mistake or a miracle of hearing, in contrast to speaking, so that the audience supposed that the believers spoke in other languages when they did not

it was not a case of incoherent utterance. Liberal commentators, who begin with a prejudice against miracles, suggest that the 120 believers broke into unintelligible, ecstatic speech, and that Luke (who had visited Corinth with Paul) mistakenly supposed that it was literal languages

the miracle of Pentecost, although it may have included the substance of what the one hundred and twenty spoke (the wonders of God), was primarily the medium of their speech (foreign languages they had never learned

in his own subtle way he is saying to us that on that Day of Pentecost the whole world was there in the representatives of the various nations

At Babel human languages were confused and the nations were scattered; in Jerusalem the language barrier was supernaturally overcome as a sign that the nations would now be gathered together in Christ, prefiguring the great day when the redeemed company will be drawn ‘from every nation, tribe, people and language’.22 Besides, at Babel earth proudly tried to ascend to heaven, whereas in Jerusalem heaven humbly descended to earth

For it contains as many ‘addresses’ as ‘acts’. Luke is true to his intention of recording what Jesus continued (after his ascension) both ‘to do and to teach

But are these speeches genuine utterances by the people to whom they are attributed? Are they accurate

First, probably nobody has ever imagined that the Acts’ speeches are verbatim accounts of what was said on each occasion

First, if one compares the speeches with each other and with Luke’s narrative passages, the whole of his text reflects the same style and vocabulary, while many of the speeches contain the same shape, theological emphasis and Scripture quotations; the natural explanation of this sameness is that it all comes from Luke’s mind and pen, rather than from the different speakers. The second argument is that ‘a prevailing convention among ancient historians was the custom of inserting speeches of the leading characters in the narrative’,23 and of freely composing these speeches themselves

From Thucydides downwards, speeches reported by the historians are confessedly pure imagination.’26 This having been the supposedly universal convention in the writing of Greek and Jewish history, the biblical critics assume that Luke as a Christian historian was no different

The third approach to the Acts’ speeches, rejecting both extreme literalism and extreme scepticism, is to regard them as reliable summaries of what was said on each occasion

must be careful not to re-quote Joel’s prophecy as if we are still awaiting its fulfilment, or even as if its fulfilment has been only partial, and we await some future and complete fulfilment. For this is not how Peter understood and applied the text. The whole Messianic era, which stretches between the two comings of Christ, is the age of the Spirit in which his ministry is one of abundance. Is

Yet the promise is surprising because elsewhere in Acts—and in the New Testament generally—only some are called to be prophets. How then shall we understand a universal prophetic ministry? If in its essence prophecy is God speaking, God making himself known by his Word, then certainly the Old Testament expectation was that in New Covenant days the knowledge of God would be universal, and the New Testament authors declare that this has been fulfilled through Christ.38 In this sense all God’s people are now prophets, just as all are also priests and kings

I have myself found it an aid to faithfulness to express the apostles’ message in the following framework:

First, the gospel events, namely the death and resurrection of Jesus

Secondly, the gospel witnesses

The primary witnesses to him are the prophets and apostles; ours is always secondary to theirs.

Thirdly, the gospel promises

Fourthly, the gospel conditions

Here, then is a fourfold message—two events (Christ’s death and resurrection), as attested by two witnesses (prophets and apostles), on the basis of which God makes two promises (forgiveness and the Spirit), on two conditions (repentance and faith, with baptism). We have no liberty to amputate this apostolic gospel, by proclaiming the cross without the resurrection, or referring to the New Testament but not the Old, or offering forgiveness without the Spirit, or demanding faith without repentance. There is a wholeness about the biblical gospel

Of course the church did not begin that day, and it is incorrect to call the Day of Pentecost ‘the birthday of the church’. For the church as the people of God goes back at least 4,000 years to Abraham. What happened at Pentecost was that the remnant of God’s people became the Spirit-filled body of Christ

One might perhaps say that the Holy Spirit opened a school in Jerusalem that day; its teachers were the apostles whom Jesus had appointed; and there were 3,000 pupils in the kindergarten

Thus koinōnia is a Trinitarian experience; it is our common share in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit

But secondly, koinōnia also expresses what we share out together, what we give as well as what we receive

A few miles east of Jerusalem the Essene leaders of the Qumran community were committed to the common ownership of property

Even the sixteenth-century Anabaptists in the so-called ‘radical reformation’, who wanted fellowship and brotherly love to be added to the Reformers’ definition of the church (in terms of word, sacraments and discipline), and who talked much about Acts 2 and 4 and ‘the community of goods’, recognized that this was not compulsory

The Hutterite Brethren in Moravia seem to have been the only exception, for they did make complete common ownership a condition of membership

the definite article in both expressions (literally, ‘the breaking of the bread and the prayers’) suggests a reference to the Lord’s Supper on the one hand (although almost certainly at that early stage as part of a larger meal) and prayer services or meetings (rather than Private prayer) on the other

it was both formal and informal, for it took place both in the temple courts and in their homes (46), which is an interesting combination. It is perhaps surprising that they continued for a while in the temple, but they did. They did not immediately abandon what might be called the institutional church. I do not believe they still participated in the sacrifices of the temple, for already they had begun to grasp that these had been fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ, but they do seem to have attended the prayer services of the temple (cf. 3:1), unless, as has been suggested, they went up to the temple to preach, rather than to pray

the Holy Spirit’s way with the institutional church, which we long to see reformed according to the gospel, is more the way of patient reform than of impatient rejection. And certainly it is always healthy when the more formal and dignified services of the local church are complemented with the informality and exuberance of home meetings. There is no need to polarize between the structured and the unstructured, the traditional and the spontaneous

The second example of the balance of the early church’s worship is that it was both joyful and reverent

It is right in public worship to be dignified; it is unforgivable to be dull

From these earliest believers in Jerusalem, we can learn three vital lessons about local church evangelism. First, the Lord himself (that is, Jesus) did it: the Lord added to their number

the Lord added people daily

The early church’s evangelism was not an occasional or sporadic activity

if the chief actor in the story of Acts 1 and 2 is the Holy spirit, the chief actor in Acts 3–6 almost seems to be Satan

For a full understanding of the early church we need to read The Acts of the Apostles and The Books of Revelation side by side. Both tell much the same tale of the church and its experience of conflict, but from a different perspective. Luke in the Acts chronicles what unfolded on the stage of history before the eyes of observer; John in the Revelation enables us to see the hidden forces at work

the structure Luke adopts in chapters 3 and 4 is the same as in chapter 2

the power was Christ’s, but the hand was Peter’s

The most remarkable feature of Peter’s second sermon, as of his first, is its Christ-centredness. He directed the crowd’s attention away from both the healed cripple and the apostles to the Christ whom men disowned by killing him but God vindicated by raising him, and whose name, having been appropriated by faith, was strong enough to heal the man completely

Ancient writing was upon papyrus, and the ink used had no acid in it. It therefore did not bite into the papyrus as modern ink does; it simply lay upon the top of it. To erase the writing a man might take a wet sponge and simply wipe it away.’13 Just so, when God forgives our sins, he wipes the slate clean

Looking back over Peter’s Colonnade sermon, it is striking that he presents Christ to the crowd ‘according to the Scriptures’ as successively the suffering servant (13, 18), the Moses-like prophet (22–23), the Davidic king (24) and the seed of Abraham (25–26

Luke makes it plain that both waves of persecution were initiated by the Sadducees (4:1 and 5:17). They were the ruling class of wealthy aristocrats. Politically, they ingratiated themselves with the Romans, and followed a policy of collaboration, so that they feared the subversive implications of the apostles’ teaching. Theologically, they believed that the Messianic age had begun in the Maccabean period; so they were not looking for a Messiah. They also denied the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, which the apostles proclaimed in Jesus

As they sat in their customary semi-circle, and Peter and John were brought before them (7a), memories of the trial of Jesus must have flooded the apostles’ minds. Was history to repeat itself

We notice the ease with which Peter moves from healing to salvation, and from the particular to the general. He sees one man’s physical cure as a picture of the salvation which is offered to all in Christ

Liberal critics have enjoyed themselves in asking how Luke could have known what went on in the Sanhedrin’s confidential discussion. ‘The author reports the closed deliberations’, comments Haenchen sarcastically, ‘as if he had been present’.29 But Paul may have been there. More likely, Gamaliel was, and he could have told Paul later what happened

This, then, was the early church’s understanding of God, the God of creation

revelation and history, whose characteristic actions are summarized by the three verbs ‘you made’ (24), ‘you spoke’ (25) and ‘you decided’ (28

there is no a priori ground for asserting that they cannot recur today. We have no liberty to dictate to God what he is permitted to do and not to do. And if we have hesitations about some claims to ‘signs and wonders’ today, we must make sure that we have not confined both God and ourselves in the prison of Western, rationalistic unbelief

First, is it certain that signs and wonders are the main secret of church growth

Luke seems rather to attribute the growth to the power of Peter’s preaching. In this sense all true evangelism is ‘power evangelism’, for conversion and new birth, and so church growth, can take place only by the power of God through his Word and Spirit

Not only are miracles by definition ‘abnorms’ rather than norms, but the Acts does not provide evidence that they were widespread. Luke’s emphasis is that they were performed mostly by the apostles (2:43; 5:12), and especially by the apostles Peter and Paul on whom he focuses our attention. True, Stephen and Philip also did signs and wonders, and perhaps others did. But it can be argued that Stephen and Philip were special people

Certainly the thrust of the Bible is that miracles clustered round the principal organs of revelation at fresh epochs of revelation, particularly Moses the lawgiver, the new prophetic witness spearheaded by Elijah and Elisha, the Messianic ministry of Jesus, and the apostles, so that Paul referred to his miracles as ‘the things that mark an apostle

But in his public ministry by turning water into wine, stilling a storm, multiplying loaves and fishes, and walking on water, Jesus gave a preview of nature’s final, total subservience him—a subservience which belongs not to the ‘already’ but to the ‘not yet’ of the kingdom

If, then, we take Scripture as our guide, we will avoid opposite extremes. We will neither describe miracles as ‘never happening’, nor as ‘everyday occurrences’, neither as ‘impossible’ nor as ‘normal’. Instead, we will be entirely open to the God who works both through nature and through miracle. And when a healing miracle is claimed, we will expect it to resemble those in the Gospels and the Acts and so to be the instantaneous and complete cure of an organic condition, without the use of medical or surgical means, inviting investigation and persuading even unbelievers

His strategy was carefully developed. He attacked on three fronts

These then were his weapons—physical (persecution), moral (subversion) and professional (distraction

Something else I have learned about him is that he is peculiarly lacking in imagination. Over the years he has changed neither his strategy, nor his tactics, nor his weapons; he is still in the same old rut

We must have hearts that are harder than iron if we are not moved by the reading of this narrative

We have no liberty to dismiss it as a rash and foolish mistake, motivated by the false expectation of an imminent Parousia and causing the poverty which Paul had later to remedy by his collection from the Greek churches. Luke gives no hint of these things

Yet the inspiration for the common life and love of the Jerusalem church will have come neither from Pythagoras, nor from Plato, nor from the Essenes, but from the Old Testament, as illumined by Jesus

The story of Ananias is to the book of Acts what the story of Achan is to the book of Joshua. In both narratives an act of deceit interrupts the victorious progress of the people of God

We have to assume, therefore, that before the sale Ananias and Sapphira had entered into some kind of contract to give the church the total amount raised. Because of this, when they brought only some instead of all, they were guilty of embezzlement

It was not on this sin that Peter concentrated, however, but on the other, hypocrisy. The apostle’s complaint was not that they lacked honesty (bringing only a part of the sale price) but that they lacked integrity (bringing only a part, while pretending to bring the whole

On the one hand an awestruck reserve’, as Haenchen puts it, and ‘on the other great missionary successes’.17 This paradoxical situation has often recurred since then. The presence of the living God, whether manifest through preaching or miracles or both, is alarming to some and appealing to others. Some are frightened away, while others are drawn to faith

Josephus’ Theudas, however, rebelled not before Judas (as Luke records Gamaliel as saying, verses 36–37) but during the procuratorship of Fadus (AD 44–46), which was about forty years after him, and indeed a decade or more after Gamaliel was speaking

We should not be too ready to credit Gamaliel with having uttered an invariable principle. To be sure, in the long run what is from God will triumph, and what is merely human (let alone diabolical) will not. Nevertheless, in the shorter run evil plans sometimes succeed, while good ones conceived in accordance with the will of God sometimes fail. So the Gamaliel principle is not a reliable index to what is from God and what is not

