Playing the Rome Card

Acts 22:25-29

But when they had stretched him out for the whips, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned?” When the centurion heard this, he went to the tribune and said to him, “What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman citizen.” So the tribune came and said to him, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” And he said, “Yes.” The tribune answered, “I bought this citizenship for a large sum.” Paul said, “But I am a citizen by birth.” So those who were about to examine him withdrew from him immediately, and the tribune also was afraid, for he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him.

Aaron Orendorff

We have seen this sort of interaction once before: at the end of Acts 16, after Paul and Silas’ wrongful imprisonment in the Philippian jail. There Paul uses his Roman citizenship to extend his stay in Philippi by putting the city’s magistrates in an extremely uncomfortable position of their own political making. Here in Jerusalem he uses it in a way that, at first glance, seems to be about little more than saving his own skin . . . literally. Tracking the story out, however, we see that Paul’s protests set him on a course of speaking the truth to power that eventually ends in Roman itself.

Whether we attribute to Paul’s choice the big picture that eventually develops is beside the point. Paraphrasing Philippians 1:18, the lesson seems to be this: “. . . that in every way, even with political pretense, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.”