Why was Paul in prison?

It was, then, the carrying out of this special service, which proclaimed the Gospel of the grace of God to the Gentiles, that raised the malice of the prejudiced Jew and brought the Apostle into prison. In the estimation of the Jew, a man who could talk of going to the Gentiles was not fit to live (Acts 22:21-22). Paul, however, did not view himself as a prisoner of men for any wrong-doing, but as a prisoner of Jesus Christ because of his service of love in making known the truth to the Gentiles.

Hostile Jews seized Paul soon after his arrival in Jerusalem. He nearly became the victim of their fury - had not the Romans intervened and helped. The Romans then took him into protective custody. He remained a prisoner because of the false accusations made by his compatriots. He stayed in Jerusalem and then, for two years, in Caesarea. When the Roman governor Felix handed over his office to Porcius Festus [2] in 60 AD a new hearing was arranged during which Paul - being a Roman citizen - appealed to Caesar (Acts 25:11-12; 26:32). Afterwards Paul was sent to Rome where he finally arrived after a perilous journey and where according to the final report of Acts he remained prisoner for two years in relative freedom (around 61 to 63 AD; Acts 27 to 28).

Having been there only three days Paul was able to call the Jewish leaders to visit him, and explained to them the circumstances of his arrest and imprisonment. He declares his innocence as regards any infraction of Israel's law, but that the Jews of Jerusalem had delivered him to the Romans as a prisoner. The Romans, after due examination, found no charge that could be substantiated, so were inclined to release him, but the Jews being opposed, Paul had appealed to Caesar. He adds, "not that I had ought to accuse my nation of." He might have accused them of their attempt to murder him in Jerusalem, but he made no issue of this. Now, he says, he desires to speak with them in Rome because it was actually on account of the true hope of Israel that he was a prisoner.

However, Paul was suffered to dwell in his own hired 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.

After three days’ quiet, Paul called the chief of the Jews together. When assembled, he said unto them that he had committed nothing against the people or customs of the fathers, yet he was delivered into the hands of the Romans. After examination they would have let him go, but the Jews expostulating, he had appealed to Caesar. He had, however, nothing to complain of against the nation. He could say that it was for the hope of Israel that he was chained to a soldier.

There was a strong tendency in those days for Jew and Gentile to fall apart, and this tendency was increased by the scheming of Judaising teachers from Jerusalem. Hence Paul evidently considered this collection a very important matter and insisted on being the bearer of the bounty himself. He was quite aware of the danger he ran, and verse 30 and 31 of our chapter show that he had some premonitions of coming trouble. Whether he was really right in going to Jerusalem has been a much discussed question. We need not attempt to answer it here, but we shall do well to note that the prayer, in which he asked the Roman saints to join with him, was answered, though not in just the way he hoped. He was delivered, but not as a free man. He was delivered from his persecutors by his imprisonment at the hands of the representatives of Caesar.

430 Like Jesus, Paul is condemned on account of the truth of his mission; but in the apostle's case, in a position that contradicted the mission itself. But the Jews complete their sin by rejecting, and giving up to the Gentiles, the grace offered to them. The word that raised the tumult was also the occasion of his imprisonment among the Romans. This was the proof, that as an apostle he had nothing to do at Jerusalem. He loved his people, and that deeply; for he had returned to Jerusalem, in spite of all that had been said to him. Desiring to bear witness there, he had reasoned with the Lord; but the Lord had replied that he ought not to go there. He excuses himself to the Jews, without doubt; but if they would not receive his testimony, what was the necessity of saying that the Lord had sent him? This discourse is the main point of the apostle's history, on which all the rest depends.

Although the Lord wrought much and mightily through His servant after Paul's address to the Ephesian bishops,* it is yet true that this marked the termination of his free activity. Immediately after, animated by his intense affection for his "kinsmen according to the flesh," he proceeded to Jerusalem. There he was taken prisoner while in the very act of seeking to appease the prejudices of the Jewish believers by conforming himself to Jewish legal customs. It was an astonishing thing that the apostle, who had so boldly and faithfully confronted and withstood Peter at Antioch, "that the truth of the gospel might continue with" the Galatian believers, should himself fall into a like error at Jerusalem. The Lord could not, consistently with the truth committed to Paul's stewardship, allow this lapse from grace to succeed in its object. He permitted His servant therefore to be arrested, and, in the issue, to be carried a prisoner to Rome, while He graciously overruled His servant's failure for the accomplishment of His own purposes. He used the apostle in captivity to write the most precious (if it be right to distinguish between what is equally inspired) of all his epistles.

The very thing that James dreaded and sought to avoid came upon them: an uproar was raised, and Paul was delivered over into the hands of the Gentiles. The Lord was determined to send him to the Gentiles. If he would not go as a free man, he must go as "an ambassador in bonds." He could say, however, that it was for "the hope of Israel that he was bound with this chain." If his heart had not longed so after Israel, he might have escaped the bonds. He left Israel without excuse, but he himself became a prisoner and a martyr.

But was deliverance from death the only deliverance he experienced at that time? Many, and perhaps most even, of the Christians in Jerusalem thought only of the preservation of his life. We, however, see that there was another deliverance brought about by the chief captain's interposition. Paul was kept thereby from compromising the truth. Are we casting a stone at him? By no means. But facts are facts, and Scripture deals with them. He had, as we may remember, been expressly forbidden by the Spirit, through the disciples at Tyre, to go to Jerusalem; nevertheless, he went there, and nothing but God's intervention by the Roman power prevented the Jews on the one hand from accomplishing their murderous purpose, or Paul on the other from compromising the truth, which his presence at the altar of burnt-offering with the sacrifices required by law must have brought about. It was a mercy to the whole Church that Paul was taken prisoner by the Romans. Could the teaching of the Hebrews have been subsequently set forth, if the great champion of the full Christian faith had at this time practically surrendered the latter by yielding to the doctrine of expediency? The chief captain's prompt appearance was a deliverance indeed. The false position in which Paul had put himself he was in no longer. And what he could not have done before he could with a free spirit do now - viz., boldly address the Jews; and though not in the Temple court, yet from a more commanding position, even the stairs of the castle.

Onesimus was his own child in the faith, his own bowels. This was equally true of Titus, etc; but of Onesimus it could be added, "whom I have begotten in my bonds." In time past he was unprofitable to Philemon, but now profitable to him and to Paul in every way. The apostle desired greatly to retain him, that on his master's part he might minister to him in the bonds of the gospel; but he would not ignore Philemon's rights. Let none suppose that this affords any sanction to slavery. It does not touch the question. The Spirit does not, in this Epistle, pronounce at all as to the right or wrong of the matter. The day has not come to set the world right. When glory bursts and the Lord Jesus reigns, God's order will be carried out through the universe; but until that day, these things are left where they are, divine instruction being given to the saints in view of them. Paul would have Onesimus received in a manner worthy of God, not now as a mere slave, but as a brother in the Lord, one who was calculated to be a help to Philemon now, in contrast with his behaviour in the past, and who had shown, it would appear, an aptitude in the Lord's service as well. Being Paul's child through grace, he must be received as himself; and if he owed his master ought, Paul would repay. Mighty fruit of divine grace and love! Where had Paul learnt this, if not from Him Who in deepest grace undertook His people's cause, and paid their mighty dues? "I will repay" was His language, as it were, as He went to the cross for us. The cold selfish heart of man can never produce such sentiments: these are plants of heavenly growth.