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Honesty and Loyalty Displayed in Paul’s Defense
INTRO: Paul had two purposes in addressing the crowd. First, he wanted them to hear that he was loyal to his Jewish heritage. He saw himself as standing in continuity with it though he confessed Jesus as Messiah, the Righteous One foretold by the prophets. Second, Paul wanted them to know the facts about his conversion. His life and ministry weren’t the result of his own imagination and wild ideas. They were the result of the sovereign, transforming grace of Jesus. Paul used this defense opportunity as an occasion to speak the good news.
Claudius Lysias, as an honest, open-minded Roman soldier, compares favourably with the prejudiced Jewish crowd. They had assumed, without taking the trouble to check it, that Paul had brought Trophimus into the inner court of the temple; Claudius Lysias had assumed that Paul was an Egyptian terrorist, but immediately changed his mind when he learned the facts. The revolutionary to whom Lysias was referring was described by Josephus as ‘an Egyptian false prophet’ who, about three years previously, had got together 30,000 men (Josephus was prone to exaggeration!), led them to the Mount of Olives, and promised them that, when the walls of Jerusalem fell flat at his command, they would be able to break into the city and overpower the Romans. But the procurator Felix and his troops intervened, and the sikarioi (‘dagger men’, i.e. fanatical nationalist assassins) were killed, captured or scattered. But the Egyptian disappeared, and the commander at first thought that he had now come to light again. But Paul enlightened him about his identity. He spoke proudly of his citizenship of Tarsus, which was ‘the first city of Cilicia, not merely in material wealth but in intellectual distinction, as one of the great university cities of the Roman world’. He then, asked leave to address the crowd, which was granted.
It was at this point that Paul was interrupted by the crowd, who found their voices again and loudly demanded his death (22). It is important to understand why. 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, not only by birth and education but still. True, he was now a witness where before he had been a persecutor. 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. Jesus of Nazareth was ‘the Righteous One’ in whom prophecy had been fulfilled. 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, the one truth in Damascus and the other in Jerusalem. Indeed, nothing but such a heavenly intervention could have so completely transformed him.
22 At this juncture the crowd could stand no more and interrupted angrily before Paul could actually deny the specific charge regarding Trophimus and the temple
R l | 1–5. A zealous Jew. m | 6–10. Revelation from the Lord. l | 11–16. A chosen vessel. m | 17–21. Revelation from the Lord.