Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were loosened. The jailer, being roused out of sleep and seeing the prison doors open, drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, “Don’t harm yourself, for we are all here!”
He called for lights, sprang in, fell down trembling before Paul and Silas, brought them out, and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him, and to all who were in his house.
He took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes, and was immediately baptized, he and all his household. He brought them up into his house, and set food before them, and rejoiced greatly, with all his household, having believed in God.
But when it was day, the magistrates sent the sergeants, saying, “Let those men go.”
The jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, “The magistrates have sent to let you go; now therefore come out and go in peace.”
But Paul said to them, “They have beaten us publicly without a trial, men who are Romans, and have cast us into prison! Do they now release us secretly? No, most certainly, but let them come themselves and bring us out!”
The sergeants reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Romans, and they came and begged them. When they had brought them out, they asked them to depart from the city.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37 26. There was an earthquake. The Lord, in showing…
26. There was an earthquake. The Lord, in showing this visible sign, meant chiefly to provide for his servants, that they might more manifestly know that the prayers were heard; yet he had respect also of the rest. He could have loosed the fetters of Paul and Silas without an earthquake, and also have opened the gates. But that addition served not a little to confirm them, seeing that the Lord, for their sakes, did shake both the air and also the earth. Again, it was requisite that the keeper of the prison and the rest should feel the presence of God, lest they should think that the miracle came by chance. Neither is it to be doubted, but that the Lord did then show a token of his power, which should be profitable for all ages; so that the faithful may fully assure themselves that he will be nigh unto them so often as they are to enter combats and dangers for the defense of the gospel. Nevertheless, he doth neither always keep the same course, to testify his presence by manifest signs; neither is it lawful for us to prescribe him a law. For he did help his by manifest miracles then for this cause, that we may be content with his hidden grace at this day; concerning which matter we have spoken more upon the second chapter.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv27, 28, 33, 35, 37, 38 The merciful Lord, so oft as he listeth, draweth…
The merciful Lord, so oft as he listeth, draweth men to life, even through the midst of death, and whereas justly they deserved great punishment, he showeth them great mercy.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv26–39 26 And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so…
26 And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed.
Ver. 26. There was a great earthquake] See the great power of prayer. It shaketh heaven and earth, Luther saith; there is a kind of omnipotence in it.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv26–39 Suddenly; how soon is prayer answered, when the fulness…
Suddenly; how soon is prayer answered, when the fulness of time is come! So nigh is God unto all that call upon him, Psa 34:17; 145:18.
There was a great earthquake; an earthquake did usually precede some wonderful matter, as Mat 28:2. And although God could have delivered these his servants without an earthquake, yet, to show the more that their deliverance was his work, and it was no artifice or force of their own, he manifested his power after this manner.
Read full note →
Every one’s bands were loosed; either by the earthquake, or some secret power of an angel, or by God himself immediately, that the apostles and others might know that the souls of men should be loosed and set free by them, whose bodies for that purpose were now freed by God.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv29, 33, 34, 35, 38 As if the gaoler had said, "Sirs, now I…
As if the gaoler had said, "Sirs, now I see and acknowledge that the doctrine taught by you is the truth of the eternal God; and he hath by this miraculous earthquake testified to me, that you are his true and faithful servants: tell me therefore, I beseech you, what I must do to attain salvation?" They answer, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, &c. That is, "If you and your family receive the doctrine of Jesus Christ, and regulate your lives according to it, you shall be saved.
Here note, 1. That scorners and persecutors will become tremblers, when once God hath touched their hearts, and wounded their consciences with remorse for sin. The gaoler here came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas; trembling under a sense of his guiltiness, and falling down upon his knees to ask them forgiveness.
Read full note →
Note, 2. That trembling sinners are always inquisitive, yea, very inquisitive, persons. An awakened conscience will put a man upon enquiry, upon great and much enquiry, what he should do.
Note, 3. That the chief thing which the trembling soul enquires after, is the business of salvation: What shall I do to be saved?
