Acts 21:17-39

¹⁷ When we had come to Jerusalem, the brothers received us gladly. ¹⁸ On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. ¹⁹ After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. ²⁰ And when they heard it, they glorified God. And they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed. They are all zealous for the law, ²¹ and they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs. ²² What then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come. ²³ Do therefore what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow; ²⁴ take these men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses, so that they may shave their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself also live in observance of the law. ²⁵ But as for the Gentiles who have believed, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality.” ²⁶ Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself along with them and went into the temple, giving notice when the days of purification would be fulfilled and the offering presented for each one of them. ²⁷ When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him, ²⁸ crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place. Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” ²⁹ For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. ³⁰ Then all the city was stirred up, and the people ran together. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut. ³¹ And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. ³² He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. ³³ Then the tribune came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. He inquired who he was and what he had done. ³⁴ Some in the crowd were shouting one thing, some another. And as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks. ³⁵ And when he came to the steps, he was actually carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd, ³⁶ for the mob of the people followed, crying out, “Away with him!” ³⁷ As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the tribune, “May I say something to you?” And he said, “Do you know Greek? ³⁸ Are you not the Egyptian, then, who recently stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins out into the wilderness?” ³⁹ Paul replied, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no obscure city. I beg you, permit me to speak to the people.”

In 1742, Charles Wesley wrote the hymn that we today know as “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.” Consider its depiction of Christ.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

Look upon a little child;

Pity my simplicity,

Suffer me to come to Thee.

Fain I would to Thee be brought,

Dearest God, forbid it not;

Give me, dearest God, a place

In the kingdom of Thy grace

Lamb of God, I look to Thee;

Thou shalt my Example be;

Thou art gentle, meek, and mild;

Thou wast once a little child.

Fain I would be as Thou art;

Give me Thine obedient heart;

Thou art pitiful and kind,

Let me have Thy loving mind.

Let me, above all, fulfill

God my heav’nly Father’s will;

Never His good Spirit grieve;

Only to His glory live.

Thou didst live to God alone;

Thou didst never seek Thin own;

Thou Thyself didst never please:

God was all Thy happiness.

Loving Jesus, gentle Lamb,

In Thy gracious hands I am;

Make me, Savior, what Thou art,

Live Thyself within my heart.

I shall then show forth Thy praise,

Serve Thee all my happy days;

Then the world shall always see

Christ, the holy Child, in me.

I am very hesitant to critique a hymn by the brilliant and godly Charles Wesley. After all, in the right context and stressed to the right proportion, this is a perfectly biblical vision of Jesus. Furthermore, it is likely that in the mid 1700’s this picture of Jesus may have been needed to balance a predominantly stern or hard vision of Christ. Who knows?

But read in our day it gives one pause. If earlier ages of the Church depicted Jesus as overly stern or hard or wrathful, our age has a vision of Jesus that is so saccharine it is hard to call it “biblical” at all. In other words, take that hymn and drop it into a modern worship pep rally with its vaguely biblical but largely therapeutic sermons, its consumerism, its sentimentalized and Americanized Jesus, and its general demeanor of a carefree euphoria and obliviousness and that hymn will positively turn your stomach.

Again, the problem is not calling Jesus “meek” and “mild.” Both are biblical virtues held in balance by all other biblical virtues. The problem is our culture can only conceive of a mild Jesus. Wesley’s words have a point, but they ought not be taken to eclipse the words of Christ about Himself in, say, Matthew 10.

³⁴ “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ³⁶ And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

Meek? Yes. Mild? Properly understood, perhaps. But also divisive, controversial, incendiary, world-changing, and conflict bringing! Jesus is all of these things.

Paul came to understand these latter realities when faced with the response of both non-Christian and even some Christian Jews in Jerusalem when he returned to Church there. He learned that following Jesus can mean great and difficult interpersonal conflicts with people you love. In truth, largely as a result of Paul’s astounding missionary efforts, the entire Church found itself in a precarious situation with the Jewish people. This led to some awkwardness as well as, as we shall see, some careful efforts to clarify what it is the Church was and was not saying.

