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February 19, 2024
Paulus' Arrest
Key verse 21: "But it has been reported to them about you that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to reject Moses and say that they should not circumcise their children or live according to the ordinances."
The Indian caste system is a strict hierarchy that divides all Indians into groups.
Sundar Singh (1888-1929?), a convert to Christianity from Sikhism in India, believed that India's caste system should be abolished immediately. Luke Jin, an India researcher from South Korea, on the other hand, believes that Christians should not make much effort to overcome the caste system. The Indian caste system is an example of established social mores.
Both opinions are justified in some respects
About Paul's world mission work, there were different opinions between legally-minded Jews and foreign Christians.
How did Paul try to deal with this conflict of opinions?
Today we want to look at the role of the Jewish laws in Paul's arrest.
I. Paul's arrival in Jerusalem (17-22)
Paul arrived in Jerusalem and visited James, the brother of Jesus. At that time, he was the leader of the church in Jerusalem. The elders of the church in Jerusalem also attended the meeting. Finally, Paul was able to hand over the collection he had made for the poor believers in Jerusalem and give the mission report to the leaders of the "mother church".
To understand the differences between the Gentile churches that had come into being through Paul's missionary work and the Jewish church in Jerusalem, let's take a moment to consider other forms of worship in some African countries:
- People all pray loudly at the same time.
- The service starts an hour late.
- The service lasts 3-4 hours.
These are just a few examples of other forms of worship in African countries. Some German Christians do not understand these forms and think that such practices are wrong.
The Jewish Christians were such people who were used to observing the ceremonial laws of Moses all their lives. For them, being Jewish and keeping the ceremonial laws were inseparable. For example, they did not eat pork, worshiped on Saturday and circumcision was obligatory for them. But for the foreign Christians abroad, the Jewish ceremonial laws were foreign and they did not observe them. For them, circumcision, for example, was disgusting, they did not worship on Saturdays but on Sundays and liked to eat pork.
The Jews were told about Paul that he had thrown their Jewish heritage and customs overboard.
Of course, Paul did not teach the Gentiles that keeping the ceremonial Mosaic Law was obligatory for them. For example, he taught the Gentile Christians that circumcision or other Jewish ceremonial laws were not necessary for them.
However, Paul emphasized that they must believe in Jesus Christ in order to get eternal life.
Some Jewish Christians believed that Paul was destroying the Jewish custom of faith with his mission. How many fires were needlessly lit by Jewish Christians who rashly condemned the living work of the Holy Spirit in other countries as the work of the devil!
As professing Christians, we are by no means free from people's prejudices. In Germany, professing Christian congregations are often viewed with suspicion by the mainstream churches.
There were some people in the Jerusalem church who were saved by faith in Jesus Christ and then became deluded into thinking that they were saved not only by faith in Jesus Christ, but also by keeping the Mosaic Law.
Even today there are people who believe something similar. They were saved through faith in Jesus Christ. Then they think that their good works also play a role in their salvation.
But their opinion is wrong, because we are saved by the grace of God alone and have become children of God.
As Jesus himself said in John 5:24: "Truly, truly, I say to you: He who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life."
I say a few things about our salvation, which is solely by the grace of God in Jesus Christ:
- We are saved by God's grace through faith, independent of our good works. So good works are not a prerequisite for our salvation.
- Genuine faith has the effect in our lives that it sometimes changes us drastically or sometimes slowly. We get better at doing good works over time.
- We are saved by the grace of God and not by our good works. But we can never become perfect like Christ during our earthly life. This means that we only live by the grace of God in Christ Jesus.
- We do not lose our salvation if we sin or fail to do good works. But we need to repent when we recognize our sin.
- Our salvation is sealed by God because of His grace and power.
What did the elders in Jerusalem suggest to Paul to remove the misunderstandings of the legal Jews?
II The attempt to clarify the misunderstandings (23-26)
The elders of the Jerusalem church proposed a plan to Paul to appease the Jews. Paul was to be purified with four Jewish men according to Jewish customs and pay the costs for the four men in order to quell the suspicions of the Jewish skeptics. Paul agreed.
Here's what Paul should do:
After such close contact with Gentiles, Paul would have to undergo a purification ceremony according to Jewish law.
- According to Jewish law, Paul had to report regularly to a priest to perform the relevant rituals.
- In addition, Paul paid for the offerings of four poor Jewish Christians who had taken a so-called Nazarite vow. This vow was an act of devotion to God and included, among other things, abstaining from alcohol and meat and letting his hair grow longer than normal. He was to spend the last week in the courtyard of the temple.
The church elders suggested to Paul that through this tangible, visible act he could dispel the Jews' suspicions that he was teaching the Jews abroad to abandon Jewish heritage and customs.
Paul accepted their proposal, not to fall back into legalism, but to identify with the Jews, his people, and lead them to Christ.
Unfortunately, this attempt did not work.
III The violent mob and Paul's arrest (27-36)
All around this wall of the temple were warnings in Greek and Latin that Gentiles were not allowed to enter the temple. The pretext the Jews used to stir up the crowd was that Paul had led a Gentile beyond the court of the Gentiles in the temple into the places only Jews were allowed to enter. This was not the case. But these facts did not matter to the fanatical Jews. Paul knew the Jewish laws well and observed them. But the zealous Jews saw Gentiles in the courtyard of the Gentiles and thought that Paul had also led the Gentiles into the courtyard that only Jews were allowed to enter.
It was the Feast of Pentecost, and Jews from all over Asia had come to the Holy City. Some instigators were probably Jews from Ephesus. These men had been waiting for an opportunity to murder Paul. When Paul went into the temple to fulfill the Nazirite vow, they saw him and seized the opportunity by shouting "betrayer" and "blasphemer". Their scream aroused the religious sympathies of fellow Jews.
So we can imagine the anger that had ignited in the hearts of the pious Jews and turned them into a lynch mob. Paul could have lost his life on the spot if Roman soldiers had not prevented their lynching.
This colonel of the detachment was a commander of the Roman troops (the head of the cohort. The cohort was a tenth of a legion of about 4000),
They had probably acted according to the Roman rule: "Keep calm at all costs!"
In order to prevent the uprising and assuming that Paul must be a criminal, they immediately arrested Paul and bound him with two chains, with a Roman soldier tied to each arm. And the colonel of the cohort tried to find out from the mob the reason for the riot.
But their accusations against Paul contradicted each other so confusingly that the colonel could not tell what it was all about. He therefore had Paul taken away by the Roman soldiers,
**Conclusion**
Paul was willing and eager to accept the suggestions of the Jerusalem church leaders to contribute to peace. He said how important it is that we keep the unity of the Spirit. In this individualistic age we live in, we need to remember how important unity is. Paul was not only thinking about his work in the Gentile world, but also about the spread of the gospel among the Jews (Romans 9-11).
Paul was concerned with sharing the gospel, not getting caught up in trivialities like preferences and cultural differences. And his attitude is right. We, too, are to point others to Christ so that they may be saved through faith in the gospel.
And we should not be preoccupied with outward appearances and the like and thereby miss the grace of God. Instead, we should concern ourselves with the essentials and leave room for differences on secondary issues.
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