Acts 22

Acts 22:30-23

Subdivision 3. (Acts 22:30; Acts 23:1-35.)Before the Special People of God. Paul still awaits his trial before the supreme court of Israel, which should have been, and was professedly, the spiritual court, before the heads of the people set apart from all others as the special people of God. The place and title had been indeed long forfeited, but not the responsibility of being what the claim implied. The trial becomes in fact that of themselves in this character. As a trial of Paul, it has no result, but breaks up in confusion: its own trial is all the more perfect; its incompetence is absolute. The people have already manifested themselves; and they are what their leaders have made them; not irresponsible on that account, but most guilty in yielding themselves to such leadership. We have here the head, Ananias; the body, disunited on every essential point.

In contrast with all this we have lastly the judgment of the Lord Himself, who owns His faithful servant in his witness to Him. After this he has to be once more saved by the Gentile power from a conspiracy against his life; which at the same time shifts the scene to Caesarea, and brings him before the tribunal of the world. 1.(1) The court of Israel sits at the bidding of the Roman commander: a significant sign of where they were before God. Lysias, unable to gather the cause of so much frenzy and confusion, summons the Sanhedrin, that the charge against Paul may be made clear. The latter, with his eyes fixed upon his judges, affirms his having lived in all good conscience before God until that day. Conscience is not the standard by which man is to be judged; nor does the apostle mean therefore to affirm this. It is simply his uprightness of which he is speaking; and indeed especially in those later and Christian days, in which alone they would care to question it. There was no accusing voice within, from which he would seek escape, which he had (or had had) to silence.

He did not come as a criminal to throw himself upon their mercy, but as one pledged to the truth, to maintain it. His unblenching look was fixed upon his judges as he said this, confirming his bold words. But the anger of the high priest is roused at once, and he commands those standing by him to smite Paul on the mouth. It was the only answer he could give, and showed, perhaps, the sting of his own conscience, which the apostle embodied for him then, and which he was accustomed to treat only as an enemy. Paul at once announces his judgment from God: “God is about to judge thee, whited wall: for sittest thou to judge me according to law, and in breach of law commandest me to be smitten?” This is not an imprecation, as is plain; it is the announcement of judgment on the part of God, and was fulfilled at the outbreak of the troubles which began the last Jewish war. Paul is here passed from the place of the accused altogether, into that of judge; and he was not one to take so solemn a place without realizing what he was doing. The high priests of this time were in fact a sorrowful indication of the condition of the people, as they were also their official representatives. Paul knew not in this case that the “whited wall,” -the painted hypocrite to whom he addressed himself, -was the high priest; and he apologizes when he learns the fact; although with the text he quotes he puts the man whom they call “God’s high priest” upon no higher ground than “a ruler of Thy people.” It has been said, and rightly, surely, that the Holy Spirit could not say, “I knew not;” yet the Spirit doubtless was in the judgment pronounced; and the indignation shown by Paul had so much justification that, remembering his own words at another time, “Be angry and sin not,” and realizing that there is a necessary anger at iniquity, which is sinless, one hesitates to say whether he had passed the limit. Of much more importance it seems than to decide as to the apostle, it is to realize that the Spirit must have used the very lack of knowledge on Paul’s part to lay bare the iniquity that was upon the head of Israel’s priesthood now, and the doom that was impending. If a shadow that priesthood was at any time, now it was but the shadow of a shadow. Out of these forms all semblance of life had departed; and they must by the law of nature vanish away. (2) There follows the further testimony of a house divided against itself, and that in the most important matters. Moreover that which was most contrary to God -which indeed destroyed the very foundations -was in the ascendancy, not indeed in regard to the number of its followers, who were few, but nevertheless possessed at this time of the chief places. The comfortless doctrine of the Sadducees which denied all future life for man could never appeal to the masses, but remained as the justification of those too rich and well satisfied with the present to trouble about the future. It was the unbelief of immortality; not a faith, but a blight of faith. Between Sadducee and Pharisee the friction was necessarily of the extremest kind, although they might band together for a common purpose, which was then sure to be of the most evil character. None knew better than Paul this essential opposition. With the Pharisees also he had a link, in all this doctrine which the Sadducee wholly denied. Of this he now avails himself: was it to throw confusion merely among those who were alike in hostility to the Name which was all his glory? or had he the hope, slight as it might be, of working upon the more orthodox by an appeal to the truth they had? All that could be spoken of as “the hope,” and which connected itself more fully for the Christian than even for the Pharisee with the resurrection of the dead, separated both from the chief men in the council there. As between these, Paul’s claim to be a Pharisee would certainly be justified; that he would have made it in any other connection one can hardly believe. But we are bound to impute, and with such an one as the apostle, the highest motive possible for what he did.