Luke’s expression is ‘a beautiful antithesis (the honour to be dishonoured, the grace to be disgraced

It is not suggested that the oversight was deliberate

That is, the Hellēnistai came from the diaspora, had settled in Palestine and spoke Greek, while the Hebraioi were natives of Palestine and spoke Aramaic. This is an inadequate explanation, however. Since Paul called himself Hebraios,35 in spite of the fact that he came from Tarsus and spoke Greek, the distinction must go beyond origin and language to culture. In this case the Hellēnistai not only spoke Greek but thought and behaved like Greeks, while the Hebraioi not only spoke Aramaic but were deeply immersed in Hebrew culture. This being so, Grecian Jews is a good rendering, while the Aramaic-speaking community is not, since it refers to language only and not culture

They may all, therefore, have been Hellēnistai, deliberately chosen to satisfy this group who were complaining. But this is speculative. It seems more likely a priori that ‘some of both classes of Jews were elected, the only fair and proper course

A vital principle is illustrated in this incident, which is of urgent importance to the church today. It is that God calls all his people to ministry, that he calls different people to different ministries, and that those called to ‘prayer and the ministry of the word’ must on no account allow themselves to be distracted from their priorities

We do a great disservice to the church whenever we refer to the pastorate as ‘the ministry’, for example when we speak of ordination in terms of ‘entering the ministry’. This use of the definite article implies that the ordained pastorate is the only ministry there is. But diakonia is a generic word for service; it lacks specificity until a descriptive adjective is added, whether ‘pastoral’, ‘social’, ‘political’, ‘medical’ or another. All Christians without exception, being followers of him who came ‘not to be served but to serve’, are themselves called to ministry, indeed to give their lives in ministry

So far it has been composed only of Jews and restricted to Jerusalem. Now, however, the Holy Spirit is about to thrust his people out into the wider world, and the apostle Paul (Luke’s hero) is to be God’s chosen instrument to pioneer this development

But first, in the next six chapters of the Acts, Luke explains how the foundations of the Gentile mission were laid by two remarkable men (Stephen the martyr and Philip the evangelist), followed by two remarkable conversions (Saul the Pharisee and Cornelius the centurion). These four men, each in his own way, together with Peter, through whose ministry Cornelius was converted, made an indispensable contribution to the global expansion of the church

he emphasized the freedom of the living God to go where he pleases and to call his people to go forth too

Cornelius the centurion (10:1–11:18) was the very first Gentile to be converted and welcomed into the church

Only after these four men had played their part in Luke’s developing story was the scene set for the first missionary journey recorded in Acts 13 and 14

So far signs and wonders have been credited by Luke only to Jesus (2:22) and the apostles (2:43; 5:12); now for the first time others are said to perform them

Some conclude that Stephen (6:8) and Philip (8:6) were special cases, both because the apostles had laid their hands on them (6:6), thus including them within their own apostolic ministry, and because they occupied a special place in salvation history, in the transition from Jewish movement to world mission. But this cannot be proved

since the temple was God’s house and the law was God’s word, to speak against either was to speak against God or, in other words, to blaspheme

both his resurrection body which was raised on the third day, and also his spiritual body, the church, which would take the place of the material temple

to affirm that both temple and law pointed forward to him and are now fulfilled in him is to magnify their importance, not to denigrate it

For Old Testament Scripture itself confirmed his teaching about the temple and the law, especially by predicting the Messiah, whereas by rejecting him it was they who disregarded the law, not he. Stephen’s mind had evidently soaked up the Old Testament, for his speech is like a patchwork of allusions to it

This was right. But many drew a false conclusion. They conceived of Yahweh as so completely identified with the temple that its existence guaranteed his protection of them, while its destruction would mean that he had abandoned them. It was against these notions that the prophets inveighed.13 Long before them, however, as Stephen pointed out, the great figures of the Old Testament never imagined that God was imprisoned in a building

The connecting feature of these four epochs is that in none of them was God’s presence limited to any particular place. On the contrary, the God of the Old Testament was the living God, a God on the move and on the march, who was always calling his people out to fresh adventures, and always accompanying and directing them as they went

So, long before there was a holy place, there was a holy people, to whom God had pledged himself

We note at once that, if Mesopotamia was the surprising context in which God appeared to Abraham (7:2), Egypt was the equally surprising scene of God’s dealings with Joseph

This is the number given in the LXX translation of Genesis 46:27 and Exodus 1:5, although the Hebrew text in both verses has seventy, the discrepancy being probably due to whether Joseph’s sons are included in the total or not

Stephen has traced the life and ministry of Moses through its Egyptian, Midianite and wilderness periods, and has shown that in each period and place God was with him

In this story of the transition from tabernacle to temple, Stephen is seen by some as showing a bias towards the former because it was mobile. But he expresses neither a preference for the tabernacle nor a distaste for the temple

Stephen’s point is not that it was wrong to construct either the tabernacle or the temple, but that they should never have been regarded as in any literal sense God’s home. For the Most High does not live in houses made by men

It is not difficult, then, to grasp Stephen’s thesis. A single thread runs right through the first part of his defence. It is that the God of Israel is a pilgrim God, who is not restricted to any one place

If he has any home on earth, it is with his people that he lives. He has pledged himself by a solemn covenant to be their God. Therefore, according to his covenant promise, wherever they are, there he is also

In response to both accusations he developed a similar defence, namely that in each area he was more biblical than they. That is, the Old Testament Scriptures laid less emphasis on the temple, and more emphasis on the law, than they did

Stephen’s speech was not so much a self-defence as a testimony to Christ. His main theme was positive, that Jesus the Messiah had come to replace the temple and fulfil the law, which both bore witness to him

Several guesses have been made why Jesus was standing (repeated in verses 55 and 56), instead of sitting,33 at God’s right hand. It may have been that the son of man, who in Daniel’s vision34 was led into the presence of God, stood before him to receive authority and power

Stephen has been confessing Christ before men, and now he sees Christ confessing his servant before God

Since the Romans had taken away the Jews’ right of capital punishment,36 it seems that Stephen’s stoning was more a mob lynching than an official execution

What interests many people most about Stephen is that he was the first Christian martyr. Luke’s main concern lies elsewhere, however. He emphasizes the vital role Stephen played in the development of the world-wide Christian mission through both his teaching and his death

Luke seems to have regarded Stephen and Philip as a pair

Stephen’s contribution lay in his teaching about the temple, the law and the Christ, and in the effects of his martyrdom, while Philip’s lay in his bold evangelization of the Samaritans and of an Ethiopian leader

For the Jews regarded the Samaritans as heretical outsiders and Ethiopia as ‘the extreme boundary of the habitable world in the hot south

But now he introduces the verb kērysso (‘to herald’) in relation to Philip’s proclamation of Christ (5), and popularizes the verb euangelizō (‘to bring good news

Luke appears to be drawing attention to a threefold chain of cause and effect.

First, Stephen’s martyrdom brought a great persecution … against the church at Jerusalem

Saul of Tarsus had blood on his hands, for several others followed Stephen into martyrdom

Secondly, the great persecution led to a great dispersion

Stephen’s speech had been truly prophetic. Jerusalem and the temple now begin to fade from view, as Christ calls his people out and accompanies them. No blame is attached to the apostles for staying behind. Jerusalem would still for a while be the headquarters of the new Christian community, and they evidently saw it as their duty to remain there

Thirdly, if Stephen’s martyrdom led to persecution, and the persecution to the dispersion, the dispersion now resulted is widespread evangelism

Up to this point it was the apostles who had given the lead in evangelism, in defiance of the Sanhedrin’s ban, violence and threats; now, however, as the apostles stayed in Jerusalem, it was the generality of believers who took up the evangelistic task

The statement that they ‘preached the word’ is misleading; the Greek expression does not necessarily mean more than ‘shared the good news’. Philip was soon to preach to the Samaritan crowds

It is hard for us to conceive the boldness of the step Philip took in preaching the gospel to Samaritans

The Samaritans were despised by the Jews as hybrids in both race and religion, as both heretics and schismatics

There is no need to suppose that he was only pretending to believe. Nor, on the other hand, did he exercise saving faith, for Peter was later to declare that his heart was ‘not right before God’ (21). Calvin suggests that we should seek ‘some middle position between faith and mere pretence

New Testament language does not always distinguish between believing and professing to believe

This is more than a matter-of-fact statement; it seems to be almost a technical expression by which Luke signals an important new stage in the advance of the gospel

in all three developments Peter played a decisive role, using the keys of the kingdom (though Luke does not refer to this) to open it successively to Jews, Samaritans and Gentiles

It was particularly appropriate that one of them was John, since Luke describes him in his gospel as wanting on one occasion to call fire down from heaven to consume a Samaritan city

Both claim warrant from this passage for their belief that Christian initiation is in two stages, the second, (receiving the Spirit) being accompanied by the laying-on of hands with prayer

Catholics believe that the first stage of initiation is baptism, and the second is confirmation by a bishop regarded as a successor of the apostles, through whose imposition of hands the Spirit is given

The Pentecostal churches, together with some (but by no means all) Charismatics, also teach two-stage Christian initiation but formulate it differently. To them the first stage consists of conversion (the human turn of repentance and faith) and regeneration (the divine work of new birth), while the second is ‘baptism in or of the Spirit’, often (not always) associated with the laying-on of hands by a pentecostal leader

We do not deny that the Samaritan experience did, in fact, take place in two stages

But we press the question: is it God’s normal purpose that the reception of the Spirit is a second experience subsequent to conversion and baptism

To this question we need to give a negative answer (we come to the positive alternative later), because what happened in Samaria diverged from the plain and general teaching of the apostles

Calvin taught this: ‘To sum up, since the Samaritans had the Spirit of adoption conferred on them already, the extraordinary grace of the Spirit are added as a culmination.’26 And reformed commentators have tended to follow him. They may be correct

In both cases, by eliminating one of the two stages (either declaring the first bogus or the second supplementary), the same result is achieved, namely a one-stage initiation into Christ.

Neither reconstruction is satisfactory, however, since Luke does seem to understand stage one as a genuine conversion, and stage two as the initial reception of the Spirit

, contrary to expectation, water-baptism had been received without Spirit-baptism, the sign without the thing signified. There was, Luke implies, something distinctly odd about their separation

This was unique. The apostles did not normally cast themselves in the role of ‘inspector of evangelism

The most natural explanation of the delayed gift of the Spirit is that this was the first occasion on which the gospel had been proclaimed not only outside Jerusalem but inside Samaria. This is clearly the importance of the occasion in Luke’s unfolding story, since the Samaritans were a kind of half-way house between Jews and Gentiles

There was a real ‘danger … of their Christ apart, or at least of forming a new and separate church for themselves’.32

Is it not reasonable to suggest (in view of this historical background) that, in order to avoid just such a disaster, God deliberately withheld the Spirit from these Samaritan converts? The delay was only temporary, however, until the apostles had come down to investigate, had endorsed Philip’s bold policy of Samaritan evangelism, had prayed for the converts, had laid hands on them as ‘a token of fellowship and solidarity’,33 and had thus given a public sign to the whole church, as well as to the Samaritan converts themselves, that they were bona fide Christians, to be incorporated into the redeemed community on precisely the same terms as Jewish converts

This may mean that he was actually Jewish, either by birth or by conversion, for the Jewish dispersion had penetrated at least into Egypt and probably beyond, and perhaps by now the promise to eunuchs of Isaiah 56:3–4 had superseded the ban of Deuteronomy 23:1

It seems unlikely that he was a Gentile, since Luke does not present him as the first Gentile convert; that distinction he reserves for Cornelius

It is especially significant that this African, who had gone to Jerusalem to worship, was now leaving it and would not return there

one has reason to admire this eunuch.’ For, unlike Saul, he had no supernatural vision of Christ. Yet he believed, ‘so great a thing is the careful reading of the Scriptures

Total immersion may be implied, but in that case the baptizer and the baptized will have been submerged together, since the same statement is made of them both

Several MSS add that ‘the Holy Spirit fell on the eunuch

It is not at all necessary that this should be accounted a miracle

lessons about

It is this combination of change (in relation to contexts and methods) and changelessness (in relation to the gospel itself), together with the ability to discern between them, which is one of Philip’s abiding legacies to the church

