Acts 27:1-12

Paul Sails for Rome
1 When it was decided that we would sail for Italy, Paul and some other prisoners were handed over to a centurion named Julius, who belonged to the Imperial Regiment. 2 We boarded a ship from Adramyttium about to sail for ports along the coast of the province of Asia, and we put out to sea. Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica, was with us.
3 The next day we landed at Sidon; and Julius, in kindness to Paul, allowed him to go to his friends so they might provide for his needs. 4 From there we put out to sea again and passed to the lee of Cyprus because the winds were against us. 5 When we had sailed across the open sea off the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we landed at Myra in Lycia. 6 There the centurion found an Alexandrian ship sailing for Italy and put us on board. 7 We made slow headway for many days and had difficulty arriving off Cnidus. When the wind did not allow us to hold our course, we sailed to the lee of Crete, opposite Salmone. 8 We moved along the coast with difficulty and came to a place called Fair Havens, near the town of Lasea.

9 Much time had been lost, and sailing had already become dangerous because by now it was after the Day of Atonement. [a] So Paul warned them, 10 “Men, I can see that our voyage is going to be disastrous and bring great loss to ship and cargo, and to our own lives also.” 11 But the centurion, instead of listening to what Paul said, followed the advice of the pilot and of the owner of the ship. 12 Since the harbor was unsuitable to winter in, the majority decided that we should sail on, hoping to reach Phoenix and winter there. This was a harbor in Crete, facing both southwest and northwest.




Dig Deeper
As I write this, my country is coming up on a time that we affectionately refer to as “March Madness.” That might sound like some sort of horrible disease that plagues farm animals and is the bane of farmers everywhere but it actually is nothing of the sort. It refers to the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s men’s basketball tournament that begins every year in March. The tournament begins with 68 teams vying for the title of “National Champion” and fills the weekends in the month of March with nationally televised college basketball games from wall-to-wall. The tournament is always full of nail-biting games that go down to the finish and exhilarating upsets that spark the imagination. It has truly become one of the most well-known and most-loved sporting events in the United States. As you watch the games each year, a pattern almost always develops, one that the announcers love to point out time and again. As a game gets into those important last few moments referred to as “crunch-time,” an announcer will invariably point out that a team is scrappy or hard-working, just like their coach. They will go to great lengths to demonstrate their belief that a team takes on the personality of its coach after a time. I really can’t argue with that hypothesis; there does seem to be a fair amount of truth to it. Teams will begin to approach situations and respond to adversity in the same manner that their coach approaches life. After awhile, the teams really do seem to become a larger extension of their fearless leader out on the court.

The biblical writers seemed to exhort the Christian community to engage in a similar phenomenon as we go through this life as Jesus’ disciple. Nowhere is that idea captured more succinctly than in 1 John 2:6 where John urges Christians that if they claim to be in Christ then they will walk as Jesus walked, meaning they will live their lives with the same character and attitude that Jesus had. We are, in short, to take on the personality of our leader and become an extension of him.

What is true for all disciples was certainly true for Paul. That seems to be the point that Luke is subtly making throughout the book of Acts. Not that he is saying that Paul’s life, or the life of every Christian for that matter, will mirror the life of Christ and that we must go through the same sorts of trials that he did which, if we’re doing it right, will ultimately result in the death of the Christian due to persecution. That’s not what Luke is saying or showing us in the life of Paul. He’s not saying that the life of every Christian will repeat a pattern over and over again like events in history that seem to repeat themselves (at least for those who do not learn from the past, as the saying goes). I think what Luke does want us to see is that the life of the Christian wont’ repeat the pattern of Christ but it very well may rhyme in certain areas. If we are taking on the nature of Christ, then when certain events do swirl our way, we will stand up and meet those obstacles in the way that Christ did.

In other words, through Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, the life of God’s age to come came cascading through his life into the present age. The time of the new creation, the restored Eden, when God will live and through his very people, dwelling with them in his full presence, became available, at least in part, through the life of Christ. And that life of the new creation will bubble and burst forth in the life of a Christian like Paul in strikingly similar ways to what one might see when they look at the gospels and see the accounts of Christ.

