“Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the crowd. When they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic: ‘Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.’”
Acts 21:40b-22:1
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MAY 30, 2025
“Never waste a crisis.” This saying is attributed to Winston Churchill, and though it likely didn’t originate with him, there’s truth to it. A crisis brings not only trouble but opportunity.
This is clearly Paul’s perspective, too. In the coming chapters, we’ll see him dragged from one court hearing to the next, and each time he takes the stand, he uses it to tell his whole testimony. If you read carefully, you’ll notice that there’s not always a clear bridge between what he’s being asked and how he’s answering, between what’s at stake and what he decides to tell.
For Paul, all of this is for Jesus and Jesus’ kingdom. If someone is going to listen to him talk he’s going to use the time to persuade them that Jesus is Lord. That’s the only defense he wants or needs.
We shouldn’t be surprised: this is what he’s been writing to his brothers and sister in the churches all along. Consider his words in the letter to the Philippians:
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Paul is making headway towards his goal, because his goal is not safety and security, but Jesus.
Questions for reflection and discussion:
- What are your goals in life? How does following Jesus and serving His kingdom factor in, if at all?
- How does Paul “never waste a crisis”? How does he use even arrest to serve Jesus and the church?
- What about you? How do you respond to crisis and danger, and how does your faith factor in to this?
Church Reading Plan:
- Today, May 3o: Deuteronomy 3; Psalm 85
- Saturday, May 31: Deuteronomy 4; Psalm 86-87
- Sunday, June 1: Deuteronomy 5; Psalm 88