Note, 4. That trembling sinners, and troubled souls, must be directed to Jesus Christ, and to faith in him, as the only way to obtain salvation by him, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v35 In these verses we have,
In these verses we have,
I. Orders sent for the discharge of Paul and Silas out of prison Act 16:35, Act 16:36. 1. The magistrates that had so basely abused them the day before gave the orders; and their doing it so early, as soon as it was day, intimates that either they were sensible the terrific earthquake they felt at midnight was intended to plead the cause of their prisoners, or their consciences had smitten them for what they had done and made them very uneasy. While the persecuted were singing in the stocks, the persecutors were full of tossings to and fro upon their beds, through anguish of mind, complaining more of the lashes of their consciences than the prisoners did of the lashes on their backs, and more in haste to give them a discharge than they were to petition for one. Now God caused his servants to be pitied of those that had carried them captives, Psa 106:46. The magistrates sent sergeants, rabdouchous - those that had the rods, the vergers, the tipstaves, the beadles, those that had been employed in beating them, that they might go and ask them forgiveness. The order was, Let those men go. It is probable that they designed further mischief to them, but God turned their hearts, and, as he had made their wrath hitherto to praise him, so the remainder thereof he did restrain, Psa 76:10. 2. The jailer brought them the news (Act 16:36): The magistrates have sent to let you go. Some think the jailer had betimes transmitted an account to the magistrates of what had passed in his house that night, and so had obtained this order for the discharge of his prisoners: Now therefore depart. Not that he was desirous to part with them as his guests, but as his prisoners; they shall still be welcome to his house, but he is glad they are at liberty from his stocks. God could by his grace as easily have converted the magistrates as the jailer, and have brought them to faith and baptism; but God hath chosen the poor of this world, Jam 2:5.
Read full note →
II. Paul's insisting upon the breach of privilege which the magistrates had been guilty of, Act 16:37. Paul said to the sergeants, "They have beaten us openly, uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison against all law and justice, and now do they thrust us out privily, and think to make us amends with this for the injury done us? Nay, verily; but let them come themselves and fetch us our, and own that they have done us wrong." It is probable that the magistrates had some intimation that they were Romans, and were made sensible that their fury had carried them further than the law would bear them out; and that this was the reason why they gave orders for their discharge. Now observe,
1. Paul did not plead this before he was beaten, though it is probable that it might have prevented it, lest he should seem to be afraid of suffering for the truth which he had preached. Tully, in one of his orations, against Verres, tells of one Ganius, who was ordered by Verres to be beaten in Sicily, that all the while he was under the lash he cried out nothing but Civis Romanus sum - I am a citizen of Rome; Paul did not do so; he had nobler things than this to comfort himself with in his affliction.
2. He did plead it afterwards, to put an honour upon his sufferings and upon the cause he suffered for, to let the world know that the preachers of the gospel were not such despicable men as they were commonly looked upon to be, and that they merited better treatment. He did it likewise to mollify the magistrates towards the Christians at Philippi, and to gain better treatment for them, and beget in the people a better opinion of the Christian religion, when they saw that Paul had a fair advantage against their magistrates, might have brought his action against them and had them called to an account for what they had done, and yet did not take the advantage, which was very much to the honour of that worthy name by which he was called. Now here,
(1.) Paul lets them know how many ways they had run themselves into a premunire, and that he had law enough to know it. [1.] They had beaten those that were Romans; some think that Silas was a Roman citizen as well as Paul; others that this does not necessarily follow. Paul was a citizen, and Silas was his companion. Now both the lex Procia and the lex Sempronia did expressly forbid liberum corpus Romani civis, virgis aut aliis verberibus caedi - the free body of a Roman citizen to be beaten with rods or otherwise. Roman historians give instances of cities that had their charters taken from them for indignities done to Roman citizens; we shall afterwards find Paul making use of this plea, Act 22:25, Act 22:26. To tell them they had beaten those who were the messengers of Christ and the favourites of Heaven would have had no influence upon them; but to tell them they have abused Roman citizens will put them into a fright: so common is it for people to be more afraid of Caesar's wrath than of Christ's. He that affronts a Roman, a gentleman, a nobleman, though ignorantly, and through mistake, thinks himself concerned to cry Peccavi - I have done wrong, and make his submission; but he that persecutes a Christian because he belongs to Christ stands to it, and thinks he may do it securely, though God hath said, He that toucheth them toucheth the apple of my eye, and Christ has warned us of the danger of offending his little ones. [2.] They had beaten them uncondemned; indicta causa - without a fair hearing, had not calmly examined what was said against them, much less enquired what they had to say for themselves. It is a universal rule of justice, Caus cognit possunt multi absolvi, incognit nemo condemnari potest - Many may be acquitted in consequence of having had a hearing, while without a hearing no one can be condemned. Christ's servants would not have been abused as they have been if they and their cause might but have had an impartial trial. [3.] It was an aggravation of this that they had done it openly, which, as it was so much the greater disgrace to the sufferers, so it was the bolder defiance to justice and the law. [4.] They had cast them into prison, without showing any cause of their commitment, and in an arbitrary manner, by a verbal order. [5.] They now thrust them out privily; they had not indeed the impudence to stand by what they had done, but yet had not the honesty to own themselves in a fault.