Nevertheless, it is clear from the rest of the New Testament that other features of Saul’s conversion and commissioning are applicable to us today. For we too can (and must) experience a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, surrender to him in penitence and faith, and receive his summons to service. Provided that we distinguish between the historically particular and the universal, between the dramatic outward accompaniments and the essential inward experience, what happened to Saul remains an instructive case study in Christian conversion

If we ask what caused Saul’s conversion, only one answer is possible. What stands out from the narrative is the sovereign grace of God through Jesus Christ. Saul did not ‘decide for Christ’, as we might say

Some of the language Luke uses to describe Saul in his preconversion state seems deliberately to portray him as ‘a wild and ferocious beast

He who had expected to enter Damascus in the fullness of his pride and prowess, as a self-confident opponent of Christ, was actually led into it, humbled and blinded, a captive of the very Christ he had opposed

First, Saul’s conversion was not at all the ‘sudden conversion’ it is often said to have been

The implication is that Jesus was pursuing Saul, prodding and pricking him, which it was ‘hard’ (painful, even futile) for him to resist

One goad was surely his doubts

It is therefore probable that they both visited Jerusalem and the temple at the same time, in which case ‘is it not possible, indeed highly likely, that the young teacher from Galilee and the younger Pharisee from Tarsus would have looked into one another’s eyes, and that Saul would have heard Jesus teach

Stephen and not Gamaliel was the real master of St Paul’.26 For Saul could not suppress the witness of Stephen. There was something inexplicable about those Christians—something supernatural, something which spoke of the divine power of Jesus. The very fanaticism of Saul’s persecution betrayed his growing inner uneasiness, ‘because fanaticism is only found’, wrote Jung, ‘in individuals who are compensating secret doubts

He humbled him, so that he fell to the ground, but he did not violate his personality. He did not demean Saul into a robot or compel him to perform certain actions in a kind of hypnotic trance. On the contrary, Jesus put to him a probing question, ‘Why do you persecute me?’ He thus appealed to his reason and conscience, in order to bring into his consciousness the folly and evil of what he was doing

Brother Saul’ or ‘Saul, my brother’ (NEB). I never fail to be moved by these words. They may well have been the first words which Saul heard from Christian lips after his conversion, and they were words of fraternal welcome. They must have been music to his ears

But why did he go to Arabia? Some think he went on a preaching mission, but others suggest more cogently that he needed time to be quiet, and that Jesus now revealed to him those distinctive truths of Jewish-Gentile solidarity in the body of Christ which he would later call ‘the mystery made knows to me by revelation’, ‘my gospel’ and ‘the gospel … I received by revelation from Jesus Christ’.36 Some have even conjectured that those three years in Arabia were a deliberate compensation for the three years with Jesus which the other apostles had had but Saul had not

Saul’s experience in Jerusalem was similar to his experience in Damascus

True conversion always issues in church membership. It is not only that converts must join the Christian community, but that the Christian community must welcome converts, especially those from a different religious, ethnic or social background

Several characteristics of his witness are noteworthy. First, it was Christ-centred

Secondly, Saul’s witness to Christ was given in the power of the Holy Spirit

Thirdly, his witness was courageous

Fourthly, Saul’s witness was costly

Thus the story of Saul’s conversion in Acts 9 begins with him leaving Jerusalem with an official mandate from the high priest to arrest fugitive Christians, and ends with him leaving Jerusalem as a fugitive Christian himself

If these three relationships—to God, the church and the world—are not seen in professed converts, we have good reason to question the reality of their conversion. But whenever they are visibly present, we have good reason to magnify the grace of God

Previously, when persecution had broken out, the apostles had deemed it prudent to remain in Jerusalem (8:1b). Now that the church was enjoying a time of peace (31), however, they felt free to leave the city

by the way in which he recorded the miracles which then took place, Luke deliberately portrayed Peter as an authentic apostle of Jesus Christ, who performed ‘the signs of a true apostle

Luke may be hinting at his comparative openness by ending the story of Aeneas and Tabitha with the information that ‘Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon

we who now read Acts 10 remember that Jesus had given Peter ‘the keys of the kingdom’, although it is Matthew who tells us this not Luke.8 And we have already watched him use these keys effectively, opening the kingdom to Jews on the Day of Pentecost and then to Samaritans soon afterwards. Now he is to use them again to open the kingdom to Gentiles

Whether ‘God-fearing’ is to be understood in a general sense that Cornelius was religious (as in verse 35) or in the more technical sense that he had become ‘a God-fearer’ (e.g. 13:16, 26), ‘a proselyte of the gate’, is disputed

he was still a Gentile, an outsider, excluded from God’s covenant with Israel

We saw in Acts 8 the special steps God took to prevent the perpetuation of the Jewish-Samaritan schism in the church; how would he prevent a Jewish-Gentile schism

The principal subject of this chapter is not so much the conversion of Cornelius of the conversion of Peter

Surely not, Lord! Peter replied, as he had done twice during Jesus’ public ministry

Whether consciously or unconsciously, Peter had just now repudiated both extreme and opposite attitudes which human beings have sometimes adopted towards one another. He had come to see that it was entirely inappropriate either to worship somebody as if divine (which Cornelius had tried to do to him) or to reject somebody as if unclean (which he would previously have done to Cornelius). Peter refused both to be treated by Cornelius as if he were a god, and to treat Cornelius as if he were a dog

The emphasis is that Cornelius’ Gentile nationality was acceptable so that he had no need to become a Jew, not that his own righteousness was adequate so that he had no need to become a Christian

Peter was quick to draw the inevitable deduction. Since God had accepted these Gentile believers, which indeed he had (15:8), the church must accept them too. Since God had baptized them with his Spirit (11:16), ‘Can anyone keep [them] from being baptised with water

It took four successive hammer-blows of divine revelation before his racial and religious prejudice was overcome

the sheet is the church’, which will ‘contain all races and classes without any distinction at all’,38 even though the full import of this dawned on Peter only later

while he was still speaking (10:44), the Holy Spirit came on them just as, he added, he had come on us at the beginning. It was the extraordinary similarity of the two events which struck him. He remembered what the risen Jesus had said after his resurrection (1:5), namely John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit. In other words, this was the Gentile Pentecost in Caesarea, corresponding to the Jewish Pentecost in Jerusalem

All such discrimination is inexcusable even in non-Christian society; in the Christian community it is both an obscenity (because offensive to human dignity) and a blasphemy (because offensive to God who accepts without discrimination all who repent and believe

What Peter emphatically did not mean is that anybody of any nation or religion who is devout (‘fears God’) and upright (‘does right’) is thereby justified. Calvin rightly dismisses this notion as ‘an exceedingly childish error’.49 Not only does it contradict Paul’s gospel, which Luke faithfully echoes in the Acts, but it is refuted by the rest of the Cornelius story

Luke has now recounted the conversions of Saul and Cornelius. The differences between these two men were considerable. In race Saul was a Jew, Cornelius a Gentile; in culture Saul was a scholar, Cornelius a soldier; in religion Saul was a bigot, Cornelius a seeker. Yet both were converted by the gracious initiative of God; both received forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Spirit; and both were the baptized and welcomed into the Christian family on equal terms

The addition in both verses of ‘also’ (kai) is important. It is not that the evangelization of the Jews must stop, but that the evangelization of the Gentiles must begin

The word itself (Hellēnistēs

it ‘appears to be a new formation from hellēnizein, “to speak Greek” or “to practise Greek ways” ’;3 it thus indicates the culture of the people in question, but not their nationality

There would, in fact, be an anachronism in representing the full-scale Gentile mission as having been pioneered by anonymous evangelists in Antioch, since Luke reserves this innovation for Paul on his first missionary journey

Antioch

Thus Greeks, Jews, Orientals and Romans formed the mixed multitude of what Josephus called ‘the third city of the empire’, after Rome and Alexandria

Although it does not seem to have caught on initially, since elsewhere it appears only twice in the New Testament (Acts 26:28 and 1 Pet. 4:16), it at least emphasized the Christ-centred nature of discipleship

Claudius ruled from AD 41 to 54, but historians do not record ‘a severe and world-wide famine’ (NEB) during this period. F. F. Bruce therefore proposes the more general expression ‘great dearth’

One naturally wonders why, apart from the famine, the Jerusalem church was now so poor as to need this relief, and whether perhaps their extreme generosity which Luke has described in Acts 2 and 4 was a contributory factor

these are plainly biblical principles, that is, ability on the one hand, need on the other, and how to relate them to each other. These principles should characterize the family of God

The church of Jerusalem had sent Barnabas to Antioch; now the church of Antioch sent Barnabas, with Saul, back to Jerusalem. This famine relief anticipated the collection which Paul was later to organize, in which the affluent Greek churches of Macedonia and Achaia contributed to the needs of the impoverished churches of Judea

At the time it must have seemed a grave crisis, although Luke is able to go on to chronicle the rescue of Peter by the intervention of God. Thus the destructive power of Herod and the saving power of God are contrasted

Jesus had warned both James and John, who had asked for the best seats in his kingdom, that they would drink his cup and share his baptism,20 that is, participate in his sufferings. But it belongs to the mystery of God’s providence why this was to mean execution for James and exile for John,21 whereas for the time being Peter escaped James’ fate which Herod intended for him also

Here then were two communities, the world and the church, arrayed against one another, each wielding an appropriate weapon. On the one side was the authority of Herod, the power of the sword and the security of the prison. On the other side, the church turned to prayer, which is the only power which the powerless possess

Some commentators have speculated that this house of Mary contained the ‘large upper room, furnished and ready’, which Mark himself mentions29 as the place where Jesus ate the passover with the Twelve before his arrest, trial and crucifixion. Perhaps it was also the house where the Twelve lived, and they and others met to pray, during the ten days between the Ascension and Pentecost

The angel is here conceived of as a man’s spiritual counterpart, capable of assuming his appearance and being mistaken for him

Then he left for another place (17). This was definitely not Rome, as the apocryphal Acts of Peter suggested, and as some Roman Catholic commentators used to argue, adding that he stayed there for twenty-five years as the first pope. Luke means simply that he went into temporary hiding, whether or not anybody knew where

Although Luke says ‘he was eaten by worms’, Josephus is content with the more general statement that ‘a severe pain … arose in his belly’, which became so violent that he was carried into his palace, where five days later he died. Their description is reminiscent of the last days of that arch-persecutor Antiochus Epiphanes who in his arrogance ‘had thought to grasp the stars of heaven’, but ‘was seized with an incurable pain in his bowels and with excruciating internal torture’, until he died

a great many people in Asia ‘harbour intestinal worms’, which can form a tight ball and cause ‘acute intestinal obstruction’. This may have been the cause of Herod’s death

These five men, therefore, symbolized the ethnic and cultural diversity of Antioch

First, to whom did the Holy Spirit reveal his will

It is more probable that the church members as a whole are in mind

Secondly, what was it that the Holy Spirit revealed to the church? It was very vague

Thirdly, how was God’s call disclosed? We are not told. The most likely guess is that God spoke to the church through one of the prophets. But his call could have been inward rather than outward

Would it not be true to say both that the Spirit sent them out, by instructing the church to do so, and that the church sent them out, having been directed by the Spirit to do so? This balance will be a healthy corrective to opposite extremes

We are not told why Cyprus was chosen as their first destination, although we know that Barnabas was a Cypriot

It was common for Jews to take a Greek or Roman second name, like Joseph Barsabbas (1:23) and John Mark (12:12, 25), and it was appropriate for Luke to mention Saul’s now as he moves into increasingly non-Jewish contexts

Luke surely intends us to view Sergius Paulus as the first totally Gentile convert, who had no religious background in Judaism

Luke is evidently anxious to demonstrate that Paul’s message to the Jews was substantially the same as Peter’s; that Paul did not turn to the Gentiles until after he had offered the gospel to the Jews and been rebuffed; and that, far from being an innovator, Paul was declaring only what God had promised in Scripture and had now fulfilled in Jesus

All this took about 450 years, Paul adds, pausing for breath. It is a round number, of course, and is probably intended to include 400 years in exile, forty in the desert, and ten in conquering the land

We need to remember that Paul is addressing Galatians. Only a few months or so later he will be writing his Letter to the Galatians. It is very striking, therefore, that he brings together here at the conclusion of his sermon five of the great words which will be foundation stones of his gospel as he expounds it in his Letter. Having referred to Jesus’ death on the tree (29),24 he goes on to speak of sin (38), faith, justification, law (39) and grace (43

The structure is also practically identical with that of Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost, in which we detected the gospel events (the cross and the resurrection), the gospel witnesses (Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles), the gospel promises (the new life of salvation in Christ, through the Spirit) and the gospel conditions (repentance and faith

