Acts 28:11-22

Paul’s Arrival at Rome
11 After three months we put out to sea in a ship that had wintered in the island—it was an Alexandrian ship with the figurehead of the twin gods Castor and Pollux. 12 We put in at Syracuse and stayed there three days. 13 From there we set sail and arrived at Rhegium. The next day the south wind came up, and on the following day we reached Puteoli. 14 There we found some brothers and sisters who invited us to spend a week with them. And so we came to Rome. 15 The brothers and sisters there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us. At the sight of these people Paul thanked God and was encouraged. 16 When we got to Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself, with a soldier to guard him.

Paul Preaches at Rome Under Guard
17 Three days later he called together the local Jewish leaders. When they had assembled, Paul said to them: “My brothers, although I have done nothing against our people or against the customs of our ancestors, I was arrested in Jerusalem and handed over to the Romans. 18 They examined me and wanted to release me, because I was not guilty of any crime deserving death. 19 The Jews objected, so I was compelled to make an appeal to Caesar. I certainly did not intend to bring any charge against my own people. 20 For this reason I have asked to see you and talk with you. It is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain.”

21 They replied, “We have not received any letters from Judea concerning you, and none of our people who have come from there has reported or said anything bad about you. 22 But we want to hear what your views are, for we know that people everywhere are talking against this sect.”



Dig Deeper
As Christians, I think it’s safe to say that we all desire to grow spiritually and become more like Christ each day. Sometimes that process seems to be humming along quite nicely and at other times we seem to be a bit stuck in our growth, or our walk with God, or in knowing what his will is for our lives in any given moment. It is often in those times that we turn to God in prayer and ask for his help in our lives. But if you’re anything like me that process of asking God for help came become quite amusing from a certain perspective if you really take a step back and look at it. For instance, have you ever found yourself pleading with God to help you grow in patience or love for other or some other such thing but then also praying that you can learn those lessons without having to suffer through a difficult trial? We seem to want God to give us the patience but then pray and ask that he doesn’t allow us to find ourselves in trying circumstances that would actually provide the opportunity to develop our patience. We want the results without the struggle and the whole thing has to be somewhat amusing to God. I have to admit that I’ve even found myself praying for God to help me become more humble and then actually momentarily regretting the prayer, because the thought flashes through my mind, “what if God does answer that prayer and humbles me?”

Writing just moths or even weeks before the events of Acts 23 where Paul was arrested in the Temple area after arriving in Jerusalem and preaching the gospel throughout the Gentile lands, Paul wrote the Romans. Included in his incredible letter to the church in Rome are his personal sentiments of his desires to come and see them, strengthen them, and preach the gospel in Rome. Near the end of the letter Paul asks that the believers in Rome pray that “I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that the contribution I take to Jerusalem may be favorably received by the Lord’s people there, so that I may come to you with joy, by God’s will, and in your company be refreshed.”

As we saw in chapter 23, God answered the first portions of that prayer in grand and immediate fashion. The contribution that he brought was well received by the believers in Jerusalem and he was certainly kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea as he was escorted by over four hundred Roman soldiers, spoiling a plot by the Sanhedrin to take his life. God had come through in stunning fashion and perhaps Paul thought that the last part of the prayer, to come to the believers in Rome would be just as fantastic and immediate. If that was his thought, Paul would have been wrong.

Paul didn’t just pray to come to Rome but that he would do so with joy and be refreshed. That was his mistake. I’m not implying, of course, that if we word our prayers just right that God will not allow us to go through trials and hard times, but there is a bit of an amusing element to the fact that Paul prayed that when he came to Rome he would be full of joy and refreshment. And then things went crazy. He was imprisoned. He had multiple trials before Felix, Festus, an Agrippa. He was in chains for two years. Then to top it all off, he was battered around in a terrible shipwreck, he had to swim onto land, and when he got there he was bit by a poisonous viper. What was God doing, he might have wondered. All along the way, God kept reassuring him that he would make it to Rome. That might have seemed in doubt at times to any rational person. But wondering what God was doing must have gone through Paul’s mind. He was kept safe in Judea in a faith-building way almost instantly. But what about getting to Rome? Over two years and yet he still wasn’t there and really had very little to show in the way of spreading the gospel because he was imprisoned the whole time.

