June
13th Paul
before a Roman court
22:
And they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their
voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is
not fit that he should live. 23: And as they cried out, and cast off
their clothes, and threw dust into the air, 24: The chief captain
commanded him to be brought into the castle, and bade that he should
be examined by scourging; that he might know wherefore they cried so
against him. 25: And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto
the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man
that is a Roman, and uncondemned? 26: When the centurion heard that,
he went and told the chief captain, saying, Take heed what thou
doest: for this man is a Roman. 27: Then the chief captain came, and
said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea. 28: And the
chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And
Paul said, But I was free born. 29: Then straightway they departed
from him which should have examined him: and the chief captain also
was afraid, after he knew that he was a Roman, and because he had
bound him.
Paul
before Sanhedrin
30:
On the morrow, because he would have known the certainty wherefore he
was accused of the Jews, he loosed him from his bands, and commanded
the chief priests and all their council to appear, and brought Paul
down, and set him before them.
The
Jews listening to Paul were with him all the way. They understood his
heritage, his education and his theology. In fact they listened in
respect when he told them of his meeting with the risen Christ. But
when he said that Christ had sent him to the Gentiles they said he is
not fit to live. Such was their fanaticism that they believed that it
was their God given duty to murder him on the spot. They cried out in
horror, they tore their clothes off which were symbolic of the Jewish
heritage and threw dust into the air which was for them the beginning
of an act of utter despair. The Chief Captain took Paul into the
fortress. Paul was now safely in Roman protection but the Captain was
going to have Paul scourged as a standard means of questioning. So as
Paul was being bound he said to the centurion, is it lawful to
scourge a Roman who has had no trial? The centurion told the captain
of the Roman guard saying be careful what you do because he is a
Roman. Then the captain of the guard came to Paul and asked him are
you a Roman? Paul answered yes. The captain of the guard said l
purchased by Roman citizenship at great cost. Yes said Paul but l was
free born. In other words he was a Roman by birth. Paul was more
Roman than this captain of the guard. It was a very strict Roman law
that no Roman could be scourged and that every Roman had the right to
be tried by his fellow countrymen. And that if he were unsatisfied by
the outcome he could appeal to Caesar and nobody would question his
Roman right to be heard in the emperor’s court. This was going to
be the path that Paul’s life would take. The Roman captain was even
afraid that he had bound him. On the next day the captain wanted to
know much more clearly what Paul had been accused of so he released
Paul from his chains and commanded the chief priests and all the
Sanhedrin to appear before him and he brought Paul down from the
fortress and he set Paul in front of them. We will read what happened
next tomorrow.
- At what point did they rise up against Paul?
- Why did the chief captain of the guard take Paul into the castle?
- In what sense was Paul safe in the castle?
No comments:
Post a Comment