Those who responded to the word and believed are described as having been appointed for eternal life (48). Some commentators, offended by what they regard as an extreme predestinarianism in this phrase, have tried in various ways to soften it. But the Greek verb tassō means to ‘ordain’ (AV, RSV), sometimes in the sense of to ‘assign someone to a (certain) classification’ (BAGD). F. F. Bruce refers to the papyrus evidence that it can mean ‘inscribe’ or ‘enrol’,30 in which case it is a reference to the ‘Book of Life

The attribution of the title ‘apostles’ to Barnabas as well as Paul, both here and in verse 14, is perplexing, until we remember that the word is used in the New Testament in two senses

So too Paul and Barnabas were both apostles of the church of Syrian Antioch, sent out by them, whereas only Paul was also an apostle of Christ

it is of great importance as his only recorded address to illiterate pagans. It invites comparison with his sermon to religious and educated Jews in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch

The context within which he preached to the Jews in Antioch was Old Testament Scripture, its history, prophecies and law. But with the pagans in Lystra he focused not on a Scripture they did not know, but on the natural world around them, which they did know and could see

One is amazed at the fickleness of the crowd. One day they tried to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas as if they were gods, while soon after they joined in stoning Paul as if he were a felon

It was a ministry of strengthening (epistērizontes) and encouraging (parakalountes). Both verbs were almost technical terms for establishing and fortifying new converts and churches

Nothing can alter or disguise the fact that St Paul did leave behind him at his first visit complete Churches.’ Indeed, ‘in little more than ten years St Paul established the Church in four provinces of the Empire, Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia

After he and Barnabas had retraced their steps through Derbe, Lystra, Iconium and Pisidian Antioch, ‘strengthening’ and ‘encouraging’ the converts, they did not set up a mission organization; they left them and went home. On what foundations, then, did Paul’s indigenization policy rest

to remain true to the faith

A number of similar expressions are used in different parts of the New Testament to indicate that there was a recognizable body of doctrine, a cluster of central beliefs, which the apostles taught

We notice that it was both local and plural—local in that the elders were chosen from within the congregation, not imposed from without, and plural in that the familiar modern pattern of ‘one pastor one church’ was simply unknown

Just the Scriptures and the pastorate; that was all. Yet there was a third—and divine—provision

Indigenous principles rest ultimately on the conviction that the church belongs to God and that he can be trusted to look after his own people

And thirdly, he trusted the Holy Spirit and so ‘did not shrink from risks

Their three principles were ‘self-supporting, self-governing, self-extending’, but the authentic selfhood of a church goes beyond finance, administration and evangelism to the totality of its cultural self-expression, including its theology, worship and lifestyle. Indigenization (local autonomy) should lead to contextualization (cultural identity

The selfhood of churches is attainable at different rates in different circumstances. Probably Allen did not sufficiently recognize the unique position of Paul’s Jewish and God-fearing converts, who already had a strong Old Testament background in doctrine and ethics

True, he had done the work ‘with them’ (literally), in co-operation or partnership with them, but he had done it, and they gave him the credit. The grace had come from him; the glory must go to him

The Gentile mission was gathering momentum. The trickle of Gentile conversions was fast becoming a torrent. The Jewish leaders had no difficulty with the general concept of believing Gentiles, for many Old Testament passages predicted their inclusion. But now a particular question was forming in their minds: what means of incorporation into the believing community did God intend for Gentiles

Something quite different was now happening, however, something which disturbed and even alarmed many. Gentile converts were being welcomed into fellowship by baptism without circumcision. They were becoming Christians without also becoming Jews

Was their vision big enough to see the gospel of Christ not as a reform movement within Judaism but as good news for the whole world, and the church of Christ not as a Jewish sect but as the international family of God

Chapter 15 is the turning point, “centrepiece” and “watershed” of the book, the episode which rounds off and justifies the past developments, and makes those to come intrinsically possible

But from now on Peter disappears, to be replaced by Paul, and Jerusalem recedes into the background as Paul pushes on beyond Asia into Europe, and Rome appears on the horizon

Its unanimous decision liberated the gospel from its Jewish swaddling clothes into being God’s message for all humankind, and gave the Jewish-Gentile church a self-conscious identity as the reconciled people of God, the one body of Christ

And although the whole Council affirmed it, Paul claimed that it was a new understanding granted specially to him, the ‘mystery’ previously hidden but now revealed, namely that through faith in Christ alone Gentiles stand on equal terms with Jews as ‘heirs together, members together, sharers together’ in his one new community

Because they could not accept conversion without circumcision as adequate, they had organized themselves into a pressure group, whom we often term ‘Judaizers’ or ‘the circumcision party’. They were not opposed to the Gentile mission, but were determined that it must come under the umbrella of the Jewish church, and that Gentile believers must submit not only to baptism in the name of Jesus, but, like Jewish proselytes, to both circumcision and law-observance as well

They were telling Gentile converts that faith in Jesus was not enough, not sufficient for salvation: they must add to faith circumcision, and to circumcision observance of the law. In other words, they must let Moses complete what Jesus had begun, and let the law supplement the gospel

Paul was hot with anger—not from personal pique, because his position was losing ground, but out of concern for the truth

Paul’s logic was incontrovertible. His courageous confrontation of Peter evidently had the desired result. For by the time Peter reached Jerusalem for the Council, he had regained his theological equilibrium and went on to bear faithful witness during the assembly to the gospel of grace and its consequences for Gentile-Jewish fellowship. Barnabas had recovered too

Or are we saved partly through the grace of Christ and partly through our own good works and religious performance? Is justification sola fide, ‘by faith alone’, or through a mixture of faith and works, grace and law, Jesus and Moses? Are Gentile believers a sect of Judaism, or authentic members of a multi-national family

The central theme of Peter’s testimony was not just that Gentiles had heard the gospel, believed in Jesus, received the Spirit and been purified by faith, but that at each stage God made no distinction between us and them

Grace and faith level us; they make fraternal fellowship possible

Thus James, whom the circumcision party had claimed as their champion, declared himself in full agreement with Peter, Paul and Barnabas. The inclusion of the Gentiles was not a divine after-thought, but foretold by the prophets

There was an ‘agreement’ between what God had done through his apostles and what he had said through his prophets

So we need a word stronger than ‘opinion’ and weaker than ‘decree’, perhaps ‘conviction’, since James was making a firm proposal

At the same time, having established the principle that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, without works, it was necessary to appeal to these Gentile believers to respect the consciences of their Jewish fellow-believers by abstaining from a few practices which might offend them. For, James went on to explain, Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is still being read in the synagogues on every Sabbath

At first sight, they appear to be an odd mixture of moral and ceremonial matters, since sexual immorality belongs to the former category, and idol-meats, ‘things strangled’ (AV) and blood to the latter. How could James combine them, as if they were of equal importance? Besides, sexual chastity is an elementary ingredient in Christian holiness; so why state the obvious by including it in the list? In addition, verse 20 raises complex textual questions, as variant Greek readings reflect variant interpretations. Two main solutions have been proposed, both aimed at separating the ethical from the ritual

The first is to regard the requested abstentions as being all moral

It seems a neat solution, but it raises more problems than it solves

The alternative solution is the opposite, namely to regard the four abstentions as being all ceremonial, all matters of external purity

If this reconstruction is correct, then all four requested abstentions related to ceremonial laws laid down in Leviticus 17 and 18, and three of them concerned dietary matters which could inhibit Jewish-Gentile common meals. To abstain would be a courteous and temporary (although in some circumstances ‘necessary’, 28, RSV) concession to Jewish consciences, once circumcision had been declared unnecessary, and so the truth of the gospel had been secured and the principle of equality established

The letter has justly been described as ‘a masterpiece of tact and delicacy

First, they disassociated themselves from the circumcision party and therefore, by clear implication, from the requirement of circumcision

The letter’s conclusion, which expresses more a recommendation than a command, was: You will do well to avoid these things

This gathering together of the church in Antioch must have reminded them of a similar meeting some time previously (14:27). Paul and Barnabas were present on both occasions. Then it had been to receive a report of the first missionary journey with its wonderful news of the conversion of Gentiles; now it was to receive the Jerusalem letter with its equally wonderful news that Gentiles who had believed in Jesus were to be accepted as Christians, without the need to become Jews as well

But before Luke can narrate how the letter reached them, he is obliged in his honesty to tell the sad story of how Paul and Barnabas came to separate

Presumably both mother and son had been converted during Paul’s previous visit about five years previously

Little minds would have condemned him for inconsistency. But there was a deep consistency in his thought and action. Once the principle had been established that circumcision was not necessary for salvation, he was ready to make concessions in policy. What was unnecessary for acceptance with God was advisable for acceptance by some human beings

It is noteworthy that in each of these three paragraphs which describe the reception of the Jerusalem letter, Luke makes a similar statement about the church

The Judaizers were arguing that circumcision was necessary for salvation (1). There was, therefore, a danger of the church breaking up into competing theological factions

The Judaizers claimed the authority of James and contradicted Paul. Peter was led astray and was opposed by Paul. The three apostles appeared to be at loggerheads, with James and Paul on opposite sides and Peter oscillating between them

Thus the unity of the gospel preserved the unity of the church

Further, it is the gospel of God’s sufficient grace. It cannot be regarded either as a supplement to something else (e.g. Judaism) or as needing to be supplemented by something else (e.g. circumcision), without being undermined

It was one thing to secure the gospel from corruption; it was another to preserve the church from fragmentation

Once the theological principle was firmly established, that salvation is by grace alone, and that circumcision was not required but neutral, he was prepared to adjust his practical policies. He made two notable concessions, both for the same conciliatory reason

As Luther put it, Paul was strong in faith, and soft in love

Paul was a reed in non-essentials,—an iron pillar in essentials

The most notable feature of Paul’s second missionary expedition, which Luke narrates in these chapters, is that during it the good seed of the gospel was now for the first time planted in European soil

That invasion of Europe was not in the mind of Paul, but it was evidently in the mind of the Spirit.’1 With the benefit of hindsight, knowing that Europe became the first Christian continent and was until fairly recently the main base for missionary outreach to the rest of the world, we can see what an epoch-making development this was

Moreover, in each case the missionaries included the capital city in their itinerary—Thessalonica being Macedonia’s capital, Corinth being Achaia’s, and Ephesus being Asia’s

In addition, to each of the churches in these capital cities Paul was later to write, namely his letters to the Thessalonians, the Corinthians and the Ephesians

It has been conjectured from the fact that Peter later wrote to the Christian dispersion in these parts, including Asia and Bithynia,5 that Paul was kept from evangelizing there in order to make way for Peter. But how the Holy Spirit did his preventive work on these two occasions we can only guess. It may have been through giving the missionaries a strong, united inward impression, or through some outward circumstance like illness, Jewish opposition or a legal ban, or through the utterance of a Christian prophet, perhaps Silas himself

William Barclay made the improbable suggestion that the man in the dream was Alexander the Great, partly because ‘the district was permeated with memories of Alexander’ and partly because Alexander’s aim had been ‘to marry the east to the west’ and so make one world, while Paul’s vision was to make ‘one world for Christ’.8 Sir William Ramsay argued that the Macedonian was Luke, whom Paul had just met in Troas, possibly consulting him as a doctor. It is likely that Luke had some personal connection with Philippi, and certain that he was in Troas at the time

A. T. Pierson in his The Acts of the Holy Spirit drew attention to what he called ‘the double guidance of the apostle and his companions’, namely, ‘on the one hand prohibition and restraint, on the other permission and constraint. They are forbidden in one direction, invited in another; one way the Spirit says “go not”; the other he calls “Come

From this we may learn that usually God’s guidance is not negative only but also positive (some doors close, others open); not circumstantial only, but also rational (thinking about our situation); not personal only, but also corporate (a sharing of the data with others, so that we can mull over them together and reach a common mind

Since Luke adds that the congregation consisted of women, it is usually assumed that this explains the non-existence of a synagogue: a quorum of ten men was necessary before a synagogue could be constituted

She was very persuasive, in fact ‘she insisted’ (15, NEB, JBP). This has led to several rumours, for example that the Lydian lady was either Euodia or Syntyche15 or Paul’s ‘true yokefellow’,16 and even that, as such, she and Paul had married. But these are nothing but wild speculations

Since salvation was a popular topic of conversation in those days, even if it meant different things to different people, it is not in the least strange that the girl should have hailed the missionaries as teachers of ‘the way of salvation