The Jewish believers within the early Church walked a fine line between proclaiming the completeness of the work of Christ for our salvation and not needlessly offending the sensibilities of Jews seeking to honor the Law.

To call this line “a fine line” is an understatement. It was an outright dangerous line, as Paul already knew and as the Church at large would soon learn. The occasion for this latest controversy came with Paul’s return to Jerusalem.

¹⁷ When we had come to Jerusalem, the brothers received us gladly. ¹⁸ On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. ¹⁹ After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. ^20a And when they heard it, they glorified God.

These beginning verses are crucial for helping us understand a very important truth: there was no division between James and Paul or between the Jerusalem church and Paul. They genuinely praised God for what was happening among the Gentiles. Many people have tried to suggest a conflict between James and Paul and I would like to point out that such an idea is uncharitable to James.

Even so, James was situated in the Jerusalem church and his daily reality was having to negotiate exactly what it meant for Jews to accept Jesus as Savior and Lord. Furthermore, the news of Paul’s great missionary journeys, while profoundly exciting for all believers who heard it, was creating some tense situations in and around the mother church of Jerusalem as James explained to Paul.

^20b And they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed. They are all zealous for the law, ²¹ and they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs. ²² What then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come.

So the problem becomes clearer. It is important that you read carefully what James is saying. He is saying that many Jews who have accepted Christ (“who have believed”) want to follow Jesus but still have an appreciation for the Law and the customs of Israel. We know, of course, that there were some Jews who actually tried to import adherence to the Law into the gospel itself thereby announcing that one had to accept Jesus and be circumcised and keep the dietary laws and observe all the feasts, etc. But this does not seem to be the case here. What seems to be happening here is that some Jews were coming to Jesus and were still wanting to honor the ceremonial law – temple worship, circumcision, the food laws – but did not necessarily see this as saving.

In other words, we should make a distinction between Jewish believers who tried to add to the gospel and Jewish believers who understood the gospel but still sought to live as observant Jews and honor the customs of the Jews. And what needs to be understood is that neither Paul nor anybody else in the early Church was saying that this was, in and of itself, a problem. On the contrary, Paul himself held to this to some extent as evidenced by his having taken a Nazirite vow just before his last trip to Jerusalem.

Paul understood perfectly well that Christ and Christ alone saves us. Furthermore, Paul saw the Law as revealing to us our sinfulness and need for a Savior. Paul did not hate or disparage the Law. Rather, he saw it as limited in terms of what it could accomplish, but as having certain useful functions. The Law could condemn but it could not save.

What is more, as Paul went to the Gentiles and began to see more and more non-Jews come to Christ, he made it abundantly clear (as, we should note, did James and the earlier Jerusalem Council), that it was not necessary for non-Jewish Christians to become Jews. Therefore, it was not necessary for Gentiles to be circumcised, to keep kosher, etc.

The situation was made even more complex, however, by the fact that the missionary churches Paul was planting oftentimes had both Jewish and Gentile Christians. This fact may have been the situation that gave rise to the false rumor James reported that Paul was telling Jewish believers to abandon Moses and the Law. In reality, though, while Paul absolutely exalted Christ as the Savior of all who would come to Him, and while Paul also pointed out the limitations of the Law for the Jews, and while Paul did not bind Gentile converts to the Law, he had never told Jewish believers that they had to abandon their observance of the customs of the Jews. He had only called upon them to understand these things more clearly in the light of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ! However, some Jewish believers may have been softening their adherence to the traditional customs as they were cast out of their synagogues and entered churches with Gentile members.