(2.) He insists upon it that they should make them an acknowledgment of their error, and give them a public discharge, to make it the more honourable, as they had done them a public disgrace, which made that the more disgraceful: "Let them come themselves, and fetch us out, and give a testimony to our innocency, and that we have done nothing worthy of stripes or of bonds." It was not a point of honour that Paul stood thus stiffly upon, but a point of justice, and not to himself so much as to his cause: "Let them come and stop the clamours of the people, by confessing that we are not the troublers of the city."
III. The magistrates' submission, and the reversing of the judgment given against Paul and Silas, Act 16:38, Act 16:39. 1. The magistrates were frightened when they were told (though it may be they knew it before) that Paul was a Roman. They feared when they heard it, lest some of his friends should inform the government of what they had done, and they should fare the worse for it. The proceedings of persecutors have often been illegal, even by the law of nations, and often inhuman, against the law of nature, but always sinful, and against God's law. 2. They came and besought them not to take advantage of the law against them, but to overlook the illegality of what they had done and say no more of it: they brought them out of the prison, owning that they were wrongfully put into it, and desired them that they would peaceably and quietly depart out of the city. Thus Pharaoh and his servants, who had set God and Moses at defiance, came to Moses, and bowed down themselves to him, saying, Get thee out, Exo 11:8. God can make the enemies of his people ashamed of their envy and enmity to them, Isa 26:11. Jerusalem is sometimes made a burdensome stone to those that heave at it, which they would gladly get clear of, Zac 12:3. Yet, if the repentance of these magistrates had been sincere, they would not have desired them to depart out of their city (as the Gadarenes desired to be rid of Christ), but would have courted their stay, and begged of them to continue in their city, to show them the way of salvation. But many are convinced that Christianity is not to be persecuted who yet are not convinced that it ought to be embraced, or at least are not persuaded to embrace it. They are compelled to do honour to Christ and his servants, to worship before their feet, and to know that he has loved them (Rev 3:9), and yet do not go so far as to have benefit by Christ, or to come in for a share in his love.
IV. The departure of Paul and Silas from Philippi, Act 16:40. They went out of the prison when they were legally discharged, and not till then, though they were illegally committed, and then, 1. They took leave of their friends: they went to the house of Lydia, where probably the disciples had met to pray for them, and there they saw the brethren, or visited them at their respective habitations (which was soon done, they were so few); and they comforted them, by telling them (saith an ancient Greek commentary) what God had done for them, and how he had owned them in the prison. They encouraged them to keep close to Christ, and hold fast the profession of their faith, whatever difficulties they might meet with, assuring them that all would then end well, everlastingly well. Young converts should have a great deal said to them to comfort them, for the joy of the Lord will be very much their strength. 2. They quitted the town: They departed. I wonder they should do so; for, now that they had had such an honourable discharge from their imprisonment, surely they might have gone on at least for some time in their work without danger; but I suppose they went away upon that principle of their Master's (Mar 1:38). Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also, for therefore came I forth. Paul and Silas had an extraordinary call to Philippi; and yet, when they have come thither, they see little of the fruit of their labours, and are soon driven thence. Yet they did not come in vain. Though the beginnings here were small, the latter end greatly increased; now they laid the foundation of a church at Philippi, which became very eminent, had its bishops and deacons, and people that were more generous to Paul than any other church, as appears by his epistle to the Philippians, Phi 1:1; Phi 4:15. Let not ministers be discouraged, though they see not the fruit of their labours presently; the seed sown seems to be lost under the clods, but it shall come up again in a plentiful harvest in due time.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv26–39 And suddenly there was a great earthquake,.... An extraordinary…
And suddenly there was a great earthquake,.... An extraordinary and unusual one; which did not arise from natural causes, from wind being pent up in the earth, but from the prayers and praises of the saints, going up to heaven; when God was pleased to testify his presence and power this way; and the effects which followed upon this earthquake, show it to be a supernatural one:
so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; not the roof and walls only, as is common in earthquakes, but the very foundation also; and yet the edifice was not thrown down, as is usual when the foundation is shaken:
Read full note →
and immediately all the doors were opened; both of the outer and inner prisons, which is another unusual effect of earthquakes:
and everyone's bands were loosed; not only the bands of Paul and Silas, but of the rest of the prisoners; though the Arabic version reads, "all the fetters and bands of both were loosed", referring it only to Paul and Silas; this circumstance shows also, that the earthquake was miraculous, for when was it ever known that such an effect ever followed one?
