Acts 16:16 - 40
Kids:
Review/Background:
Text:
Paul and Silas in Prison
16 As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling. 17 She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” 18 And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.
16:17 slaves of the Most High God The lack of Jewish influence in Philippi means that the crowd surrounding Paul would likely assume that the girl was speaking about Zeus as the chief god of the Greek pantheon.
Paul means to convey the thought that Jesus, as deity, expelled the demon
16:21 advocate customs … not lawful for us … Romans. The charge is that Paul and Silas are propagating an illegal religion and disturbing the peace. Because of Philippi’s status as a colony, its citizens are Romans who enjoy legal status beyond those of other Macedonian cities. The charge is inflamed by cultural and religious prejudice (“these men are Jews”). Ironically, it will come to light that Paul and Silas themselves are Roman citizens whose civic rights are being violated (vv. 37, 38).
And ‘salvation’ wouldn’t mean what it meant to a Jew or a Christian, entry into the world of God’s new creation, overcoming corruption, sin and death. It would mean ‘health’ or ‘prosperity’ or ‘rescue’ from some kind of disaster, as we shall see later in Acts 16:30–31.
19 But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. 20 And when they had brought them to the magistrates, they said, “These men are Jews, and they are disturbing our city. 21 They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice.” 22 The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods. 23 And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely.
16:20 being Jews The apostles’ ethnicity becomes part of the rhetoric used to stir up the leadership against them. Jews were uncommon in this region and were disliked by non-Jewish people due to their differences in lifestyle and insistence on one true God.
Acts 16:19 NICNT Ac
16:22 beat them. Paul and Silas are Roman citizens (v. 37) and should be exempt from such treatment. But in the mob atmosphere, the question of their citizenship status and legal rights is ignored.
24 Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.
The Philippian Jailer Converted
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, 26 and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. 27 When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”
inner prison The jailer, under orders, places Paul and Silas in the most secure part of the prison.
Under Roman law, the jailer is liable to punishment if his prisoners escape
29 And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33 And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. 34 Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.
But of course the Philippian jailer knew none of this. In his pagan world there were all kinds of theories about the afterlife, but none of them was anything like so clear, or so precise, as the medieval heaven-and-hell scenario which dominated later Western thought. In any case, it was midnight; there had just been an earthquake; the prison he was in charge of had burst open; he was going to be held responsible for escaped prisoners, which would probably mean torture and death; he was on the point of committing suicide—and was he about to ask these strange visitors for a detailed exposition of justification by grace through faith?
No, of course not, said Bishop Neill. In any case, as we have seen, ‘salvation’ in the ancient world didn’t mean ‘going to heaven when you die’, and that is by no means how the New Testament writers use it. Jesus himself frequently speaks of someone being ‘saved’ when he means ‘healed’ (e.g. Luke 8:48: ‘your faith has saved you’, in other words, ‘has made you well’). So ‘saved’ meant, simply, ‘rescued’, ‘delivered’—from whatever problem, be it sickness, financial disaster, personal catastrophe, or anything else, might be threatening.
Rather, the Christian worldview sees the entire mess that the world is in, from the global facts of human rebellion, idolatry and sin, the corruption of human life and relationships, the pollution of our planet, the worldwide systems of economic exploitation, and so on, right through to this messy situation here and now, this sudden crisis, this person in desperate need or sorrow or fear, and this person whose own deliberate sin has raised a dark barrier between themselves and God—the Christian worldview sees all of this under the heading of ‘the way the world currently is’, as opposed to ‘the way the world will be when Jesus is reigning as Lord—and the way it can become even here and now, because Jesus is already reigning as Lord, but his reign must spread through humans acknowledging that lordship.’ That’s why ‘believe in the Lord Jesus’ is always the answer to the question of how to be rescued, at whatever level and in whatever sense.
In other words, Paul and Silas address both the very specific question the jailer has asked and the deep, world-deep, heart-deep, God-deep question which, with practised eye, they can see lies beneath it.
It isn’t about committing oneself to a life of worship, prayer and good works. It isn’t even about believing in some particular theory of how precisely God deals with our sins in the death of Jesus. It is about recognizing, acknowledging and hailing Jesus Christ as Lord—the very thing which Paul declares triumphantly at the climax of the great poem in his letter to this very city (Philippians 2:10). ‘If you confess with your lips Jesus as Lord’, he wrote to the Romans (10:9), ‘and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’ Everything else is contained within that—all the volumes of systematic and pastoral theology, all the worship and prayers and devotion and dogma, all the ethics and choices and personal dilemmas.
35 But when it was day, the magistrates sent the police, saying, “Let those men go.” 36 And the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, “The magistrates have sent to let you go. Therefore come out now and go in peace.” 37 But Paul said to them, “They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out.” 38 The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens. 39 So they came and apologized to them. And they took them out and asked them to leave the city. 40 So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.
Verres had crucified a man who had been trying to tell people what was going on. And the man was a Roman citizen. The great plea which had echoed round many nations, ‘I’m a Roman citizen’,
Verres left Rome before the trial ended and went into voluntary exile. Years later, he was put to death on the orders of Mark Antony
That story, of course, went round the world of Roman politics and governance as a stinging cautionary tale.