where, having found brethren, we were begged to stay with them seven days. And thus we went to Rome.
Paul reaches Italy as a prisoner under guard. The first thing recorded on Italian soil is a welcome, not a court: Christians already living at Puteoli ask his party to stay a week. Who were these believers, and why did a prisoner on his way to trial stop for seven days?
The party lands and finds Christians waiting. The officer in charge lets his prisoner spend the week with them, and Paul draws strength from it.
Everything went well. They arrived at Puteoli and found brothers there. Those brothers begged that Paul might stay with them for a week, and the visit was gladly arranged. It seems that by this time the centurion in charge had taken the measure of his prisoners. He was willing to give Paul remarkable freedom. He was a spiritual man, in close touch with God and dependent on Him. Even so, he was not above thanking God and taking courage from the love and fellowship of saints who may have stood far below him in spiritual stature. It is striking to see this, and very encouraging for us. Let us be very careful not to despise, or even underestimate, the value of the fellowship of saints.
The length of the stay is not random. It matches a pattern that appears earlier in Acts, each time after a sea voyage.
Luke describes the journey to Rome and the stay at Puteoli (Acts 28:13-14). This is the third recorded time in Acts when Paul and his company, after a sea voyage, stay with the saints where they landed for exactly seven days. Each time they then set out again at once.
Why a week? One writer points to what those days made room for.
Here they found brothers who begged the apostle and the rest to stay with them seven days. That was the usual length of a visit. It came naturally to Christians who valued, above all, the joy of fellowship on the Lord's day and at His Supper, along with all the opportunities meanwhile for building up, prayer and the word.
The stop did more than delay him.
It seems that the brothers at Puteoli wanted him to stay a week among them. That delay gave the news of his arrival in Italy time to reach the saints in Rome, and they came out to meet him. The authorities who held him prisoner raised no difficulty at all. Such was the moral respect he had inspired among the Roman officials, and not least in the centurion. That officer had watched his ways and words all the journey from east to west.
Paul had prayed for a good journey to Rome. He got the journey, but not by the route he expected.
Paul had longed to see the saints at Rome. He had asked God to prosper his journey to them (Rom. 1:10-13). But the Lord arranged his way to Rome in a quite unexpected manner. Christian fellowship is sweet at all times. How precious it is in times of trouble! We can easily understand why Paul "thanked God and took courage."
The verse ends at the world's capital. Believers were there before Paul arrived, and one writer sees God's hand in that.
So the apostle comes to the capital of the world a prisoner. Such was the will of God. There were saints in it then, as we know from the letter written to them from Corinth (Rom. 16:3). Apostles founded many churches, but no apostle founded the one in Rome. So God went ahead of the pride of man and condemned it — the pride that later claimed such a founder, a tradition as groundless as most others. Yet more: the greatest witness of the gospel arrived there in chains.
The same writer sets that arrival beside the road's usual traffic.
"And so we came to Rome." What a contrast with the great ones of the earth, winners or losers, who had so often taken the same road!
- Found — At Puteoli the travellers find believers already there. The gospel reached Italy ahead of Paul, and no apostle founded the church in Rome.
- Fed — Seven days is the third such stay in Acts after a sea voyage. A week reaches the Lord's day, the Supper, prayer and the word together.
- Freed — The centurion had watched Paul the whole journey. He grants him remarkable freedom, and the guard's respect becomes the believers' opportunity.
- Forwarded — The week's delay lets news run ahead to Rome, so believers come out to meet him. Delay in God's hand is arrangement.
- Fortified — Paul drew courage from believers far below his own spiritual stature. Never underestimate the fellowship of the saints, above all in hard times.
And thence the brethren, having heard about us, came to meet us as far as Appii Forum and Tres Tabernae, whom when Paul saw, he thanked God and took courage.
Paul reaches the road into Rome as a prisoner, and believers he has never met walk out to greet him. His response — thanks to God, and fresh courage — shows what one simple act of love can do for even the strongest servant.
The two place names mark two separate welcoming parties, and neither spot was a place anyone would choose. One writer sets the meeting against the sordid reputation these stops had among travellers of the day.
From Rome, when the brothers heard that they had arrived in Italy, they "came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us." The Forum of Appius was less than forty miles from the great city, and Three Taverns more than thirty. Neither place had a good name, even among the pagans. A classical poet left a vivid record of passing through the more distant of the two. He wrote of its cheap but overpriced taverns and its quarrelling bargemen.
Paul had written to Rome asking for a good journey and a joyful arrival. He came as a prisoner instead, and still called it an answer.
When he wrote his letter, we may be sure he little thought he would see them as Rome's prisoner. He asked that he might have a good journey to them (Rom. 1:10), and had told them to pray that he might reach them with joy (Rom. 15:32). But it is beautiful and blessed to see this. The Spirit of God had given his journey and his arrival among them this character, yet he does not treat it as anything less than a full answer to his desires. "He thanks God," owning that God had answered what he asked.
The phrase itself admits something about Paul's condition. One writer weighs the words carefully.
The love of the brothers moves them to go and meet him. Paul, seeing them, thanks God and takes courage. He was then cast down — I do not say discouraged — but he needed to take courage. Here we find a difference in the inner state of Christians, and it is important to notice. One thing is the state of the soul in itself. Another is its strength when facing difficulties and the power of the enemy.
A humble believer can put fresh heart into the greatest of servants. Holding back from despised people costs us that blessing.
What a joy it is for a humble brother to be the means of giving the apostle Paul fresh cheer along the road of Christ! And how we rob ourselves and our brothers of so much blessing! Our faith is too small and our love too thin to stand with the most despised, and with those who suffer for the name of the Lord.
