Paul is Apprehended; Acts 21:27-36 Part 2

Church History: Date: A.D.57 - 59

The informers against him were the Jews of Asia, not those of Jerusalem. The Jews of the dispersion, who knew him best, and who were most exasperated against him. Those who seldom came up to worship at the temple in Jerusalem themselves, but contentedly lived at a distance from it, in pursuit of their private advantages, yet appeared most zealous for the temple, as if thereby they would atone for their habitual neglect of it. They did not go to the high priest, or the magistrates of the city, with their charge, but they stirred up all the people, who were at this time more than ever disposed to anything that was tumultuous and seditious, riotous and outrageous. Those are fittest to be employed against Christ and Christianity that are governed least by reason and most by passion; therefore Paul described the Jewish persecutors to be not only wicked, but absurd unreasonable men.

The arguments wherewith they excited the people against him were popular, but very false and unjust. They cried out, "Men of Israel, help. If you are indeed men of Israel, true-born Jews, that have a concern for your church and your country, now is your time to show it, by helping to seize an enemy to both." Thus they cried after him as after a thief (Job 30:5), or after a mad dog. They charge upon him both bad doctrine and bad practice, and both against the Mosaic ritual. They charged him with bad doctrine; not only that he holds corrupt opinions himself, but that he vents and publishes them, though not here at Jerusalem, yet in other places, yes in all places, he teaches all men, everywhere; so artfully is the crime aggravated, as if, he was an itinerant, he was a ubiquitary: "He spreads to the utmost of his power certain damnable and heretical positions," against the people of the Jews. He had taught that Jews and Gentiles stand on the same level before God, and neither circumcision avails anything nor uncircumcision; he had taught against the unbelieving Jews that they were rejected (and therefore had separated from them and their synagogues), and this is interpreted to be speaking against the whole nation, as if no doubt but they were the people, and wisdom must die with them (Job 12:2), whereas God, though he had cast them off, yet had not cast away his people, (Romans 11:1). They were Lo-ammi, not a people (Hosea 1:9), and yet pretended to be the only people. Those commonly seem most jealous for the church's name that belong to it in name only. His teaching men to believe the gospel as the end of the law, and the perfection of it, was interpreted as his preaching against the law; whereas it was so far from making void the law that it established it, (Romans 3:31). Because he taught men to pray every where, he was reproached as an enemy to the temple, and perhaps because he sometimes mentioned the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and of the Jewish nation, which his Master had foretold. Paul had himself been active in persecuting Stephen, and putting him to death for words spoken against this holy place, and now the same thing is laid to his charge. He that was then made use of as the tool is now set up as the butt of Jewish rage and malice.