“They listened to him up to this point. Then they raised their voices, shouting, ‘Wipe this man off the face of the earth! He should not be allowed to live!’ As they were yelling and flinging aside their garments and throwing dust into the air, the commander ordered him to be brought into the barracks, directing that he be interrogated with the scourge to discover the reason they were shouting against him like this. As they stretched him out for the lash, Paul said to the centurion standing by, ‘Is it legal for you to scourge a man who is a Roman citizen and is uncondemned?’
When the centurion heard this, he went and reported to the commander, saying, ‘What are you going to do? For this man is a Roman citizen.’ The commander came and said to him, ‘Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. The commander replied, ‘I bought this citizenship for a large amount of money.’ ‘But I was born a citizen,’ Paul said. So those who were about to examine him withdrew from him immediately. The commander too was alarmed when he realized Paul was a Roman citizen and he had bound him.”
Acts 22:22-29 (CSB)
–
JUNE 3, 2025
In the passage we are meditating on this week, we read that the crowds in Jerusalem are in a rage because of Paul. As we’ve seen before, the Roman governing authorities step in for crowd control, wanting to avoid riots. The commander intends to use physical torture to see if he can figure out if Paul is truly guilty or not.
Before Paul is brutally lashed, he turns to a centurion and, using his background as a Pharisee and expert in the law, asks if it is lawful to lash an innocent Roman citizen. Paul knows that by Roman law, a Roman citizen could not be punished until proven guilty of a crime.
This was incredibly alarming to the commander and he looked for a different way to assess Paul’s situation. But something in his language stands out to me. The commander confessed to Paul that he had purchased his Roman citizenship for a good amount of money. Why would he tell Paul this? At the time, someone who purchased their citizenship was of less value than someone who was a natural born Roman citizen. Why would he disclose this?
I wonder if the commander was beginning to see that being a Roman citizen wasn’t the security he had hoped for when he bought it. If a natural Roman citizen could be treated like this, what might happen to him? How often in this life, do we place hope in something or someone to keep us safe and secure—but it doesn’t? How often do we think that a country will keep us safe, or a politician, or a job, or insurance, or our Ring system, or our money, or our work experience or our college degree or our network of contacts?
There is only one form of true security:
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order 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 comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
(Philippians 3: 8-11 ESV)
Questions for reflection and discussion:
- What kinds of things do you spend money on to “keep you safe”?
- Do you spend more effort and energy investing in temporary physical security or the Holy Spirit driven restoration of all things?
- Why do you think we have such a bent towards pain avoidance?
Church Reading Plan: Deuteronomy 6; Psalm 89