But why should a demon engage in evangelism? Perhaps the ulterior motive was to discredit the gospel by associating it in people’s minds with the occult

The accusations of causing a riot and introducing an alien religion were serious. ‘Officially the Roman citizen may not practise any alien cult that has not received the public sanction of the state, but customarily he might do so as long as his cult did not otherwise offend against the laws and usages of Roman life, i.e. so long as it did not involve political or social crimes

Thus, as Chrysostom pointed out, the washing was reciprocal: ‘he washed them and was washed; those (sc. the imprisoned missionaries) he washed from their stripes, himself was washed from his sins

No! Let them come themselves in person and escort us out’ (37). ‘Paul seems to have been responsible’, writes A. N. Triton, ‘for the first recorded “sit-in”. He refused to move until the authorities came and apologized.… He wanted to compel the authorities to recognize and to fulfil their God-appointed task. This may have been very important for the freedom of the church he left behind

It would be hard to imagine a more disparate group than the business woman, the slave girl and the gaoler. Racially, socially and psychologically they were worlds apart. Yet all three were changed by the same gospel and were welcomed into the same church

The head of a Jewish household would use the same prayer every morning, giving thanks that God had not made him a Gentile, a woman or a slave. But here were representatives of these three despised categories redeemed and united in Christ

Thirdly, consider their different personal needs. Lydia could be said to have had an intellectual need

If socially she belonged as a slave to her masters, psychologically she belonged to the spirit which controlled her. She was in double bondage. But in finding Christ (for I think Luke means us to understand that she was converted as well as delivered), she found herself

As for the gaoler, we could say that his need was moral

It is wonderful to observe in Philippi both the universal appeal of the gospel (that it could reach such a wide diversity of people) and its unifying effect (that it could bind them together in God’s family). Of course the gospel also divides a community, because some reject it, but it unifies those who accept it

For example, some of the Jews were persuaded, convinced by Paul’s careful arguments, and joined Paul and Silas, perhaps withdrawing from the synagogue to become members of a Christian house church

oikoumenē, the known inhabited earth, in practice the Roman Empire

The general accusation levelled against the missionaries was that they had caused trouble (6). This means not (in the familiar and appealing AV expression) that they had ‘turned the world upside down’, but that they were causing a radical social upheaval. The verb anastatoō has revolutionary overtones and is used in 21:38 of an Egyptian terrorist who ‘started a revolt’. In particular, Paul and Silas were charged with high treason. It is hard to exaggerate the danger to which this exposed them, for ‘the very suggestion of treason against the Emperors often proved fatal to the accused

Luke chronicles the Thessalonian and Berean missions with surprising brevity. Yet one important aspect of them, to which he seems to be drawing his readers’ attention, is the attitude to the Scriptures adopted by both speaker and hearers, as evidenced by

What is impressive is that neither speaker nor hearers used Scripture in a superficial, unintelligent or proof-texting way

a characteristic of the true religion is that it suffers itself to be examined into, and its claims to be so decided upon

Everybody knew about Athens. Athens had been the foremost Greek city-state since the fifth century BC. Even after its incorporation into the Roman Empire, it retained a proud intellectual independence and also became a free city. It boasted of its rich philosophical tradition inherited from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, of its literature and art, and of its notable achievements in the cause of human liberty

He was hoping to be able to return to Macedonia, for it was to Macedonia that he had been called

the Roman satirist hardly exaggerates when he says that it was easier to find a god there than a man

There is no need to suppose that Paul was blind to their beauty. But beauty did not impress him if it did not honour God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ

Now jealousy is the resentment of rivals, and whether it is good or evil depends on whether the rival has any business to be there. To be jealous of someone who threatens to outshine us in beauty, brains or sport is sinful, because we cannot claim a monopoly of talent in those areas. If, on the other hand, a third party enters a marriage, the jealousy of the injured person, who is being displaced, is righteous, because the intruder has no right to be there

So the pain or ‘paroxysm’ which Paul felt in Athens was due neither to bad temper, not to pity for the Athenians’ ignorance, nor even to fear for their eternal salvation. It was due rather to his abhorrence of idolatry, which aroused within him deep stirrings of jealousy for the Name of God, as he saw human beings so depraved as to be giving to idols the honour and glory which were due to the one, living and true God alone

How then, in the face of growing opposition to it, can Christians justify the continuance of world evangelization? The commonest answer is to point to the Great commission, and indeed obedience to it provides a strong stimulus. Compassion is higher than obedience, however, namely love for people who do not know Jesus Christ, and who on that account are alienated, disorientated, and indeed lost. But the highest incentive of all is zeal or jealousy for the glory of Jesus Christ

I could not endure existence if Jesus was not glorified; it would be hell to me, if he were to be always … dishonoured

He seems deliberately to have adopted the famous Socratic method of dialogue, involving questions and answers; he was, in fact, a kind of Christian Socrates, although with a better gospel than Socrates ever knew

To oversimplify, it was characteristic of Epicureans to emphasize chance, escape and the enjoyment of pleasure, and of the Stoics to emphasize fatalism, submission and the endurance of pain

One cannot help admiring Paul’s ability to speak with equal facility to religious people in the synagogue, to casual passers-by in the city square, and to highly sophisticated philosophers both in the agora and when they met in Council

It is possible that the philosophers, grasping that the essence of Paul’s message was ton Jēsoun kai tēn anastasin (Jesus and the resurrection) thought that he was introducing into Athens a couple of new divinities, a male god called ‘Jesus’ and his female consort ‘Anastasis

both Paul’s speeches to pagans in the Acts seem to have been occasioned by a misunderstanding

First, was Paul brought to the hill, or before the court/council, or both

It seems almost certain, then, that he addressed that august senate

Secondly, was Paul’s speech before the court of the Areopagus a defence or a sermon

One may therefore regard the situation as ‘as informal inquiry by the education commission’, who regarded him with ‘slightly contemptuous indulgence

How then shall we interpret his statement that ‘what’ they were worshipping ‘as something unknown’ he was about to proclaim to them? Was he thereby acknowledging the authenticity of their pagan worship, and should we regard with equal charity the cultus of non-Christian religions

It is also true that converts, who turn to Christ from a non-Christian religious system, usually think of themselves not as having transferred their worship from one God to Another, but as having begun now to worship in truth the God they were previously trying worship in ignorance, error or distortion. But N. B. Stonehouse is right that what Paul picked out for comment was the Athenians’ open acknowledgement of their ignorance, and that ‘the ignorance rather than the worship is thus understood’.27

This view of the world is very different from either the Epicurean emphasis on a chance combination of atoms or the virtual pantheism of the Stoics

It is remarkable that Paul should thus have quoted from two pagan poets.29 His precedent gives us warrant to do the same, and indicates that glimmerings of truth, insights from general revelation, may be found in non-Christian authors. At the same time we need to exercise caution, for in stating that ‘we are his offspring’, Aratus was referring to Zeus

Paul quotes their own poets to expose their own inconsistency

In brief, all idolatry tries to minimize the gulf between the Creator and his creatures, in order to bring him under our control. More than that, it actually reverses the respective positions of God and us, so that, instead of our humbly acknowledging that God has created and rules us, we presume to imagine that we can create and rule God. There is no logic in idolatry; it is a perverse, topsy-turvy expression of our human rebellion against God

In the past God overlooked such ignorance. It is not that he did not notice it, nor that he acquiesced in it as excusable, but that in his forbearing mercy he did not visit upon it the judgment it deserved

Moreover this divine judge is also the man. All nations have been created from the first Adam; through the last Adam all nations will be judged

As we reflect on Paul’s address to the Areopagus, we have to face two criticisms of it, first that it was not authentic, and secondly that it was not adequate

that it is a ‘Hellenistic’ speech about the knowledge of God, which is not Christian until its conclusion

Ramsay popularized the notion in his day that Paul ‘was disappointed and perhaps disillusioned by his experience in Athens’, since the results were negligible. So ‘when he went on from Athens to Corinth, he no longer spoke in the philosophic style’, but ‘ “determined not to know anything save Jesus Christ, and him crucified

what Paul renounced in Corinth was not the biblical doctrine of God as Creator, Lord and Judge, but the wisdom of the world and the rhetoric of the Greeks. His firm ‘decision’ to preach nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified was taken because of the anticipated challenges of proud Corinth, not because of his supposed failure in Athens

The Areopagus address reveals the comprehensiveness of Paul’s message. He proclaimed God in his fullness as Creator, Sustainer, Ruler, Father and Judge. He took in the whole of nature and of history

Many people are rejecting our gospel today not because they perceive it to be false, but because they perceive it to be trivial. People are looking for an integrated world-view which makes sense of all their experience. We learn from Paul that we cannot preach the gospel of Jesus without the doctrine of God, or the cross without the creation, or salvation without judgment. Today’s world needs a bigger gospel, the full gospel of Scripture

Why is it that, in spite of the great needs and opportunities of our day, the church slumbers peacefully on, and that so many Christians are deaf and dumb, deaf to Christ’s commission and tongue-tied in testimony? I think the major reason is this: we do not speak as Paul spoke because we do not feel as Paul felt

great needs and opportunities

Have we ever been provoked by the idolatrous cities of the contemporary world

The rise of urban civilization’, wrote Professor Harvey Cox in The Secular City, is one of the ‘hallmarks of our era

Most of these megacities will be in the Third World

This process of urbanization, as a significant new fact of this century, constitutes a great challenge to the Christian church

Christians need to move into the cities, and experience the pains and pressures of living there, in order to win city-dwellers for Christ

It seems to have been Paul’s deliberate policy to move purpose-fully from one strategic city-center to the next. What drew him to the cities was probably that they contained the Jewish synagogues, the larger populations and the influential leaders

Athens was the intellectual centre of the ancient world

Corinth was above all a great commercial centre, a world-famous emporium

Paul must have seen its strategic importance. If trade could radiate from Corinth in all directions, so could the gospel

Ephesus was also famed for its commerce. Barclay calls it ‘the market of Asia Minor’.6 It had political importance as well, as the capital of the Roman province of Asia. But in particular Ephesus was one of the principal religious centres of the Graeco-Roman world. The imperial cult flourished there, and at one time the city boasted as many as three temples dedicated to the worship of the Emperor. Above all, Ephesus was famed as ‘the guardian of the temple of Artemis’ (19:35)

Here, then, were three major cities of the Graeco-Roman world, all of them in differing degrees being centres of learning, trade and religion. Luke plainly understands their significance for the spread of the gospel

These visits followed a similar pattern, namely the evangelization of Jews, their opposition to the gospel, the apostle’s deliberate turn to the Gentiles, and the multiple vindication of his dramatic decision. This is Luke’s underlying theme in chapters 18 and 19

What was it about Corinth which occasioned his alarm and necessitated his decision to preach only Christ and his cross?

It was surely the pride and immorality of the Corinthian people which intimidated Paul, since the cross comes into direct collision with both.