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv28, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37 But Paul cried - As they were all then…
But Paul cried - As they were all then in the dark, it is not easy to say, how Paul knew of the jailer's purpose; unless it were by some immediate notice from God, which is by no means incredible. With a loud voice - Through earnestness, and because he was at some distance. Do thyself no harm - Although the Christian faith opens the prospect into another life, yet it absolutely forbids and effectually prevents a man's discharging himself from this.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38 Verse 26. There was a great earthquake] Thus God…
Verse 26. There was a great earthquake] Thus God bore a miraculous testimony of approbation to his servants; and, by the earthquake, and loosing the bonds of the prisoners, showed, in a symbolical way, the nature of that religion which they preached: while it shakes and terrifies the guilty, it proclaims deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the prison-doors to them that are bound; and sets at liberty them that are bruised.
Every one's bands were loosed.] And yet so eminently did God's providence conduct every thing, that not one of the prisoners made his escape, though the doors were open, and his bolts off!
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv29, 31, 35 Act 16:29-30. Then he, &c. — The jailer, greatly…
Act 16:29-30. Then he, &c. — The jailer, greatly terrified by the earthquake, and astonished at Paul’s discovering his purpose to kill himself; called for a light — Greek, φωτα, lights, implying, it seems, that on this alarm several of his attendants came with torches, and were present at the inquiry which immediately followed; and sprang in — With a violent and impetuous motion, into the inner prison, and, in the presence of his domestics, fell down trembling before Paul and Silas — Begging them, doubtless, to forgive the injuries he had been obliged to do them; for he was now convinced that they were, what the possessed damsel called them, even the servants of the most high God, who showed to men the way of salvation. And then, in the most respectful manner, brought them out — From the inner prison, in which they were confined; and said, Sirs — Κυριοι, a style this in which he did not address them the day before; what must I do to be saved? — From the guilt I feel, and the vengeance I fear; probably referring to the testimony of the Pythoness, which had been so often and so publicly repeated. God, however, undoubtedly then set his sins in array before him, and convinced him, in the clearest and strongest manner, that the wrath of God abode upon him. Added to this, probably, “a vast multitude of ideas rushed into his mind at once. He saw by the earthquake the power and displeasure of God; and, together with this, the sweetness and joy of Paul and Silas in their bonds, their willing continuance in prison, when they might easily have escaped, and their generous solicitude for the life of one who had used them so ill, were all circumstances fit to strike powerfully on a mind so passionate as his seems to have been, and might all do their part toward convincing him that these men were indeed divine messengers, and that the divine displeasure was falling on the city, and particularly on himself, for persecuting them. Perhaps some kind and pious words, which Paul and Silas, who took all opportunities of doing good, might have uttered while he was fastening their feet in the stocks, might throw further light on his mind, when recollected amidst such extremity of danger; and, no doubt, the Spirit of God added conviction and energy to all.” — Doddridge.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39 And suddenly - While they were praying and singing.
And suddenly - While they were praying and singing.
