Chapter 21
On this ship they go all the way to Patara. They change ships there and embark to Phoenicia. They pass Cyprus on the left and arrive at Tyre. In Tyre, they were telling him "through the Spirit" not to go to Jerusalem. Perhaps they knew he would be imprisoned and afflicted, just as Paul was already aware. How though did he know to over ride their warnings and go on? How was the message not "If you go this will happen" instead of "this is going to happen but you must go anyway". I don't know how you would ever be able to tell, and surely having others warn you not to go would make the right course even more difficult to determine. But Paul goes on.
2023 - Note that Luke is telling this in narrative format. In vss 1-6 he uses "we" 9 times. Luke is telling us about these events as a first hand observer, not as an interviewer.
Once he arrives in Ceasarea, they stay with Philip. (2023 - Philip the evangelist, who was sent to the Ethiopian eunuch, and went to Samaria where John and Peter came and laid their hands on them later. Philip had apparently settled in, or was from, Ceasarea. It says Philip is one of "the seven". What does that mean? Where did that come from? I did a search on "the seven" and it is surprising how many times the term is used in the Bible. Here are a couple: 11 saying, "Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea." ... 20 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. [Rev 1:11, 20 ESV]. Seven churches, stars, lampstands, and angels. Philip is none of these. So...MSB refers us back to Acts 6:3 and the selecting of the first seven deacons. One of them was named Philip, and Stephen was another. Presumably, this is the same Philip. MSB also argues that the seven were all evangelists. MSB says "Stephen and Philip clearly were evangelists, not deacons." But...weren't they choosing deacons? I do feel pretty sure though that "the seven", as used here, includes Philip in the seven chosen that day.) A prophet named Agabus does the belt thing, telling Paul he will be bound in Jerusalem. They all urge him not to go. But he tells them he is going anyway, and is willing to die there if that's what is coming. So again, he sets aside the counsel of many and does as he believes God is leading. How did he know? Did he have it right? We really don't know. 2021 - He had it right. Of course he did. He was an apostle, and all the prophets that told him not to go, the friends, and so on, were subject to him, not the other way around. We saw in 20:22 that Paul was "bound in the Spirit" from the time he started back to Jerusalem. (2023 - one of the definitions of the Greek word translated "bound" in this verse is "put under obligation, of the law, duty, etc. So Paul understood that just because others also had insight into what awaited him in Jerusalem, didn't mean he could shirk his obligation to go, as revealed to him by the Spirit.) He knew first hand from God what he was to do, and no prophecy would or could over ride what God had revealed to one of His Apostles. So these prophecies of doom and gloom were just confirmations of what was to come. Paul said he didn't know what awaited him, he just knew he had to go there, and had prepared himself for anything - up to and including his own death. The word from these prophets just filled in the part God had not imparted to Paul. To perhaps allow him some clues as to what to prepare for. Surely this prophecy from Agabus, saying that Paul would be bound and turned over to the Gentiles, eased his mind a little as to whether he faced death in Jerusalem. First, at least, he would be bound and imprisoned. That's what all this was about.
Paul reports to James, in the church at Jerusalem, and all the elders of that church, and they hear his report. They glorify God at the converts that have resulted from Paul's ministry. And then this:
20 And when they heard it, they glorified God. And they said to him, "You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed. They are all zealous for the law, 21 and they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs. [Act 21:20-21 ESV]
Many in the churches Paul has started, and many in the Jerusalem church, are Jews who still hold rigidly to the Law of Moses. James is allowing this...which is sort of what we saw at the end of Romans. Don't weaken the immature Christians who are not able in good conscience to forsake the Law, though it is expired. But now they are discussing what "must be done" to keep the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem itself from turning against Paul. How could it be in this state?
They urge him to support four men monetarily who have taken a vow "under the law" in some way, and so show that he, Paul, himself is still an observer of the Law of Moses. They want him to recant, basically, all he has taught the churches abroad about the Law, both Jew and Gentile, and about freedom in Christ. They want him to deny he's done so!
2022 - So here is the way they justified this. It was here all along, I just hadn't seen it:
24 take these men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses, so that they may shave their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself also live in observance of the law. 25 But as for the Gentiles who have believed, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality." [Act 21:24-25 ESV].
In Jerusalem, they were allowing JEWS to continue in JEWISH adherence to the Law of Moses. In their way of thinking, the decision of the Jerusalem Council, years earlier, had only been about what Gentiles were required to do. Gentiles did not need to be circumcised or make sacrifices or observe the dietary laws. But it was OK with the Jerusalem church if the Jews there - thousands of them - continued to belong to two churches.
