23 As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, 24 the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. 25 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 hasn’t even been found guilty?”
26 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.”
27 The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered.
28 Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.”
“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.
29 Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.
Paul Before the Sanhedrin
30 The commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews. So the next day he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the members of the Sanhedrin to assemble. Then he brought Paul and had him stand before them.
Dig Deeper
A few months ago I was wearily returning from a wonderful ministry trip that took me all over Southern Africa. I normally enjoy the quiet and peaceful 24-28 hour plane journey home but I was dreading this one a bit because my wife had returned back to our home in the states a couple of weeks earlier and I would be traveling alone internationally for the first time. It’s not that I can’t handle being alone, but my wife usually takes care of the logistics of our trips and carries all of our tickets, passports, and other necessary items and I just follow her to get where I need to go. As I arrived in Washington DC I was tired and only half paying attention to what I was doing. I followed everyone else as they got into line to go through customs and be allowed into the rest of the airport. I walked past the line attendant who didn’t say anything and began to wait in that line as it snaked around for quite awhile until I encountered another customs worker who was quickly walking through checking each person’s paperwork to make sure that they would be prepared once they reached the customs desk. As the man looked at my passport, he got a look on his face that looked like a mixture of concern and embarrassment. What I had not realized is that I had unwittingly walked into the wrong line but that initial attendant should have checked and caught my error. I had walked into the custom line for those with non-US passports, but I was a citizen and would need to go to the correct line, which was, thankfully, much shorter. Perhaps to make up a bit for the mistake, the attendant personally walked me over to the right line and cheerfully sent me on my way. At least in this case, citizenship had offered a small advantage.
Paul had made his appeal to his countrymen in the hopes that they would respond to the gospel. He had requested permission from the Roman commander to speak to the Jews in what was apparently rather eloquent Greek. He had then turned to his Jewish brothers and sisters and addressed them in the common language of their day, Aramaic. The advantage of this was that it earned him at least a momentary hearing from the crowd of Jews pressing in on Paul. The downside of speaking in Aramaic is that the commander probably didn’t understand what Paul was saying or what made the Jews so irate. All he would likely have been able to determine was that Paul spoke to the crowd and said something that enraged them and caused them to want Paul beaten or worse. The commander had been rather generous and conciliatory with Paul just moments earlier but now the Romans were ready to get to the bottom of this.
The Jews were screaming, throwing their cloaks in the air, and flinging dust in what may have been an action similar to the wiping off of dust from one’s shoes, an act that showed that they believed the person to be no better than a pagan and worthy of the judgment that Jews believed was due to the pagan nations. The commander wasn’t in a playing mood so he ordered Paul to be taken into the barracks and questioned. We must be clear that the Roman version of “interrogating” someone was incredibly brutal and vicious. It involved flogging the person with a whip that typically had strips of leather with pieces of bone or metal attached and could cripple a person for life if not kill them. The Romans turned to this method believing that torturing someone was the only truly effective way to get a witness to tell the whole truth. So, the commander would cut right to the chase and get to the bottom of the problem with Paul through this brutal method.
But that is when Paul pulled out his trump card. It was a card that is only discussed twice in Acts (here and chapter 16) so Paul must have used only when absolutely necessary. Paul was willing to suffer for the gospel but not unnecessarily. It was then that he informed the centurion, who was moments away from carrying out the commanders orders, that he was a Romans citizen.
Clearly, being a Roman citizen was not the most important thing to Paul in his life. It probably ranked fourth on his list. Far and away the most important for Paul was his citizenship as part of God’s kingdom, a citizenship that emanated from heaven itself (Phil. 3:20). Far down the list but next for Paul was the fact that he was a Jew and then that he was a citizen of Tarsus. But Roman citizenship was not without disadvantages and Paul would exercise his rights when absolutely necessary.
The fact was that Roman citizens could not be shackled and certainly could not be flogged without a fair trial and conviction. Non-citizens didn’t have that same protection but citizens of Rome did. A Roman official who violated those rights of a Roman citizen would be facing severe punishment that could even include death. It is understandable, then, that both the centurion and the commander were a bit unnerved upon hearing this news (There were severe penalties that exceeded even the flogging for falsely claiming citizenship so the Romans would have been rather apt to believe Paul’s claim and he may have even produced the small scroll that most citizens would have possessed to verify their status). But this bit of news so surprised the commander that his response to Paul’s claim was more than a little bit sarcastic. He had paid for his citizenship, something that was technically illegal. His point was that he had paid a lot of money in bribes in order to get his name on the citizenship roles, so what he was saying was something along the lines of saying “anyone can buy a citizenship these days.” Paul’s response was not rude but was a factual statement that would have respectfully put the commander in his place a bit. Paul did not bribe his way into citizenship papers, he was born a citizen meaning that his father and possibly even grandfather had been a citizen in Tarsus.
It was quite wise of Paul to declare his citizenship away from the Jewish crowd where such a claim would have made him look even worse in their eyes. But his claim back in the barracks was a game-changer. He could not be flogged. No longer was the concern that Paul was in trouble, it was whether or not they would be in trouble for treating a Roman citizen in such a way. They had just discovered that Paul was in the wrong line, so to speak, and had to scramble to get him in the right one.
But the commander still wanted to know if Paul was guilty of anything that should concern Rome. He was not going to get any useful information from the crowds outside, and the option of simply torturing Paul was off the table. That left him with few options so he decided to request that the Sanhedrin assemble so that Paul could be brought before them. This was clearly a Jewish issue so perhaps the Sanhedrin could get to the bottom of it and explain things to him. That would be Paul’s next stop on his journey.
Paul’s willingness to take advantage of his Roman citizenship, however, should not be glossed over for its instructive value for us today. He never sought to abuse his rights, nor did he even take advantage of them at every opportunity. Paul was far more concerned with his citizenship in God’s kingdom and being loyal to that way of life, but he was no fool either. Paul was never one to shy away from suffering for the sake of the gospel but he would appeal to legitimate means for his deliverance. In fact, we begin to see that God could use Paul so powerfully at least in small part because of his language skills, his Jewish training, and his Roman citizenship.
So are there specific lessons that we can take from Paul’s choice to claim his citizenship when it comes to our lives in Christ today? Paul clearly wasn’t someone who spent the better part of his day whining about his rights. In fact, in most cases, Paul would argue that when rights ran up against the good for others that rights should be surrendered willingly. Perhaps in this case, though, we can see a clear example of Jesus’ words being fulfilled in Paul’s life: ““I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matt 10:26-20). We can speculate, based on this, that it was the Spirit who directed Paul to claim his Roman citizenship. The primary lesson for us, then, is that we don’t need to be obsessed with our rights as citizens but when exercising them benefits the kingdom of God, we should be wise and use them as gifts from God.
Devotional Thought
Throughout his life Paul showed unflagging trust in the Holy Spirit. He was willing to go into life threatening situations if that’s where the Spirit led. He trusted in the Spirit to provide him wisdom and the right words in difficult situations and he wasn’t afraid to stand up for his rights if the Spirit so allowed. Do you have that same kind of radical trust and reliance on the Spirit? Would you even know his voice if he was speaking to you?
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