The sexual promiscuity of Corinth was proverbial, so that korinthiazomai meant to practise immorality, and korinthiastēs was a synonym for a harlot

This married couple, whom Paul later called his ‘fellow-workers in Christ Jesus’, who had ‘risked their lives’ for him,12 exemplified an extraordinary degree of mobility

Some commentators prefer ‘leather worker’ or ‘saddler’, however, ‘since the tents of antiquity were usually made of leather’.14 Another possibility is ‘cloth worker

But which law was he supposed to be contravening? Gallio understood them to be referring to what he called ‘your own law’ (15), but they knew as well as he that debates about the Jewish law were beyond his jurisdiction. So they must have been trying to make out that Paul’s teaching was against Roman law, because it was not an authentic expression of Judaism. Judaism was a religio licita, an authorized religion. But Paul’s teaching was ‘something new and un-Jewish …; it was, they urged, a religio illicita, which accordingly ought to be banned by Roman law

Gallio’s refusal to take seriously the Jewish case against Paul or to adjudicate was immensely important for the future of the gospel. In effect, he passed a favourable verdict on the Christian faith and thus established a significant precedent. The gospel could not now be charged with illegality, for its freedom as a religio licita had been secured as the imperial policy

Jesus would keep his promise to protect him; the chief means of his protection would be Roman law

As for the person concerned, although the grammar permits it to be Aquila, the context requires that it was Paul

Once Paul had been liberated from the attempt to be justified by the law, his conscience was free to take part in practices which, being ceremonial or cultural, belonged to the ‘matters indifferent’, perhaps on this occasion in order to conciliate the Jewish Christian leaders he was going to see in Jerusalem

The church which he greeted on disembarkation was almost certainly not that of Caesarea, but of Jerusalem, about sixty-five miles inland, for ‘the terms “going up” and “going down” are used so frequently of the journey to and from Jerusalem as to establish this usage

Thirdly, however, he knew only the baptism of John (25b), whom Luke knew to have been the Messiah’s forerunner35 and to have belonged to the law and the prophets, not the kingdom

Their ministry was timely and discreet. As Professor Bruce remarks, ‘how much better it is to give such private help to a preacher whose ministry is defective than to correct or denounce him publicly

But those twelve ‘disciples’ cannot possibly be regarded as providing a norm for a two-stage initiation. On the contrary, as Michael Green has written, it is ‘crystal clear that these disciples were in no sense Christians’,39 having not yet believed in Jesus, whereas through the ministry of Paul they came to believe and were then baptized with water and the Spirit more or less simultaneously

That is, his questions expressed his assumptions that those who have believed have received the Spirit,40 and that those who have been baptized have received the Spirit, for he cannot separate the sign (water) from the thing signified (the Spirit

Both his questions imply that to have believed and been baptized and not to have received the Spirit constitutes an extraordinary anomaly

It must rather mean that, although they had heard John’s prophecy, they had not heard whether it had been fulfilled. They were ignorant of Pentecost

They understood neither that the new age had been ushered in by Jesus, nor that those who believe in him and are baptized into him receive the distinctive blessing of the new age, the indwelling Spirit

In other words, they experienced a mini-Pentecost. Better, Pentecost caught up on them. Better still, they were caught up into it, as its promised blessings became theirs

The norm of Christian experience, then, is a cluster of four things: repentance, faith in Jesus, water baptism and the gift of the Spirit. Though the perceived order may vary a little, the four belong together and are universal in Christian initiation

There are no Samaritans or disciples of John the Baptist left in the world today

To argue from the Old Testament Scriptures about the kingdom is the same as to argue that Jesus is the Christ, since it is Jesus the Christ who inaugurated the kingdom

It is a bit tantalizing that Luke tells us nothing about Tyrannus. One assumes that he was a philosopher or educator of some kind, who lectured during the cool hours of the morning, but was prepared to rent his school room or lecture hall (scholē) to the Christian evangelist during the heat of the day

and beyond that he was even dreaming of Spain,49 ‘the most westerly outpost of Roman civilization in Europe’.50 His vision had no limits. As Bengel rightly commented, ‘no Alexander, no Caesar, no other hero, approaches to the large-mindedness of this little (a play on his name Paulos, “little”) Benjamite

A diversion was caused when some Jews tried to put forward their spokesman, no doubt in order to disassociate Jews from Christians

in final analysis the only thing heathenism can do against Paul is to shout itself hoarse

Luke’s purpose in recounting this incident was clearly apologetic or political. He wanted to show that Rome had no case against Christianity in general or Paul in particular

But when the Jews rejected the gospel, he withdrew from the synagogue and moved to a neutral building instead. In Corinth he chose a private house, the home of Titius Justus, while in Ephesus he rented the lecture hall of Tyrannus. And easily the greater part of his evangelistic ministry in both cities was spent in these secular situations

In our day we still have to evangelize the religious. The equivalent to the synagogue in our culture is the church. It is here that the Scriptures are read, prayer is offered, and ‘God-fearers’ congregate, people on the fringe who are attracted but not committed

If religious people can be reached in religious buildings, secular people have to be reached in secular buildings

Thus both in the religious context of the synagogue and in the secular context of the lecture hall, Paul combined argument and persuasion

Martin Hengel conjectures plausibly that Paul’s letters (especially Romans and parts of 1 and 2 Corinthians) ‘contain brief summaries of lectures and … the much reduced quintessence of what Paul taught’ during those years in Tyrannus’ lecture theatre

This vocabulary shows that Paul’s presentation of the gospel was serious, well reasoned and persuasive. Because he believed the gospel to be true, he was not afraid to engage the minds of his hearers. He did not simply proclaim his message in a ‘take it or leave it’ fashion

What he renounced in Corinth64 was the wisdom of the world, not the wisdom of God, and the rhetoric of the Greeks, not the use of arguments

We must never set them over against each other as alternatives. No, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and he brings people to faith in Jesus not in spite of the evidence, but because of the evidence, when he opens their minds to attend to it

Thus he spent two years in Corinth and three years in Ephesus, and in both cases his teaching was comprehensive and thorough

the Bezan text adds that he did it ‘from the fifth hour to the tenth’ (19:9, RSV margin), that is, from 11 o’clock in the morning to 4 o’clock in the afternoon

he will have given a daily five-hour lecture six days a week for two years, which makes 3,120 hours of gospel argument

They then returned to their towns and villages as born-again believers. Thus the gospel must have spread to the Lycus valley and to its chief towns Colosse, Laodicea and Hierapolis, which Epaphras had visited but Paul had not,69 and perhaps to the remaining five of the seven churches of Revelation 2 and 3, namely Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis and Philadelphia

Our evangelism tends to be too ecclesiastical (inviting people to church), whereas Paul also took the gospel out into the secular world; too emotional (appeals for decision without an adequate basis of understanding), whereas Paul taught, reasoned and tried to persuade; and too superficial (making brief encounters and expecting quick results), whereas Paul stayed in Corinth and Ephesus for five years, faithfully sowing gospel seed and in due time reaping a harvest

Luke sees a parallel between Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, which is prominent in his first volume, and Paul’s journey to Jerusalem, which he describes in his second

Paul hardly ever travelled alone, and that when he was alone, he expressed his longing for human companionship

It is probable that he was celebrating the Christian Passover, i.e. Easter, with the church at Philippi

How we interpret this ‘first day’ depends on whether we think Luke followed the Jewish reckoning of a day (from sunset to sunset) or the Roman (from midnight to midnight

Luke’s reference to ‘the first day of the week’, i.e. Sunday, ‘is the earliest unambiguous evidence we have for the Christian practice of gathering together for worship on that day’.24 Moreover, the purpose of their assembly was ‘to break bread’, which Luke understood as the Lord’s Supper in the context of a fellowship meal, as in the upper room in Jerusalem

First, it was an evening service or meeting

the boy for falling asleep during the apostle’s sermon. For the impression is that he had a protracted struggle with his sleepiness

Then, surely following the precedent established by Elijah with the son of the widow at Zarephath26 and by Elisha with the son of the Shunammite woman,27 he threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him

First, the disciples met on the Lord’s Day for the Lord’s Supper. At least verse 7 sounds like a description of the normal, regular practice of the church in Troas. And the evidence is that the Eucharist, as a thankful celebration of the now risen Saviour’s death, very early became the main Sunday service, in the context of an agapē, that is, a ‘love feast’ of fellowship meal

Secondly, in addition to the supper there was a sermon, indeed a very long one, for its first part lasted from sunset to midnight (7), and its second from midnight to sunrise (11). Not that we are to envisage Paul’s preaching as purely monologue, since Luke uses the verb dialegomai twice (7, 9), which implies discussion, perhaps in the form of question and answers. The other word he uses is homileō (11), which JBP renders ‘a long earnest talk’ and NEB ‘much conversation

But at least the apostle took his teaching responsibility seriously. So should we

So it is, thirdly, that word and sacrament were combined in the ministry given to the church at Troas, and the universal church has followed suit ever since

Perhaps ‘word and sacrament’ is not the best or most accurate coupling

What builds up the church more than anything else is the ministry of God’s word as it comes to us through Scripture and Sacrament (that is the right coupling), audibly and visibly, in declaration and drama

Secondly, Paul arranged for his friends to travel to Assos by sea and for himself to go by land. Travel along the coastal road would be quicker than a sea voyage round the cape. But why did he want to be alone? Was it that this was the real beginning of his long journey to Jerusalem

First, this is the only speech in the Acts which is addressed to a Christian audience

Secondly, the leaders addressed are called ‘elders’ (17), ‘pastors’ (28a) and ‘overseers’ (28b), and it is evident that these terms denote the same people

Those of us who belong to episcopally ordered churches, and believe that a threefold order (bishops, presbyters and deacons) can be defended and commended from Scripture, do not base our argument on the word episkopoi, but on people like Timothy and Titus who, though not called ‘bishops’, were nevertheless given an oversight and jurisdiction over several churches, with authority to select and ordain their presbyter-bishops and deacons

There is no biblical warrant either for the one-man-band (a single pastor playing all the instruments of the orchestra himself) or for a hierarchical or pyramidal structure in the local church (a single pastor perched at the apex of the pyramid

Certainly the address has an authentically Pauline flavour. What has struck many students is the correspondence, in both vocabulary an content, between the speech and Paul’s letters

This repeated emphasis on their knowledge of him is reminiscent of 1 Thessalonians 2

Because he had had to be smuggled out of the city by night and had not returned, his critics accused him of insincerity. Something similar seems to have happened in Ephesus during the year or so since he had left the city. So he needed to defend the sincerity of his motives and, as in Thessalonica so in Ephesus, he did it by reminding them of his visit

The past and the future will together shape their present ministry. In essence, his appeal is for vigilance: ‘Keep watch!’ (28) … ‘Be on your guard!’ (31

This sense of idios (‘own’), writes F. F. Bruce, ‘is well attested by the papyri, where it is “used thus as a term of endearment to near relations

There had been a degree of thoroughness about it, which left his conscience clear. First, he had been thorough in his teaching

In modern terms, Paul’s threefold thoroughness was a fine example of ‘evangelism in depth’. He shared all possible truth with all possible people in all possible ways

Sheep were defenceless against them

So the shepherds of Christ’s flock have a double duty: to feed the sheep (by teaching the truth) and to protect them from wolves (by warning of error

This emphasis is unpopular today. We are frequently told always to be positive in our teaching, and never negative

Implicit in verse 28 is the truth that the pastoral oversight of the church belongs ultimately to God himself. Indeed, each of the three persons of the Trinity has a share in this oversight

And over this church, which belongs to God and has been bought by Christ, the Holy Spirit appoints overseers. So the oversight is his too, or he could not delegate it to others

For sheep are not at all the clean and cuddly creatures they may appear

But some people are a great trial to their pastors (and vice versa). And their pastors will persevere in caring for them only if they remember how valuable they are in God’s sight

At first sight the promptings of the Spirit appear to have been in direct conflict with each other

Some have argued that the references to the Spirit here simply mean that the speakers were claiming inspiration, without necessarily being inspired. But then we would have to interpret other references to the Spirit in the same ambiguous way. The better solution is to draw a distinction between a prediction and a prohibition

It is more difficult to understand 21:4 in this way, since the ‘urging’ itself is said to be ‘through the Spirit’. But perhaps Luke’s statement is a condensed way of saying that the warning was divine while the urging was human. After all, the Spirit’s word to Paul combined the compulsion to go with a warning of the consequences

What fortified Paul in his journey was the Christian fellowship which he and his travel companions experienced in every port

So far Luke has portrayed his hero on the offensive

Following his three epic missionary journeys Luke describes the five trials he had to endure

But Luke had a better reason for giving such a comparatively full account of Paul’s trials than the mere circumstance that he had firsthand material at his disposal. For, we remember, Luke was more than a historian; he was a theologian too. One of the major themes which he has been developing concerns the relations between Jews and Gentiles in the Messianic community. He has shown how Paul, called and commissioned to be the apostle to the Gentiles, has by now on three solemn occasions, in Pisidian Antioch, Corinth and Ephesus, left the synagogue and exchanged Jewish for Gentile evangelism (13:46; 18:6 and 19:8–9). It is not an accident that Luke’s story begins in Jerusalem and ends in Rome

In Acts 21–23, therefore, to which we have now come, Luke depicts the reaction to the gospel of two communities—of the Jews who were increasingly hostile to it, and of the Romans who were consistently friendly to it

In Jerusalem, however, what had been spasmodic outbursts became an implacable determination to get rid of him once for all

The slammed gates seemed to symbolize the final Jewish rejection of the gospel. Paul’s policy of turning to the Gentiles had been justified

Luke seems also to be drawing a deliberate parallel between the sufferings (‘passion’) of Christ and the sufferings of his apostle Paul

both Jesus and Paul (1) were rejected by their own people, arrested without cause, and imprisoned; (2) were unjustly accused and wilfully misrepresented by false witnesses; (3) were slapped in the face in court (23:2); (4) were the hapless victims of secret Jewish plots (23:12ff.); (5) heard the terrifying noise of a frenzied mob screaming ‘Away with him’ (21:36; cf. 22:22); and (6) were subjected to a series of five trials