They ask Paul to pretend that he himself is still a practicing orthodox Jew, and has only allowed this relaxation of the Law where Gentiles are concerned. And Paul agrees to do this. Was he in distress over being urged to do this? After all it was Jesus' own brother and the elders of the "home church" who are urging him to do so. But he had to know it was wrong. How many other apostles were also still at the Jerusalem church when this all happens? Do we know the year? Do we know who was left? John might well have already been gone to Ephesus, Matthew could have left town...perhaps it was only James that was still there. It is hard to read this acceptance of the two-church system as anything but a local compromise to keep the peace, and it is hard to see it as anything but a grave error.
It perhaps makes some sense in the context of God's greater plan to blind the Jews during the Age of the Gentiles, so that even this founding church, in the city of the Temple, was doomed from the start to failure, and it was in fact the distributed churches which were to maintain the true gospel. Christianity was given to those in darkness, NOT to the hometown Jews, who had so aggressively rejected it.
Do we have any evidence, from smarter readers than me, that Paul had an inkling that this is what was really going on? Looked at from the long view, Paul ends up taking the gospel to a lot more Gentiles as a result of what went on in Jerusalem that day. All the way to the seat of Gentile government and power, and in fact he makes many converts in that Gentile church in Rome. Finally, pulling back to this much broader context, I can see some sense in Paul's actions. Perhaps his refusal to do as the prophets in the various places were telling him as he made his way toward Jerusalem is foreshadowing that when he did take the advice of James and the elders, disaster followed immediately - and provided him transport all the way to Rome, and many opportunities to witness in the various halls of power in the Gentile world.
2021 - I just plain do not understand this. Paul hasn't taken anyone's advice about how he shouldn't go to Jerusalem. But when he gets to Jerusalem, he takes the advice of James and the Elders to present himself as still maintaining compliance with Mosaic Law, up to and including offering sacrifices on behalf of himself and others. This after what he has said about being slaves to the Law or free in Christ - and making it very plain which is the best option. Even in light of the teaching at the end of Romans, about not obstructing the journey from slavery to freedom or from idolatry to freedom, of new Christians, how can Paul do this? How can he not stand firm that the Law is dead, gone, unnecessary and unneeded by either Jew or Gentile, until the end of the age? Sorry. This just feels to me like abject failure on the home stretch. It just does.
Paul does as they ask.
When it is nearly time for him to go to the temple and present an offering there for each of the four men, he is recognized in the Temple by some Jews from Asia who still practice the law.
I had not thought of this before, but believing Jews in the church at Jerusalem who were still "zealous for the law" would be going pretty much daily to the Temple also, and they were making the sacrifices there that the Law required. They were in two churches at the same time. And James and the elders were apparently not preaching against this at all, nor trying to impress upon them that the law and circumcision were no more. Paul's teaching on this - despite the ruling of the Jerusalem council years before as to Gentiles - is pretty much ignored as to the Jews. Ignored.
They get the whole city in an uproar, physically bodily drag Paul out of the Tempe (heartbreaking for him) and bar the doors behind him. All this after he agrees to pretend to behave like a practicing orthodox Jew. They are in the process of beating Paul to death - without even a semblance of a trial - when the Roman's arrive to restore order. Were these indeed members of the Jerusalem church doing this, or were these non-believing temple Jews that had opposed Paul while in Asia and don't want him preaching his "heresies" in the heart of Judaism? We don't know specific identities.
The Roman Tribune arrests Paul and tries to find out what he is accused of, believing he may be the Egyptian leader of a recent revolt. The mob is too unruly for him to get to the bottom of the accusations, so the Tribune takes Paul to the barracks. The mob follows, shouting for him to die. A familiar tactic of the Jews at this time in history. As they are about to go in, Paul gets permission to speak to the crowd. This is granted, and amazingly, the crowd quiets down to listen to him. He speaks to them in Hebrew.
2023 - I still do not understand Paul's decisions in this chapter. Two things make sense to me. His decision to pretend he is still an orthodox Jew, practicing two religions at the same time as so many Jews in Jerusalem are doing, absolutely blows up in his face. We know that you cannot serve two masters, yet many Jews were doing so, and Paul is about to pretend he is among them. And it naturally backfires, because it was the wrong thing to do. However, look where it leads? Paul ends up in Rome, preaching the gospel to both Jews and Gentiles there. Paul's terrible mistake is God's plan for saving some who might never have received the gospel otherwise. And second, the point I made above about the Jew's being blinded...how many of the Jews claiming Christianity while making sure they didn't lose their business connections in the Temple were in fact just being pragmatic. How many of the thousands that James talked about are really saved? Could it be that the Jerusalem church, while it was the hub from which the apostles spread the gospel, was never really intended to last, because after all, Jesus had told them the Temple would be thrown down. And to me, the double punishment was still to be fulfilled.