After shipwrecking on the island of Malta, Paul and the others had been fairly well taken care of by the people there, but it would be three months before the seas were safe enough to attempt completing their journey on an Alexandrian ship that was also wintering on the island and willing to take the passengers with them. After a few quick stops, Paul and the others arrived in Puteoli. There was a small Christian community in Puteoli of which Paul had evidently heard of but had no personal knowledge of. The brothers and sisters there were eager to take care of everyone, presumably including the non-Christian Romans. It’s fascinating to think what must have been going through the mind of Paul’s captors at this point as they enjoyed the hospitality of the Puteoli Christians for a week.

Before reaching Rome itself, the believers in the area in and surrounding Rome did what was common for people to do to a ruler or extremely important person. They went outside of the city itself to meet and greet Paul and escort him back into the city gates. This was a very specific process with a very specific word, apantesis, (a practice alluded to during Jesus’ glorious return in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 when believers will “apantesis” Jesus, meaning to go out greet him and escort him back into the city; see also the only other use of apantesis in the New Testament in Matthew 25:1, 6).

Imagine Paul as he approached Rome and saw the believers there to greet him. His prayers had finally been answered after two agonizing and trying years; two years, it had taken. But imagine the incredible joy that welled up in Paul to finally see the brothers and sisters in Rome. Can you even begin to fathom how refreshed he felt at that moment. There are not many moments of refreshment that can compare with the completion of an arduous and perilous journey and Paul had finally reached that moment. He was still technically a prisoner, but that was small potatoes at this point. God had answered his prayers and been faithful to his promises to bring him to Rome. The believers were there to greet him, indicating that they had received his challenging letter well and had been praying for him as well. The joy Paul felt at that moment must have been overwhelming. You see, God had thoroughly answered his prayer. Paul didn’t just arrive in Rome. He got there and felt unbelievable joy and unmatchable refreshment. God had taken him through incredibly trying circumstances to teach him and train what true trust and genuine joy were all about.

With those incredible details out of the way, Luke seems content to focus on Paul’s dealings with the Jewish leaders in Rome. It makes sense that Paul would immediately reach out to them. He had no idea of what they had heard about him and what the reaction to him being there would be. In fact he may have had some reason for concern as the Emperor Claudius had expelled all Jews from Rome following riots that reportedly had to do with disputes over Christians in Rome. Nero had since become emperor and allowed them back in but Paul would have wanted to avoid any further conflict if possible.

Perhaps to his surprise, the Jewish leaders in Rome did not really know about Paul. They knew about Christianity and they knew that Jews everywhere were deeply opposed to it, but they seemed fairly dispassionate about it. In fact, they were willing to hear Paul out because they had not heard anything negative about him. It is surprising that the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem had not contacted them and sought to make sure that the job against Paul was finished in Rome, but perhaps they felt that to be unnecessary with him appearing before the Emperor. It is simply unknown whether the Jews ever pleaded the case against Paul before the Emperor or not.

Paul assured the Jewish leadership, as he had continued to assert that his gospel was not just an attack on the Jewish people or the Temple, but was a concerned warning of their fate. That is something that Paul wanted to make clear because he well knew Jesus’ prophecies that the Temple would be judged by God and utterly destroyed (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21). He wanted to warn Jews of the coming catastrophe with Rome that would result in those horrific events and proclaim to them that the family of God was no longer found in the nation of Israel and marked by following the law but was found in God’s true son, Jesus Christ, and marked by being baptized into his life in faith. Once again Paul asserted that he had been arrested and thrown in chains for doing nothing more than holding to the true fulfillment of the great hope of Israel, that of God’s people being resurrected.

Paul would get one more chance to proclaim the gospel to the Jews, as we will see in the next section. But he had arrived in Rome with joy. His prayers had been answered and he was being afforded the chance to do the one thing that he desired more than anything else in the world, to proclaim the kingdom of God and King Jesus. That was Paul’s gospel and it was his life.


Devotional Thought
Paul prayed that he would come to Rome in great joy and be refreshed and God answered that through two years of trials and hardship. Do you ever feel that you are going through needless trials in life? Perhaps the problem is not with God or your life but with your perspective. Take some time today to contemplate what God might be teaching you through the trials in your life.