A great earthquake - Mat 28:2. An earthquake, in such circumstances, was regarded as a symbol of the presence of God, and as an answer to prayer. See the notes on Act 4:31. The design of this was, doubtless, to furnish them proof of the presence and protection of God, and to provide a way for them to escape. It was one among the series of wonders by which the gospel was established, and the early Christians protected amidst their dangers.
Read full note →
And immediately all the doors were opened - An effect that would naturally follow from the violent concussion of the earthquake. Compare Act 5:19.
Everyone’s bands were loosed - This was evidently a miracle. Some have supposed that their chains were dissolved by electric fluid; but the narrative gives no account of any such fluid, even supposing such an effect to be possible. It was evidently a direct interposition of divine power. But for what purpose it was done is not recorded. Grotius supposes that it was that they might know that the apostles might be useful to them and to others, and that by them their spiritual bonds might be loosed. Probably the design was to impress all the prisoners with the conviction of the presence and power of God, and thus to prepare them to receive the message of life from the lips of his servants Paul and Silas. They had just before heard them singing and praying; they were aware, doubtless, of the cause for which they were imprisoned; they saw evident tokens that they were the servants of the Most High, and under his protection; and their own minds were impressed and awed by the terrors of the earthquake, and by the fact of their own liberation. It renders this scene the more remarkable, that though the doors were opened, and the prisoners loosed, yet no one made any attempt to escape.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv26, 33, 35, 37 All the doors were opened. This made the jailer…
All the doors were opened. This made the jailer conclude the prisoners had made their escape. And he being answerable for them, and expecting to be put to death, was for stabbing himself. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv26–39 And suddenly there was a great earthquake--in answer, doubtless,…
And suddenly there was a great earthquake--in answer, doubtless, to the prayers and expectations of the sufferers that, for the truth's sake and the honor of their Lord, some interposition would take place.
every one's bands--that is, the bands of all the prisoners.
Read full note →
were loosed--not by the earthquake, of course, but by a miraculous energy accompanying it. By this and the joyous strains which they had heard from the sufferers, not to speak of the change wrought on the jailer, these prisoners could hardly fail to have their hearts in some measure opened to the truth; and this part of the narrative seems the result of information afterwards communicated by one or more of these men.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv26–39 26. And suddenly—What sense, says the Rationalist, in a…
26. And suddenly—What sense, says the Rationalist, in a miracle here where it accomplishes nothing which might not have been attained without one? We reply, with Baumgarten, that the miracle was a true, illustrious, and necessary “Divine Sign,” confirming the apostles in the reality of the divine invitation, from the man of Macedonia, of Christianity into Europe. And Baumgarten also plausibly shows that this whole scene was a symbol and a shadow of the future history of Christianity in Europe. Philippi, as a colonia, is an image, ambitiously so, of the Roman pagan power. She opens the first Gentile persecution against the Church, emblem of the pagan persecution for four centuries. For three centuries the martyred Church sings her songs of triumph in the midnight, the bloodshed, and the stocks. Yet the very foundations of that inner structure are shaken, and by the very majesty of the secular power is the Church at last enfranchised.
A great earthquake—The voice of God answers to the voice of man; the earthquake responds to the hymn. The σεισμος was so much an earthquake as a prison-quake. It was not from below, but from above, as truly as the pentecostal house-shaking. It was not, therefore, a mere indiscriminate jar and crash, but a distinct and specific act of the divine volition by which the foundations of the prison were shaken, the prison doors were flung open, and the fetters all sprung, while the power-bound limbs of the prisoners were unable to escape. Doubtless the city and the magistrates heard and were awed by the concussion; for even the ancient pagan recognised in the earthquake the movement of God. The solemn echoes of the apostles’ preaching had for many days been resounding through the city, convictions and misgivings had disturbed the public heart, and it may be saintly supposed that this immediately following sign should dismay the consciences of the guilty inhabitants and magistrates.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv26–39 26. And suddenly there was a great earthquake] Just…
26. And suddenly there was a great earthquake] Just as the place wherein the Apostles prayed (Act_4:31) was shaken, so here God testifies that He is near at hand.
and every one’s bands were loosed] The sense in which these words are to be taken may be gathered from the rest of the description. The chains (δεσμὰ) were made fast to the wall, and the shock which burst asunder the bolts of the doors also released the fastenings which held the chains in the masonry.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv26–38 (26) And suddenly there was a great earth quake.—Both…
(26) And suddenly there was a great earth quake.—Both the region and the time were, it will be remembered, conspicuous for convulsions of this kind. Cities in Asia, such as Sardis, Apamea and Laodicea, and in Campania, suffered severely under Tiberius. (See Note on Mat_24:7.) St. Luke apparently reads the fact not as in itself miraculous, but as leading to a display of supernatural calmness and courage on the part of the Apostles, and so to the conversion of the gaoler.
