Loyal to Whom?

Acts 21:27-28, 32-34

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, 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.” . . . [The Roman tribune] at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. 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. 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.

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part Two)

The one note of clarity in the whole scene is the point Luke is making yet again. The mob is trying to kill Paul because of false charges to do with his disloyalty to the Jewish law and customs. And the Roman solder rescues him. Luke is not, as some have supposed, trying to suck up to Rome, saying that Romans always do the right thing while Jews always do the wrong thing. . . . No: Luke is trying to establish a pattern . . . . Give this man a chance and he will show you his innocence. Let cool-headed justice prevail over hot-tempered mobs, and Paul will be vindicated.

Luke is not just trying to make a general point, for a general readership, about Christians in general. He is making a specific point about Paul. Yes, wherever he goes there is a riot. But that is because he is being loyal to the true, if extraordinary and dangerous, purposes of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the creator God who will one day call the whole world to account. Every vindication of Paul is another advance signal of that eventual day (151).