So, yes, Jesus had a vocation to announce the kingdom of God and he sent out on a journey, despite many obstacles, to fulfill that mission. When he arrived in Jerusalem he faced down the opposition of the Jewish people and was handed over to the Romans without blinking an eye because of his trust in the Father. He was questioned by a Herod, the questionable ruler of the Jews as well as a Roman governor. Finally he would face the stiff test of death as a result of following God’s will for him to lay down his life for the benefit of others and the spread of the gospel.

Paul’s life, Luke is careful to point out, hit similar notes but not because Paul was called to play the same tune but because he was trained by the Master. He learned to play the notes just like Jesus did and that produced a certain tell-tall similarity. Paul, too had a vocation to spread the gospel, albeit quite different from Jesus’ specific commission. But he would carry it out in the same way that Jesus did and so he overcame many obstacles in fulfilling that mission and when he arrived in Jerusalem, he too was opposed by the Jews and handed over to the Romans. But he had learned to take on the personality of his Lord and so he didn’t bat an eye either; he just continued to trust in the Father. So it should be of no surprise that Paul also found himself standing before a Herod and being questioned by Roman governors just as Jesus had. Paul would resolutely march towards Rome, and maybe his own death as Luke has already told us (Luke 9:51) that Jesus set off towards Jerusalem and his own death.

And just like the one that he sought imitate, when faced with the stiff test of laying down his life for others or laying down his vocation due to the violent opposition, Paul’s response would look eerily similar to Christ’s even if the circumstances were very different. The Father’s will for Jesus was that he pick up his Cross and march to Golgotha where he would walk boldly into the jaws of death for the benefit of others and the spread of God’s kingdom. The Father’s will for Paul was that he pick up his own cross and march on towards Rome but he would face the sea on the way, which in the Jewish mind was a constant symbol of the place of death, destruction, and evil. Paul would go boldly into the sharp teeth of the sea and continue to carry on the Father’s will in his life for the benefit of others and the spread of the kingdom, regardless of the personal loss that it might mean for him.

So as they begin the arduous journey towards Rome, Paul may not have known precisely what was going to happen along the way, but it does seem that the Spirit had made it clear that he would continue to suffer for the name of Christ, just as he had been told from the beginning (Acts 9:16). Paul knew what lay ahead both for him and for the ship and he tried to warn them, perhaps knowing that his advice wouldn’t be followed, but that just maybe after everything had happened, people would remember that he had warned them and praise God.

One thing is clear, however. This was not Paul’s first rodeo, so to speak, at sea. In writing 2 Corinthians 11:26 some time before this incident, Paul had already chronicled that he had been shipwrecked no less than three times at sea for the sake of the gospel and one time found himself bobbing up and down in the water, probably clinging to a piece of broken ship or some such thing, for a night and a day. During each trial he had learned more and more of what it meant to allow the peace and trust in the Father that comes with a life aligned within the new creation to break forth into his life and the lives of those around us.

Even in desperate situations, Paul had learned to let the life of Christ burst forth through his own. He was a constant living example of his own words in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. “ It was because of that that Paul could find himself on a prison ship headed for Rome and yet demonstrate enough controlled power and influence that the Roman centurion allowed him to have considerable influence and an active voice in the decisions of the ship. It was because of the life of the new creation breaking into his life that Paul could calmly declare that they were staring down the barrel of a terrible shipwreck and yet not fear, fret, or worry because he knew that God was in control.

Jesus had faced the Cross and not a shipwreck at sea, and yet, because he was becoming like his King, an incident and a life that was very different in the details starts to look eerily similar. Paul would march towards his date with the symbol of evil with the same resolve to do God’s will that Jesus had demonstrated as he marched towards Jerusalem and the Cross. That’s what happens when the new creation comes into our lives and transforms us. It’s not that we will go through the same things that Jesus did in his life, but that in whatever circumstances we face, we will become more like him and our lives will begin to echo his own more and more each day.


Devotional Thought
What does the challenge from 1 John 2:6 to walk as Jesus walked mean for you? Spend some time today thinking about what that particular concept is challenging you to do today.