It is not just that the first Gentile convert was a Roman centurion, Cornelius, or that the first convert of Paul’s missionary journeys was the Roman proconsul of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus (13:12). It is rather that, whenever they had the opportunity, the Roman authorities defended the Christian missionaries

This protection by Roman justice is even more clear in Paul’s trials. Although he was accused by the Jews, he was tried and exonerated by the Romans. The same had been true of Jesus. Luke finds a third parallel here. What he is at pains to demonstrate is that, although the Jews brought accusations against Jesus and his apostle Paul, the Romans could find no fault in either

Thus three times in the case of Jesus, and three times in the case of Paul, the accused was declared not guilty in a court of law

his trial, with its ‘formal decision by the supreme court of the Empire’, ‘was really a charter of religious liberty, and therein lies its immense importance

Luke’s purpose has shown the church of all subsequent times and places how to behave under presecution. It must be able to show that accusations of crimes against the state and against humanity (which were often alleged in the early centuries) are groundless; that it is innocent of offences against the law; and that its members are conscientious citizens, that is, submissive to the state in so far as their conscience permits them. Then the freedom to profess, practise and propagate the gospel will, inasmuch as it lies with the church, be preserved, and the only offence which Christians give will be the stumbling block of the cross

James was still the recognized leader of the church in Jerusalem and indeed of the world-wide Jewish Christian community, especially now that the apostles Peter and John seem to have left the city

In depicting Paul and James face to face, Luke presents his readers with a dramatic situation, fraught with both risk and possibility. For James and Paul were the representative leaders of two Christianities, Jewish and Gentile. This was not, of course, their first meeting. It was at least their fourth

Indeed, as they greeted one another now, each was flanked by sample fruits of their respective missions, Paul by his companions from the Gentile churches, and James by the elders of the Jerusalem church

Some people were doubtless asserting that the doctrinal positions of James and Paul were incompatible, as they had done before the Jerusalem Council (15:1–2), Paul teaching salvation by grace, and James salvation by works

the evidence of God’s grace towards Gentiles was indisputable, and the only appropriate response was worship

But Paul was also anxious to be conciliatory towards the Jewish Christian community, and showed it in two ways

The first, which for some reason Luke mentions only later in 24:17, was the presentation to the Jewish church of the offerings given by the Gentile churches of the west

The chief significance of the offering, however, lay in its symbolism. It exemplified the solidarity of Gentile believers with their Jewish sisters and brothers in the body of Christ

Further, the offering was a humble acknowledgement of reciprocal indebtedness

It was surely because of the symbolic nature of the offering that Paul was so concerned about it. He was anxious that it should not be misunderstood, as an unwelcome paternalism perhaps, or as an attempt to buy favour, and that its acceptance should not be misinterpreted as a kind of capitulation by Jewish Christians to Paul’s pro-Gentile stance

Luke concentrates, however, on the second example of Paul’s conciliatory spirit, namely the positive way in which he responded to the proposal James put to him

In a word, should Jewish believers continue to observe Jewish cultural practices? The rumour was that Paul was teaching them not to

First, Paul should ‘join in their purification rites’. Commentators are not agreed about what James had in mind

We can only thank God for the generosity of spirit displayed by both James and Paul. They were already agreed doctrinally (that salvation was by grace in Christ through faith) and ethically (that Christians must obey the moral law). The issue between them concerned culture, ceremony and tradition. The solution to which they came was not a compromise, is the sense of sacrificing a doctrinal or moral principle, but a concession in the area of practice

James seems to have gone too far in expecting Paul to live ‘in obedience to the law’ (24) in all matters and at all times, if that is what he meant. But Paul was certainly ready to do so on special occasions, for the sake of evangelism for example19 or—as here—for the sake of Jewish-Gentile solidarity

a truly emancipated spirit such as Paul’s is not in bondage to its own emancipation

It was rather a sensitive, mutual Christian forbearance. The unbending prejudice and fanatical violence of the unbelieving Jews, which Luke describes next, stands out in ugly contrast

It is ironical’, Howard Marshall justly comments, ‘that this should have been the charge against Paul at a time when he himself was undergoing purification so that he would not defile the temple

The second accusation, that Paul had brought Greeks into the temple area and so defiled it (28b), was simply untrue. It was not a deliberate lie, Luke charitably adds, but rather an assumption on their part

It is noteworthy that the same verb epilambanomai is used both of the mob ‘seizing’ Paul (30) and of the commander ‘arresting’ him (33), although they had opposite objectives

As Paul boldly made his speech or defence (apologia, 22:1) to the hostile crowd from the stone steps which led up from the temple to the fortress of Antonia, he did so with great sensitivity and appropriateness

To the crowd in Jerusalem, whose angry complaint was that he taught everybody everywhere against the people, the law and the temple (21:28), Paul stressed his personal loyalty to his Jewish origins and faith

In their eyes proselytism (making Gentiles into Jews) was fine; but evangelism (making Gentiles into Christians without first making them Jews) was an abomination. It was tantamount to saying that Jews and Gentiles were equal, for they both needed to come to God through Christ, and that on identical terms

Looking back over Paul’s defence, we may perhaps say that he made two major points. The first was that he himself was a loyal Jew

But the God of his fathers was his God still. He had not broken away from his ancestral faith, still less apostatized; he stood in direct continuity with it

And Paul’s second point was that those features of his faith which had changed, especially his acknowledgment of Jesus and his Gentile mission, were not his own eccentric ideas. They had been directly revealed to him from heaven

He then ‘gave instructions to examine him by flogging’ (24, NEB). This ghastly ordeal was the standard way of extracting information from prisoners. ‘The scourge (Latin flagellum) was a fearful instrument of torture

Paul was actually being prepared for the flogging when he divulged his Roman citizenship. Similarly, in Philippi he had not revealed that he was a Roman citizen until after he had been beaten, imprisoned and put in the stocks (16:37). He seems for some reason not to have wanted to take advantage of being a citizen except in some dire extremity

the precise legal situation of Roman citizens in provincial jurisdiction is not well documented at this period

Although the commander was alarmed when he realised that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains (29), he does not seem to have released him from them. At least he was still in chains the following day and subsequently.35 What is the explanation of this? ‘possibly a distinction is to be made between the heavy chains, a torture in themselves (of which Paul may have been relieved) and the lighter chains to prevent the prisoner form escaping

So now he opted for a third method—trial by the Sanhedrin

The high priest Ananias was a thoroughly unsavoury character. He was described by Josephus as ‘a great hoarder up of money’; he even ‘took away the tithes that belonged to the priests by violence

The most likely explanation is that Ananias understood Paul’s words as a claim that, though now a Christian, he was still a good Jew, having served God with a good conscience all his life (since, as well as before, his conversion), even ‘to this day’. This was certainly the claim Paul made in 2 Timothy 1:3. It seemed to Ananias the height of arrogance, even of blasphemy

Secondly, why was Paul’s riposte so rude? Jerome seems to have been the first commentator to draw attention to the contrast between Jesus and Paul before their judges

It may be that he did lose his temper, for he more or less apologized

How is it, then, that he did not recognize the high priest

41 But to me the most likely explanation lies in the poor eyesight which Paul is known to have had

It is tantalizing to read these references to Paul’s sister and her son, and to have no further information about them

It is this question which has made scholars wonder whether ‘spearmen’ is the correct translation of dexiolaboi

Felix was utterly ruthless in quelling Jewish uprisings

At the same time, Lysias somewhat manipulated the facts in order to portray himself in the most favourable light

The future of the gospel was at stake, as powerful forces ranged themselves for and against it. On the one hand, the Jewish persecutors were prejudiced and violent. On the other, the Romans were open-minded and went out of their way to maintain the standards of law, justice and order of which their best leaders were understandably proud. Four times they rescued Paul from death either by lynching or by murder,49 taking him into custody until the charges against him could be clarified and, if cogent, presented in court

Between these two powers, religious and civil, hostile and friendly, Jerusalem and Rome, Paul found himself trapped, unarmed and totally vulnerable. One cannot help admiring his courage, especially when he stood on the steps of Fortress Antonia, facing an angry crowd which had just severely manhandled him, with no power but the Word and the Spirit of God. Luke seems to offer him to us as a model of Christian valour

Jerusalem and Rome were the centres of two enormously strong power blocs. The faith of Jerusalem went back two millennia to Abraham. The rule of Rome extended some three million square miles round the Mediterranean Sea. Jerusalem’s strength lay in history and tradition, Rome’s in conquest and organization

He was no traitor to either church or state, that he should come into collision with them, although this is how his accusers tried to frame him. The enemies of Jesus had followed the same ploy. In their own court they had accused him of threatening to destroy the temple and of blaspheming,1 while before Pilate they had represented him as guilty of sedition

But Paul was as innocent in these areas as Jesus had been. He had no quarrel with the God-given status of either Rome or Jerusalem. On the contrary, as he had written to the Roman Christians, he recognized that the authority given to Rome came from God3 and that the privileges given to Israel came from God also

Paul’s contention, while on trial, was that in principle the gospel both supports the rule of Caesar (25:8–12) and fulfils the hope of Israel (26:6ff.). His defence before his judges was to present himself as a loyal citizen of Rome and a loyal son of Israel

In each of these five trials, in which the charge was now political (sedition), now religious (sacrilege), the judging audience was part Roman and part Jewish. Thus, when Paul spoke to the Jewish crowd and the Jewish Council, Claudius Lysias, the Roman tribune, was present and listening, while when Paul stood before Felix and Festus, the representatives of Rome, it was the Jews who were prosecuting. Then in the fifth trial, which was the grand finale, King Agrippa II combined both authorities within himself, for he had been appointed by Rome but was also an acknowledged authority on Jewish affairs

Tertullus expressed gratitude for the ‘peace’ Felix had secured and the ‘reforms’ he had introduced, whereas in reality he had put down several insurrections with such barbarous brutality that he earned for himself the horror, not the thanks, of the Jewish population

Paul’s purpose in this was not just to make a personal declaration, however, but to insist that he shared it with the whole people of God. He worshipped the same God (‘the God of our fathers’), believed the same truths (the Law and the Prophets), shared the same hope (the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked) and cherished the same ambition (to keep a clear conscience). He was not an innovator, therefore, but loyal to the ancestral faith. Nor was he a sectarian or heretical deviant, for he stood squarely in mainstream Judaism

Why were these men not in court to press their charges? (19). Their absence was a serious breach of Roman law, which ‘was very strong against accusers who abandoned their charges

He found himself on the horns of a dilemma. He could not convict Paul

On the other hand, Felix was unwilling to release Paul, partly because he hoped for a bribe (26) and partly because he wanted to curry favour with the Jews (27). The only other option was to postpone his verdict on the pretext that he needed the tribune’s advice

The Romans had different degrees of imprisonment

We may guess that Luke visited him, and Philip the evangelist with his four daughters who lived in Caesarea (21:8–9

Most commentators relate ‘righteousness’ or ‘justice’ to the well-known cruelty and oppression of which Felix was guilty, and ‘self-control’ to the unbridled lust which had drawn and united him to Drusilla

In this case the three topics of conversation were what are sometimes called the ‘three tenses of salvation’, namely how to be justified or pronounced righteous by God, how to overcome temptation and gain self-mastery, and how to escape the awful final judgment of God

It would be cynical to suppose, however, that Felix’s only motive was to hold Paul to ransom. I think he knew that Paul had something more precious than money, something which money cannot buy. If his conscience had been aroused by Paul’s teaching, then he must have been seeking forgiveness and peace. Certainly the release of Felix from sin meant more to Paul than his own release from prison. But unfortunately there is no evidence that Felix ever capitulated to Christ and was redeemed

What is apparent is that Festus was determined to allow justice to take its course

Roman procedure followed three stages. First, charges had to be formulated and sustained by the prosecutor. Secondly, there would be ‘a proper formal act of accusation by the interested party’. Thirdly, the case was heard by ‘the holder of the imperium in person’, in this case the procurator

In this way the accused and his accusers would come face to face

The disturbances which Paul was alleged to have caused were religious in their origin but civil in their character. That is why Caesar’s representative was obliged to take note of them

In making this offer he was within his rights. ‘Nothing prevented him from using the Sanhedrin, or members of it, as his own concilium. That is what Paul feared

Paul saw clearly that he could hope for justice and for acquittal only from the Romans, not from the Jews