Every one’s bands were loosed.—This seems, at first, beyond the range of the usual effects of an earthquake, but the chains of the prisoners were fastened, we must remember, to rings or staples in the wall, and the effect of a great shock would be to loosen the stones and so make it easy to escape. The fact that the “foundations of the prison were shaken” agrees with what has been said above (Note on Act_16:24), as to the dungeon into which the prisoners had been thrust.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 Prison-house for prison, A.V., as Act_5:21, Act_5:23. All the…
Prison-house for prison, A.V., as Act_5:21, Act_5:23. All the doors were opened. This would be the natural effect of the earthquake. Bands (desma) St. Luke always follows the Attic usage of desmon, in the neuter. (comp. Act_20:23; Luk_8:29) St. Paul follows the Hellenistic usage of desmov, in the masculine (Php_1:13; see Jer_2:20 Jer_5:5; Hab_3:13) In many instances (genitive and dative) it is, of course, impossible to determine whether the word is masculine or neuter.
Vers. 26-34. God in the earthquake.
Read full note →
God does not always manifest himself in the still small voice"; (1Ki 19) there are times when he makes himself known in other forms. We learn from our text
I THAT GOD IS SOMETIMES, IF NOT OFTEN, IN THE TERRIBLE. (Ver. 26.) "By terrible things in righteousness," as well as by gracious things in mercy and in love, does he answer us. He is in the earthquake and in the fire and in the great and strong wind, sometimes. He was, here. The earthquake was the moving of his hand, the utterance of his voice, the expression of his mind. It was his condemnation of human injustice and cruelty; it was his declaration on behalf of human innocence and worth. As in nature we have the solemn as well as the pleasant, the fearful as well as the delightful, the storm as well as the sunshine, so in God"s providential dealings with us, and also in his revelation of himself in Jesus Christ, we have the awful and the stern as well as the benignant and the merciful, the rebuke as well as the invitation, punishment as well as reward, death as well as life.
II THAT GOD"S AIM, IN THE TERRIBLE, IS TO AWAKEN THE SLUMBERING SOUL. "The keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep" (ver. 27). It was the sleep of sin from which this earthquake called him, rather than from bodily slumber. God aroused his spirit thus; and from a guilty, deadly unconsciousness of all that is most precious in the human heart, he awoke to newness of life." "God doeth it that men should fear before him". (Ecc_3:14) God sends the earthquake; he shakes the very ground under men"s feet; he makes their life-prospects to rock and quiver; he threatens with loss, or he permits terrible bereavements, to compel men to think of those things which otherwise they would continue to disregard, to make men see the solemn realities which are about them, to place judgment and eternity in full view before their eyes.
III THAT SPIRITUAL AGITATION STILL ASKS THE OLD QUESTION AND RECEIVES THE OLD REPLY. Let men say what they will about "refined selfishness," it will always remain true that a man"s first duty to God is the duty he owes to himself; that the first thing a man awakened by God has to do is to consider how he can come into a right and happy relation to the God with whom he has to do; in other words, to ask him how he can be saved," how his sin can be forever and himself be taken back into the favor and the service of the living God. And the answer of Paul will always be the reply of the Christian teacher. The earnest seeker after salvation must be directed to a Divine Savior, in whom he can "believe." For us to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ is to accept him.for all that he offers to be to us to accept him
(1) as the Savior in whom we trust for Divine mercy;
(2) as the Friend to whom we give our heart;
(3) as the Lord to whom we dedicate our life.
