No “Sidelines”

Acts 28:3-6

When Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.” He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. They were waiting for him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.

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

Luke simply cannot help, now, allowing the pattern of accusation-and-vindication to run through story after story. “This man could have been set free,” declares Agrippa. The storm does its worst but Paul and his companions are “saved.” The snake and “Justice” do their worst and Paul is hailed as a god (236).

The whole scene, of course, provides yet another example, before Italy itself is finally reached, of an official finding that Paul was a man to be trusted and valued, on top of the islanders finding that, despite an apparent accusation (via the snake) he was in fact innocent. This sets the narrative up for the final voyage and the theology for its full meaning. The sea and the snake have done their worst and are overcome. New creation is happening, and the powers of evil cannot stop it. Paul may arrive in Rome a more bedraggled figure than he would have liked, but the gospel which he brings is flourishing, and nobody can stop it (237).

Aaron Orendorff

However we may feel at times and whatever our particular situation my look like, the final chapters of Acts (among there other aims) serve to illustrate that in reality (that is, under the kind and sovereign providence of God) there are no “sidelines” in gospel-service: no “back-alleys,” no “wrong-ways,” no “holding-patterns,” no “missteps.” Reading from Acts 24 to Acts 28 only takes a few minutes, so it’s easy to forget that for Paul more than two years have passed since he was told by the Lord, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome” (Acts 23:11). Two years spent waiting in jail on account of petty, political posturing. Then, as if that weren’t discouraging enough, a sea-voyage that goes from bad, to worse, to catastrophic until finally, water-logged and half-drown, he arrives on a foreign shore only to be bit by a viper while trying to warm himself by the fire.

And yet, all of this is for a purpose. The venom doesn’t kill Paul and he is vindicated before the island’s natives. The father of the “chief man of the island, named Publius” (a Roman) is nearly dead and Paul heals him. News of this healing spreads and before you know it “the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured.” Finally, as v. 10 concludes, “They [the people of the island] also honored us greatly, and when we were about to sail, they put on board whatever we needed.”

However we may feel at times and whatever our particular situation my look like, there are no “sidelines” in gospel-service.