He was met by men, but his first word went upward. And the order of the verse — thanks, then courage — is itself instructive.
The kind interest and gracious concern of these men, to whom he was "unknown by face," stirred his warm heart to its depths. He forgot the dangers of the past, the weariness of travel, and the shame of his chains. Joy filled him at the sight of those who loved the Christ he served... But while he was certainly grateful to those kind brothers for their affectionate interest, his first thought was to give thanks to God.
Some might expect the Lord to be slighted when His servant is lifted by human company. The opposite is true.
He is a jealous God, I know, and will not allow us to have any other. He is a jealous Saviour, I also know... But in a great sense He is not a jealous Friend. He allows other connections and affections to move our hearts as well as Himself. When Paul saw the brethren he took courage. Did the Lord resent this?... No. He approved of His servant finding refreshment in the faces and company of fellow believers.
One writer, writing about believers meeting the Lord in the air, points back to this scene on the road.
The word used here only occurs three other times in the New Testament: Matthew 25:1 and 6, and Acts 28:15. In each case it means "going out and returning with." When the brothers from Rome "met" Paul, that is exactly what happened. They went out as far as the Forum of Appius. Having met him, they joined his company and returned with him to Rome. In just the same way, we will all meet our Lord in the air.
- Asked — Paul had prayed for a joyful journey to Rome. He arrived in chains, and still called it a full answer.
- Low — the verse admits he was cast down. A soul can be weak in itself and still hold its ground against the enemy.
- Met — believers came over thirty miles to a prisoner they had never seen. Their coming gave him courage.
- Thanked — men lifted him, but his first word went to God. Thanks came before courage.
- Ahead — the word for their meeting means going out and coming back together. It is the word for going out to meet the Lord in the air.
And when we came to Rome, [the centurion delivered up the prisoners to the praetorian prefect, but] Paul was allowed to remain by himself with the soldier who kept him.
Paul's long journey as a prisoner ends here. He enters the capital of the empire alive, and the guard takes charge of him. The verse is short, but it raises the questions that shape the rest of the book. Who held him? How much freedom did he have? And why did the great witness of the gospel enter Rome in chains?
Some translations add a line here about "the captain of the guard." The title names a real Roman post.
"Captain of the guard" in Acts 28:16 is the Greek word stratopedarches, which strictly means "commander of a camp." Here it means the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, the officer who took charge of state prisoners at Rome.
Paul passed from one officer's charge to another's, and he entered a city ruled by the man he had appealed to.
At last Paul entered Rome. What must he have felt as he walked through the grandest capital in the whole world! On the throne sat Nero, a monster of lust and cruelty, who had murdered his own mother and his wife. And it was to Nero that Paul had appealed. On arriving at Rome, the courteous Julius handed him over to the Captain of the guard, the praetorian prefect. This officer's duty was to hold in custody every accused person who had to be tried by Caesar.
Compare translations and you will find the middle of the verse missing in some. The reason lies in the oldest copies.
In Acts 28 it is admitted that the middle part of verse 16 rests on doubtful authority, and so does the whole of verse 29. The best witnesses stand against both, not only in the manuscripts but in the ancient versions.
Either way, the second half of the verse is not in doubt. Paul lived apart from the other prisoners, under a single guard.
Paul had written to the Christians in Rome about the visit he hoped to make.
So Paul arrived at Rome. His circumstances were very different from the ones he had pictured when he wrote ahead about what he planned to do (see Romans 15:22-32). Yet he did come to them with a certain measure of joy, by the will of God, and he came marked by "the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ." God's hand was still over him. Though he was a prisoner, he was allowed to live by himself under guard, and this gave him a measure of liberty for service and testimony.
He had asked God long before for this visit to the believers at Rome. The chain did not cancel it.
These had been his desires (Romans 1:10-13), and every one of them is answered (Acts 28:15-24). He sees them, he takes courage, and through preaching he gathers fruit there as well as among other Gentiles.
Paul was not treated like the other prisoners.
When they came to Rome, the centurion let Paul live outside the prison, in the custody of a soldier, while the rest of the prisoners went to prison. Paul was no ordinary prisoner, as their trust in him shows. But the soldier was in effect a captive audience for the gospel!
The favour still had a hard edge.
However, Paul was allowed to live in his own rented house with a soldier to guard him. It was no small trial to be chained as a prisoner night and day and have no privacy.
The chain fixed him in one place. He used the place.
For two years he lived in Rome under light arrest, guarded by a soldier, in his own rented room. All that time he knew that martyrdom awaited him. He knew how to turn that humble room into a pulpit. There he preached the Kingdom of God and taught the things that concern the Lord Jesus Christ. There and in that occupation we see the last glimpse of that loved and honoured man.
Christians were already in the city; what was new was the way its foremost preacher entered it.
It is not that God had done no work there already. Many souls before this were calling on the name of the Lord, both Jews and Gentiles, as the letter to the Romans lets us see. But the great witness of the gospel was to enter Rome as a prisoner. If he was released later, he came back, a prisoner again, to die at Rome for Christ. It was indeed a solemn picture of what Rome would always prove to be to the gospel of God.
- Chain — The custody was real. A praetorian prefect held the empire's state prisoners, and Paul wore a chain day and night with no privacy.
- Concession — Within that chain came unusual favour. Other prisoners went to prison. The centurion trusted Paul to live on his own under one guard.
- Confirmation — Behind that favour was God's hand. It gave him room for service and testimony.
- Captive audience — The guard chained to him could not walk away. The rented room became a pulpit for the kingdom of God.
- Consequence — Every desire of Romans 1:10-13 was answered: he arrived, he took courage, he gathered fruit. And the great witness of the gospel entered the world's capital in chains.