IV THAT THE ACCEPTANCE OF JESUS CHRIST IS TO BE FOLLOWED BY DISCIPLESHIP AND PROFESSION. The converted jailor, so far from being satisfied with his first change, gave his mind to the further and fuller understanding of the truth (ver. 32); moreover, he showed the sincerity of his conversion by being baptized into the Christian faith (ver. 33), by carrying with him all the members of his household, and by offering hospitality to those whom he had treated as criminals and now welcomed as friends. We, too, if our faith be genuine, shall
(1) be eager to learn more of Christ and of his holy will;
(2) make profession of our change of heart and life;
(3) do all we can to befriend and further those who are the ambassadors of Christ.
V THAT FAITH IN CHRIST TURNS PASSING PLEASURE INTO ABIDING JOY. "He rejoiced" (ver. 34). He had often laughed and been merry before; now joy takes up its home in his heart. ".Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. C.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv26, 27, 29, 30, 32 And suddenly there was a great earthquake.
Act_16:26
And suddenly there was a great earthquake.
Read full note →
The earthquake at Philippi
A miraculous act of the breaker of all bonds.
I. He breaks the bonds of tribulation, when His elect call to Him day and night (Paul and Silas).
II. He tears asunder the fetters of sin, when bound souls sigh after Him (the jailer).
III. He makes a path for His word and kingdom even when the world puts fetters on them. The Word of God is not bound.
IV. He bursts open the prison of the grave, when the hour of eternal redemption strikes. That hour is said to be midnight. (K. Gerok.)
Earthquakes
We have all read of the earthquake in Lisbon, in Lima, in Aleppo, and in Caraceas; but we live in a latitude where in all our memory there has not been one severe volcanic disturbance. And yet we have seen fifty earthquakes. Here is a man who has been building up a large fortune. His bid on the money market was felt in all the cities. He thinks he has got beyond all annoying rivalries in trade, and he says to himself, Now I am free and safe from all possible perturbation. But in 1837, or in 1857, or in 1873, a national panic strikes the foundations of the commercial world, and crash f goes all that magnificent business establishment. Here is a man who has built up a very beautiful home. His daughters have just come home from the seminary with diplomas of graduation. His sons have started in life, honest, temperate, and pure. When the evening lights are struck, there is a happy and unbroken family circle. But there has been an accident down at Long Branch. The young man ventured too far out in the surf. The telegraph hurled the terror up to the city. An earthquake struck under the foundations of that beautiful home. The piano closed; the curtains dropped; the laughter hushed. Crash! go all those domestic hopes, and prospects, and expectations. So, my friends, we have all felt the shaking down of some great trouble, and there was a time when we were as much excited as this man of the text, and we cried out as he did: What shall I do?
The midnight hour in the prison of Philippi, an image of the great hour of the Lord
1. The world sleeps, but believers wait for it with watchfulness and prayer.
2. The earth quakes, but the Lord is near.
3. The servants of sin tremble before judgment.
4. The children of the kingdom lift up their heads with joy, because their redemption draweth nigh. (K. Gerok.)
God a powerful Ally
When John G. Paton, upon his little island of Anyeitum, was almost giving up hope of life, though still trying to pacify the bloodthirsty natives, it happened that upon the far horizon line a ships sails were seen and a line of smoke going up into the sky. The fire steamer comes, cried the natives in wild terror, and ran to hide themselves in the bush. The chief, who had been so cruel, came to beg Paton for his life. It seemed like the last judgment to these poor ignorant subjects. But what was it to the missionary? To him the connecting link with his own country, the help and strength of new life. When the ship came it proved to be one of Her Majestys men-of-war, and the sight of the power of Patons Queen so struck the native imagination that they decided to leave the man who had such powerful friends to do his work unharmed. So behind the Christian there is the Christians God, all-powerful, all-willing.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v29 Chapter 12
Chapter 12
ST. PAUL IN MACEDONIA.
