Acts, Chapter 22

Please, in your Bible, read this chapter.

Up to verse 21 Paul rehearses the account of his conversion and the events immediately after. In verse twenty-one we catch up with him:

Verse 21, 22, 23, 24, 25: “Then the Lord said to me: ‘Go, I will send you far away, to the Gentiles’. The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted: ‘ Rid the earth of him. He’s not fit to live!’ As they were shouting and throwing their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the commander ordered Paul to be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and questioned in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. As they stretched him out to flog him Paul said to the centurion standing there: ‘Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who has not even been found guilty?’ “.

Those Roman officers and their troops could have suffered punishment by Roman law, because they were about to break that law. They stood ready to tear the flesh of the back of that innocent man, bound in their chains. But he protected them. They would not easily forget..

Verses 26, 27, 28, 29: “When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘This man is a Roman citizen’. The commander went to Paul and asked, ‘tell me, are you a Roman citizen?’ ‘Yes, I am’ he answered. Then the commander said ‘I had to pay a big price for my citizenship’ ‘But I was born a citizen’ Paul replied. Those who were about to question him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.

Those angry, difficult Jews! Soon they would have him in trouble. And that stranger. Who was he? Were the Jews so cross with him, because he was born a Roman? For that reason would they kill him?

Verse 30: “The next day, since the commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews, he released him and ordered the chief priests and all all the Sanhedrin to assemble. Then he brought Paul and had him stand before them”.