GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
ACTS 16:22-24
22 The crowd joined in the attack against them, and the chief magistrates stripped them. They gave the order and kept ordering to beat them with rods. 23 And when they had given them many wounds, they threw them into prison. They ordered the jailer to keep them under close guard. 24 When he received this order, he put them into the inner prison cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
The chief magistrates showed no common sense or justice in this matter at all. God has placed his law in human hearts even apart from the received text of the Bible in the form of the conscience so that governments will have a sense of right and wrong. This first use of the law, the law as a curb, is meant to keep incidents like this one from happening. But here it failed because of human weakness. The men in charge stripped Paul and Silas because they were Jews (verse 20) and then ordered and kept on ordering that they be beaten with rods. I have tried to catch the sense of the Greek imperfect tense in the translation of this phrase. Ancient Jews kept beatings to forty wounds or lashes minus one according to the law of Moses (Deuteronomy 25:3). Later, Paul says that he received the “forty minus one” beating five times from the Jews (2 Corinthians 11:24), but these were not Jews. They were Roman Greeks, and they didn’t care about such limitations. The beating in Philippi went on and on.
After Paul and Silas were a pair of bloody messes, they were thrown into prison. That isn’t just an expression, like we would use in English. The Greek word is actually “thrown” (ebalon) into the prison. They gave orders to the jailer, but the text of verse 24 shows that he received this order later, second-hand, probably from the guard who was on duty at the time. Bleeding, unable to move quickly or at all, and probably unable even to walk, they were to be guarded closely. The jailer put their feet into stocks in a secure inner cell.
Were Luke and Timothy jailed with them? For Paul’s sake, we can hope so. Luke would at least have been able to stop the bleeding and maybe bind some of their wounds by ripping up his own cloak into strips.
This wasn’t a very likely place for them to do any missionary work. But God was about to use them for just that. You and I will be attacked because of our faith sometimes. We should always be prepared to be scorned and opposed by unbelievers. But there will be moments when Christians, even friends, lash out against us for speaking up for the Word of God. Jesus said, “Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man” (Luke 6:22). And again, he said: “All me will hate you because of me” (Luke 21:17). And Isaiah said: “Your brothers who hate you, and exclude you because of my name, have said, ‘Let the Lord be glorified,’ yet they will be put to shame” (Isaiah 66:5).
What we might not expect is that our response to scorn and opposition may make all the difference in someone’s life. People in our time are not much different from people in Paul’s time. People today say things and do things according to the impulses of the sinful nature without thinking about what will happen next. Paul said: “When we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passion aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death” (Romans 7:5). “Fruit for death” in that verse is anything a person does that has no benefit for the soul or for the kingdom of God. It’s the impulse of sin that lives in us that drives us to obey our passions or our anger or whatever sinful urges control us in the moment, and which bring only pain, grief, guilt, and shame.
When you feel stripped, beaten, hated, scorned, or even thrown into the stocks because you stood up for the Word of God, remember that you will be blessed. When you take a risk just to try to get the word of God to someone you know about who doesn’t know Jesus, you will be blessed. Your Father in heaven knows what you are going through. Your heavenly Father knows what you need (Matthew 6:32), especially the comforts of the gospel and the forgiveness of your sins. And he will not fail to fill your needs.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Acts 16:22-24 A beating