John Polhill has summarized the situation probably as succinctly as it can be summarized:

In short, Paul saw one’s status in Christ as transcending the distinction between Jew and Gentile (Gal 3:28). Being in Christ neither required that the Gentile become a Jew nor that the Jew cease to be a Jew (cf. 1 Cor 9:19f.). Still, there may have been a grain of truth in the rumor that Paul was encouraging Jews of the Diaspora to abandon the Torah. It would not have been Paul’s having actually urged the Jews to do so but rather the social situation of Paul’s Diaspora churches. In the Diaspora, Jews who became Christians would almost inevitably have transferred form the synagogue to the predominantly Gentile churches. Acts 19:9 would indicate that this had been the case in Ephesus. Having left the base of support for their Jewish identity in the synagogue, there would be the natural inclination to adapt to the ways of the Gentile majority in the Christian churches. Whether or not this was the case, Paul himself had not urged Jewish Christians to abandon the Torah, and there is no evidence that the elders themselves lent any credence to the allegations.[1]

The rumors in Jerusalem about Paul were therefore false. But perception is 9/10^ths reality, as they say, so James and the other leaders were wondering if Paul might could take some action to help squelch the rumors and to assure Jewish believers in Christ that they were not in error to keep the customs and observances of the Jews. Here was their proposal:

²³ Do therefore what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow; ²⁴ take these men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses, so that they may shave their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself also live in observance of the law. ²⁵ But as for the Gentiles who have believed, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality.”

This is a most fascinating proposal. Tellingly, on the question of Gentile believers, James and the other elders upheld the earlier decision of the Jerusalem Council and did not ask that they become Jews. On the question of Jewish believers and, specifically, of those who had heard rumors of Paul disparaging the Law, James had an intriguing proposal concerning a way for Paul to clarify his position. Four of the Jewish converts in the Church had taken a Nazirite vow that, as we have seen, required them to abstain from cutting their hair, drinking wine, or coming into contact with dead bodies for thirty days. At the end of the thirty days, they were to make a sacrifice at the temple, offering their hair as part of it in completion of the vow. James asked Paul to join with them, defraying the expenses associated with their vow, and undergoing purification himself as a sign of understanding and approval. Paul’s purification should likely be differentiated from the Nazirite vow these Jewish brothers took and was probably associated with Paul’s having just come back from Gentile lands and extensive contact with Gentiles.

Paul’s response to this idea is quite moving.

²⁶ Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself along with them and went into the temple, giving notice when the days of purification would be fulfilled and the offering presented for each one of them.

In other words, he did what was proposed. He underwent purification himself and prepared to pay their expenses.

What does this tell us about Paul? For one thing, it tells us that Paul, while understanding the freedom he had in Christ, was willing to give up those freedoms for the sake of weaker brothers. F.F. Bruce put it beautifully when he said, “a truly emancipated spirit such as Paul’s is not in bondage to its own emancipation.”[2] I love that!

To insist on your rights simply because you have them with no regard to where other believers are in their own journeys is a most selfish thing to do. Furthermore, to insist on your freedoms simply because you have them with no regard for how the exercise of those freedoms may cause weaker brothers to stumble is callousness.

Did Paul have to undergo purification in the temple? No. He knew he had been cleansed by Christ. But he did so in order not to cause offense on a non-salvific issue among brothers who still highly prized these aspects of the Jewish customs. Paul would address his approach most clearly in 1 Corinthians 9.

¹⁹ For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. ²⁰ To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. ²¹ To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. ²³ I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

So there is a powerful example of humility for the sake of the body of Christ in Paul’s agreement to this proposal. It should give us pause. How attuned are we to the spiritual growth of our brothers and sisters? Do we consider where they are and what we can do to help them in their growth? Are we willing to abstain from certain freedoms for the sake of helping others in the Church? Do we insist on our rights, our freedoms, our desires, or do we value others as more important than ourselves? Paul valued others.

Paul’s actions also demonstrate something else about Paul. Ajith Fernando writes, “We cannot be certain whether this act was a mistake. But it shows us how serious Paul was about preserving unity in the body of Christ.”[3] “Serious” is a good way to describe it. This was serious business to Paul. It mattered whether or not the Church fractured on this point. For Paul, such a fracturing was unnecessary, so he made concessions to keep the believers together.

That fine line ultimately proved very difficult to walk and led to a break between Judaism and Christianity.