So he had only one option left: I appeal to Caesar! (11). Festus seems to have been quite unprepared for this development. What would he do now? He could neither convict and sentence Paul, for fear of offending against Roman justice, nor release him, for fear of offending the Jews

If in his trial before Felix Paul had emphasized the continuity of ‘the Way’ with Judaism, in his trial before Festus he stressed his loyalty to Caesar

He was nevertheless influential in Jewry because the Emperor Claudius had committed to him both the care of the temple and the appointment of the high priest

Paul had aroused his curiosity, much as Jesus had aroused the curiosity of his great-uncle, Herod Antipas

Paul’s trial before Agrippa is the longest and most elaborate of the five

to tradition, he was only a little fellow and unprepossessing in appearance, balding, with beetle brows, hooked nose and bandy legs, yet ‘full of grace’.23 Wearing neither crown nor gown, but only handcuffs and perhaps a plain prisoner’s tunic, he nevertheless dominated the court with his quiet, Christlike dignity and confidence

It was not true, however, that Festus had ‘nothing definite to write to His Majesty’ about Paul (26) and that he could not ‘specify the charges against him’ (27). For the Jewish charges, as we have seen, were both definite and specific. What Festus lacked was not charges, but evidence to substantiate them. For lack of this, he should have had the courage to declare Paul innocent and to release him

It was a dramatic moment when the holy and humble apostle of Jesus Christ stood before this representative of the worldly, ambitious, morally corrupt family of the Herods, who for generation after generation had set themselves in opposition to truth and righteousness

Their founder, Herod the Great’, wrote R. B. Rackham, ‘had tried to destroy the infant Jesus. His son Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, beheaded John the Baptist, and won from the Lord the title of “fox”. His grandson Agrippa I slew James the son of Zebedee with the sword. Now we see Paul brought before Agrippa’s son

Paul describes

to kick against the goads

this saying occurs as a metaphor for useless ‘opposition to deity

Surely, when the heavenly voice declared, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ at least two truths must have registered instantly in Saul’s consciousness. The first is that the crucified Jesus was alive and had thus been vindicated, and the second that the Jesus who identified himself so closely with the Christians that to persecute them was to persecute him, must regard them as being peculiarly his own people

In Paul’s account to Agrippa of what happened on the Damascus road, however, what he stressed was not his conversion, but his commissioning

In fact, the commissioning of Saul as Christ’s apostle was deliberately shaped to resemble the call of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and others to be God’s prophets. In both cases the language of ‘sending’ was used. As God ‘sent’ his prophets to announce his word to his people, so Christ ‘sent’ his apostles to preach and teach in his name, including Paul who was now ‘sent’ to be the apostle to the Gentiles

Christ’s commission of Saul took the form of three verbs, all in the first person singular of direct speech, although respectively in the past, future and present tenses: ‘I have appeared to you’, ‘I will rescue you’ and ‘I am sending you

This renewed claim that Paul was not an innovator, but a faithful exponent of the Scriptures, also had its parallel in Luther and the other sixteenth-century Reformers

The court gasps. Has any prisoner ever before presumed to address His Royal Highness with such impertinence? Agrippa is unhorsed. Too embarrassed to give Paul a direct answer to a direct question, and too proud to allow him to dictate the topic of their dialogue, he takes evasive action with an ambiguous counter-question

He was sincere, the prisoner Paul. He really believed what he was talking about. He wanted everybody to be like him, including the king—everybody a Christian, but nobody a prisoner. You could not help admiring his integrity. There was also a finality about his statement

Agrippa was quite right in theory. But to acquit Paul now would be to short-circuit his appeal, and so to invade the Emperor’s territory. No provincial judge would dare to do that

Luke intends to portray Paul in two guises, first and negatively as a defendant, then secondly and positively as a witness.

Not apostasy but continuity summed up his attitude to Moses and the prophets

So certain was he that he had done nothing against Caesar that he felt it necessary to appeal to Caesar in order to clear himself (25:8, 11). Not anarchy but loyalty summed up his attitude to Caesar

In both cases Paul was fearless

But Paul made no attempt to ingratiate himself with the authorities. He wanted the king’s salvation, not his favour. So he did not stop with the story of his own conversion; he was concerned for Agrippa’s conversion too

Three times, therefore, Luke has Paul repeating the elements of the gospel in the king’s hearing

First, he summarized Christ’s commission to him to bring people into his light, power, forgiveness and new community

Secondly, he described his obedience to the heavenly vision in terms of preaching that people should repent, turn to God and do good works

Thirdly, he detailed his continuing mission ‘to this very day’, which was to testify that, as the Scriptures had foretold, Christ died, rose and proclaimed the dawn of the new age

Each time Paul thus repeated the gospel in court, he was in fact preaching it to the court

Our study of how a single author (Luke) tells the same story differently will help us to understand how the three synoptic evangelists (Matthew, Mark and Luke) could also tell their same stories differently. In this way Luke’s practice throws light on ‘redaction criticism’, that is, on how the work of a redactor (editor) may be influenced by his theological purpose in writing

Presumably the men first fell down with Saul, and then stood up with him also. As for the vision and the voice, they saw the light but not the person of Jesus (as Saul did), and they heard a noise without being able to make out any words.56 Alternatively, as Chrysostom suggested long ago, ‘They … heard the voice of Paul, but saw no person to whom he answered

Rome, the largest and most splendid of ancient cities, acted like a magnet to its peoples. For Rome was the capital and symbol of the Roman Empire, whose founding has been called ‘the grandest political achievement ever accomplished

It treated its conquered subjects and their religions with comparatively humane tolerance; it somehow managed to integrate Romans, Greeks, Jews and ‘Barbarians’ into its social life; it protected the Greek culture and language; it inculcated respect for the rule of law; it gained a reputation for efficient administration and postal communication; and it facilitated travel by its ambitious system of roads and ports, policed by its legions and its navy, so preserving for the benefit of all the long-standing pax romana

True, Seneca had called it ‘a cesspool of iniquity’ and Juvenal ‘a filthy sewer’,2 and Paul had himself described this moral decadence near the beginning of his Letter to the Romans,3 but all the more urgently did it need the gospel

True, John in the book of Revelation portrayed Rome as a persecuting monster and as ‘the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth’,4 but he was writing at least twenty years later in Domitian’s reign; Nero at the time of Paul’s visit had not yet exposed his ugly cruelty

If only Rome could be thoroughly evangelized, he must often have thought to himself, and its church enlarged, consolidated and fired with a missionary vision, what a radiating centre for the gospel it could become

Rome dominated his horizon

In fact, Luke appears deliberately to arrange his material in both his Gospel and the Acts in order to highlight what Floyd V. Filson has called ‘the journey motif’. Two-fifths of the Gospel describe Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem,14 and the final one-third of Acts describes Paul’s journey from Jerusalem to Rome

In this way Luke indicates that Jerusalem and its temple are not indispensable to the church. ‘It would capture the essential geographical outlook of Luke to entitle the Gospel of Luke “From Galilee to Jerusalem” and the Book of Acts “From Jerusalem to Rome” ’, for Jerusalem was the goal of Jesus’ ministry, while Rome was the goal of Paul’s

Paul’s descent into the darkness and danger of the storm was a kind of grave, while his rescue from shipwreck and later springtime voyage to Rome were a kind of resurrection

James Smith of Jordanhill in Renfrewshire, Scotland, whose book The voyage and Shipwreck of St Paul

His general conclusion was that Acts 27 was the work of an eyewitness who nevertheless was a landlubber, and not a professional seaman

No ship seems to have been available to transport the prisoners direct to Italy

Ramsay makes the plausible suggestion that ‘they must have gone as his slaves’.21 This may have enhanced Paul’s importance in the centurion’s eyes and may partly account for the respect in which he was held

But Paul somehow knew what was happening, ‘either by a natural sagacity, by nautical experience or by special revelation’,35 and said to Julius and his men: ‘Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved

Paul made his third intervention, urging everybody to eat because they had not done so for a fortnight, either because of the constant suspense (33), or because of seasickness, or because the food supplies had been saturated, or because cooking had been impossible in the gale

Because of the sequence that he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and ate, some have depicted this as a Eucharist. But neither the occasion nor the gathering of unbelieving soldiers, sailor and prisoners, was appropriate for this. It was surely an ordinary meal, although the food was consecrated by thanksgiving

Here then are aspects of Paul’s character which endear him to us as an integrated Christian, who combined spirituality with sanity, and faith with words

What a man! He was a man of God and of action, a man of the Spirit and of common sense

Luke does not explicitly say that Paul was bitten

So fickle is the crowd that in Lystra Paul was first worshipped, then stoned (14:11–19), while on Malta he was first called a murderer, then a god

Although a vaccine has been developed, the fever lasts on average for four months and sometimes persists even for two or three years

It must have been an emotional experience for Paul to meet personally the first residents in the city of his dreams and the first members of the church to which he had addressed his great theological and ethical treatise

The Western text inserts before this, however, that ‘the centurion delivered the prisoners to the stratopedarch’,43 which BAGD translates ‘military commander, commandant of a camp’. There has been much discussion as to who this was

even in the Gentile capital of the world Paul addressed himself to Jews first

Thus, Paul had done nothing against the Jews, the Romans had nothing against him, and he had nothing (i.e. no charge) against the Jews

In this fearful process’, wrote J. A. Alexander, ‘there are three distinguishable agencies expressly or implicitly described, the ministerial agency of the prophet, the judicial agency of God, and the suicidal agency of the people themselves

Three times before, stubborn Jewish opposition has led Paul to turn to the Gentiles—in Pisidian Antioch (13:46), in Corinth (18:6), and in Ephesus (19:8–9). Now for the fourth time, in the world’s capital city, and in a yet more decisive manner, he does it again

Probably he resumed his tent-making, in order to pay his way

Probably, however, the distinction between ‘preaching’ and ‘teaching’ has been over-pressed, for all Paul’s preaching had a doctrinal content, while all his teaching had an evangelistic purpose

Parrēsia denotes speech which is candid (with no concealment of truth), clear (with no obscurity of expression) and confident (with no fear of consequences

But still the length of the narrative seems out of proportion to its value.

It is this feeling which has prompted some students to look in the story for deeper, spiritual meanings

Unprincipled allegorizations bring Scripture into disrepute, and cause confusion, not enlightenment

What, then, is the major lesson we are intended to learn from Acts 27 and 28? If concerns the providence of God

This providential activity of God is seen in these chapters in two complementary ways, first in bringing Paul to Rome, his desired goal

secondly in bringing him there as a prisoner, his undesired condition

First, Luke intends us to marvel with him over the safe conduct of Paul to Rome

Each incident seemed to be designed to prevent to him from reaching his God-planned, God-promised destination. Since Luke concentrates on the storm, we need to remember that the sea, reminiscent of the primeval chaos, was a regular Old Testament symbol of evil powers in opposition to God. It was not the forces of nature (water, wind and snake) or the machinations of men (schemes, plots and threats) which were arrayed against Paul, but demonic forces at work through them

the apostle, who was brought to Rome to witness, found his witness expanded, enriched and authenticated by his two-year custody in the city

First, his witness was expanded, not only because of the constant flow of people visiting him, but especially because he witnessed to Christ in the presence of Caesar. This has, of course, been questioned

Nero avoided personal jurisdiction, and then only accepted a case for special reasons

In this case we are permitted to imagine that the prisoner who stood before Felix, Festus and Agrippa, stood before Nero also, and that in the world’s most prestigious court, to the world’s most prestigious person, he faithfully proclaimed Christ

That would not have been possible if he were not a prisoner on trial

Secondly, Paul’s witness was enriched by those two years. It is difficult for us to conceive how such a congenital activist as Paul managed to endure nearly five years of comparative inactivity (two in the Caesarea prison, two under house arrest in Rome, and about six months in between voyaging from Caesarea to Rome

in God’s providence there is something distinctive and special about those prison letters. It is not only that he had more time now to reflect and to pray; it is also that the substance of these letters owes something to his prison experience

So then (the Holy Spirit using his custody to clarify and enforce this truth), the three main prison letters (to the Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians) set forth more powerfully than anywhere else the supreme, sovereign, undisputed and unrivalled lordship of Jesus Christ

Thirdly, his ministry was authenticated by his sufferings. Nothing proves the sincerity of our beliefs like our willingness to suffer for them. So Paul had to suffer, and be seen to suffer, for the gospel he was preaching

Just as Luke’s Gospel ended with the prospect of a mission to the nations,72 So the Acts ends with the prospect of a mission radiating from Rome to the world