He is clearly not at his highest. Yet he might have discerned that here there was no opportunity for his great theme, which must have been well known to these his judges, even if they had not been amongst the crowd that listened to him from the castle stairs; and he might have realized that now the suggestion of the link between Pharisaism and Christianity was the best seed he could sow on soil like that before him. In fact there seems a certain success in it. Could they have been ignorant how much they were admitting when they allowed that perhaps a spirit or an angel might have spoken to Paul? We cannot follow this to any after results, but that does not justify us in declaring that there were none, or in thinking even that this was not all that could be done upon this occasion in testimony to Christ. Certainly we have no right to suppose that that devoted love to his people which had made him in face of all assurances as to the result put himself thus into their hands, had failed him now that he was there, and that he was merely trying to throw his foes into disorder as a means of escape for himself: he as to whom the Spirit in every city bore witness that bonds and afflictions awaited him. But the effect, as far as we are given to trace it, seems to be more to expose the condition of things in Israel than to alter anything. The very men who here are ready apparently to go far in admission of the divine claim of Christianity would soon repent their hasty speech. The council, having exhibited its incapacity for righteous judgment, breaks up in mere confusion; Paul being once more saved out of their hands by those who are thus allowed to show their true title over them. Israel itself it is that is under judgment, and that in the chief seat of wisdom and authority. (3) The apostle has accomplished nothing by his earnest self-devotion; he is manifestly out of his place, and the power realized in his labors among the Gentiles is not with him here. All the more, now that this has been fully manifest, does he find the divine arm thrown round him, and himself get the ministry that he needs to sustain him in this failure of cherished hopes. “The night following, the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good courage; for as thou hast borne full witness at Jerusalem of the things concerning me, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.” How beautiful the strong expression, “full witness!” It might have seemed that he had not had opportunity for this. And how much cause of exercise and sad questioning might there be in regard to this! That which he had been warned of had taken place; the warning which he had not heeded. Whatever might have been the motive, how vain to run contrary to the dictates of a Wisdom which was at the same time the perfection of Love! Yet He at least could sympathize with His servant’s sorrow who had wept His own tears over Jerusalem, and had to say too, as he was saying, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and in vain.” And the Lord gives him too in his sorrow to have part also in His consolation, “yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and My work with My God.” It might seem as if the Lord were even thinking of such reflections as we would be apt to make upon the disappointed and sorrow-stricken laborer, and were throwing around him the shield of His acceptance. He who has done worthily at Jerusalem shall have committed to him the same testimony at Rome! How well He knows that this is Paul’s blessedness to bear witness for Him! How He assures him of strength that shall be with him to carry him through; and that all the might of the world is powerless against him! Blessed be God that this remains in its comfort abidingly for those to whom the world will have the same Marah-spring to offer, which the “Tree” alone can sweeten. So he goes back to his old call as the apostle of the Gentiles, if he be now “an ambassador in chains.” Rome! what treatment will the proud city of the world give to an ambassador in chains? 2. The council is not, however, the Jews’ last answer to the gospel of God’s grace. Their moral state comes out still more in the conspiracy which follows to lie in wait for Paul and kill him. The forty or more pledge themselves to it by a religious vow, and then communicate their plan to the chief priests and elders, without a thought, evidently of opposition on their part, nor that they will do aught but help on their design. And plainly they are not mistaken, although we hear nothing more about it, as God in His providential care for His servant causes the whole to fall to the ground. At the right moment Paul’s sister’s son, of whom we have not heard before, comes forward to declare what has come to his knowledge; and Lysias, now thoroughly aroused, sends off his prisoner, well protected by an escort, to the governor at Caesarea.

That he seeks to make capital out of his zeal on behalf of a Roman citizen, stretching the truth considerably in order to do so, scarcely calls for remark, so thoroughly is it the way of the world at all times. By this act Paul is transferred from the Jews, tribunal to that of the Gentiles, though the Jews are still his accusers to the end. If Jerusalem can no more put to death the prophets herself, she will use the hands of others as far as she can influence them. We are now to see Paul therefore at Caesar’s judgment seat.