Paul, then, attempted to foster peace and understanding by agreeing to James’ proposal. Unfortunately, things did not go well.

²⁷ When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him,

Notice who these Jews are. They are “Jews from Asia.” Why is that significant? Because Ephesus was in Asia. In other words, these were Jews from the territory where Paul spent three years ministering. These were Jews, in other words, who had seen the comingling of Jewish and Gentile believers and had seen the disruption of the synagogues that the preaching of the gospel caused. So they had an ax to grind. Thus, seeing Paul in the temple, they made their move.

²⁸ crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place. Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” ²⁹ For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple.

The Jews drew attention to Paul and slandered him. Paul had never spoken “against” the Jews, the law, or the temple, though his preaching of the gospel had implications for all of these. Most slanderous of all was their outright false assertion that Paul took Trophimus the Ephesian, a non-Jewish man, into the temple. It was strictly forbidden to take Gentiles past the court of the Gentiles. Archeologists have discovered two markers that were in the temple of this time warning Gentiles that they would be put to death if they ventured further into the temple. But Paul had, in fact, not taken Trophimus in. He was likely just seen in the Court of the Gentiles with him and they pinned this allegation on him on that basis.

Regardless, it had the desired effect.

³⁰ Then all the city was stirred up, and the people ran together. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut. ³¹ And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. ³² He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. ³³ Then the tribune came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. He inquired who he was and what he had done. ³⁴ Some in the crowd were shouting one thing, some another. And as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks. ³⁵ And when he came to the steps, he was actually carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd, ³⁶ for the mob of the people followed, crying out, “Away with him!” ³⁷ As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the tribune, “May I say something to you?” And he said, “Do you know Greek? ³⁸ Are you not the Egyptian, then, who recently stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins out into the wilderness?” ³⁹ Paul replied, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no obscure city. I beg you, permit me to speak to the people.”

Another riot ensued, and this time Paul was saved by the Roman soldiers stationed near the temple. Our text ends with Paul asking permission to speak to the angry crowd, which he does, but what is most telling at this point are the words from the latter half of verse 30: “They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut.”

That phrase, “and at once the gates were shut,” is likely saying more than it seems. In fact, this was the beginning of the end of the Jewish-Christian attempt to live at peace as observant Jews who followed Jesus. The gate was shut on Paul and it would soon be shut on the Church.

F.F. Bruce quotes T. D. Bernard as saying in his 1864 Bampton Lectures, “‘Believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets’ and ‘having committed nothing against the people or customs of [his] fathers’, he [Paul] and his creed are forced from their proper home. On it as well as him the temple doors are shut.” To which Bruce adds:

For Luke himself, this may have been the moment when the Jerusalem temple ceased to fill the honorable role hitherto ascribed to it in his twofold history. The exclusion of God’s message and messenger from the house once called by his name sealed its doom: it was now ripe for the destruction which Jesus had predicted for it many years before (Luke 21:6).[4]

Not too long after this, the temple would be destroyed. Furthermore, the Jews would formally cast out those Jews who professed faith in Christ. This, in other words, was the beginning in the end.

In this sense, the attempt to calm the tension in the city failed. In another sense, however, it was a success: in the sense that Paul, the great missionary to the Gentiles, had demonstrated deep sensitivity to the complexities of life for the Jewish believers and had been willing to humble himself, without compromising the gospel, for the greater good of the body of Christ.

That, friends, is an example worth imitating.

 

[1] Polhill, Acts, p.117. Robertson, Acts, p.36. Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), p.448.

[2] Quoted in Stott, John (2014-04-02). The Message of Acts (The Bible Speaks Today Series) (Kindle Location 6305). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

[3] Fernando, Ajith (2010-12-21). Acts (The NIV Application Commentary) (p. 511). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

[4] Bruce, F.F. (1988-06-30). The Book of Acts (New International Commentary on the New Testament) (p. 410). Eerdmans Publishing Co – A. Kindle Edition.