Read full note →
Act_16:29-31; Act_17:1-2; Act_17:10
TROAS was at this time the termination of St. Pauls Asiatic travels. He had passed diagonally right through Asia Minor, following the great Roman roads which determined his line of march. From Troas he proceeded to Philippi, and for exactly the same reason. All the great roads formed under the emperors down to the time of Constantine the Great led to Rome. When the seat of empire was moved to Constantinople, all the Asiatic roads converged upon that city; but in St. Pauls day Rome was the worlds centre of attraction, and thither the highways all tended. This fact explains St. Pauls movements. The Egnatian road was one of the great channels of communication established for State purposes by Rome, and this road ran from Neapolis, where St. Paul landed, through Philippi on to Dyrrachium, a port on the Adriatic, whence the traveller took ship to Brundusium, the modern Brindisi, and thence reached Rome. What a striking commentary we find in this simple fact upon the words of St. Paul Gal_4:4 : "When the fulness of the time came God sent forth His Son." Roman dominion involved much suffering and war and bloodshed, but it secured the network of communication, the internal peace, and the steady, regular government which now covered Europe as well as Asia, and thus for the first time in the worlds history rendered the diffusion of the Gospel possible, as St. Pauls example here shows. The voyage from Troas to Neapolis was taken by the Apostle after the usual fashion of the time. Neapolis was the port of Philippi, whence it is distant some eight miles. Travellers from the East to Rome always landed there, and then took the Egnatian Road which started from Neapolis. If they were official persons they could use the public postal service, post-houses being established at a distance of six miles from one another, where relays of horses were kept at the public expense, to carry persons travelling on the imperial service. Paul and Silas, Timothy and Luke, must, however, have travelled on foot along the Egnatian Road from Neapolis to Philippi, which was their first objective point, according to St. Pauls usual policy, of attacking large and important centres of population, and then leaving the sacred leaven to work out into the surrounding mass of paganism. Philippi amply rewarded the wisdom of his plan, and the Philippian Church became noted for its zeal, its faith, its activity, among the Churches which owed their origin to the Apostle, as we learn from the Epistles addressed to the Corinthians and to the Philippians themselves a short time after the foundation of the Philippian Church.
Now let us look at the circumstances under which that foundation was laid. To understand them we must go back upon the course of history. Philippi was a city built by King Philip, the father of Alexander the Great. After the conquest of Macedonia by the Romans, it became famous as the scene of the great battle between Brutus and Cassius on the one hand, and Mark Antony and Augustus on the other, which decided the fate of the empire and influenced the course of the worlds history as few other battles have done. At the time of St. Pauls visit the memory of that battle was fresh, and the outward and visible signs thereof were to be seen on every side, as indeed some of them are still to be seen, the triumphal arches, for instance, erected in memory of the victory and the mound or rampart of earth raised by Brutus to hinder the advance of the opposing forces. But these things had for the holy travellers a very slight interest, as their hearts were set upon a mightier conflict and a nobler war far than any ever before waged upon earths surface. There is no mention made in the sacred narrative of the memories connected with the place, and yet St. Luke, as an honest writer setting down facts of which he had formed an important part, lets slip some expressions which involve and throw us back upon the history of the place for an, explanation, showing how impossible it is to grasp the full force and meaning of the sacred writers unless we strive to read the Bible with the eyes of the people who lived at the time and for whom it was written. St. Luke calls Philippi "a city of Macedonia, the first of the district, a colony." Now this means that in that time it was situated in the Roman province of Macedonia, that it was either the capital of the division of Macedonia, in which it was situated, Macedonia being subdivided into four distinct divisions which were kept perfectly separate, or else that it was the first city the traveller met upon entering Macedonia from Asia, and further that it was a Roman colony, and thus possessed peculiar privileges. When we read in the Bible of colonies we must not understand the word in our modern sense. Colonies were then simply transcripts of the original city whence they had come. Roman colonies were miniatures or copies of Rome itself transplanted into the provinces, and ruling as such amid the conquered races where they were placed. They served a twofold purpose. They acted as garrisons to restrain the turbulence of the neighbouring tribes; and if we study Roman geography carefully we shall find that they were always placed in neighbourhoods where their military importance is plainly manifest; and further still, they were used as convenient places to locate the veteran soldiers of Italy who had served their time, where they were rewarded with grants of land, and were utilising at the same time the skill and experience in military matters which they had gained, for the general benefit of the State.
Augustus made Philippi into a colony, erecting a triumphal arch to celebrate his victory over Brutus, and placing there a large settlement of his veterans who secured for him this important outpost. The colonies which were thus dispersed along the military frontier, as we should put it in modern language, were specially privileged. All the settlers were Roman citizens, and the government of the colony was like that of the mother city itself, in the hands of two magistrates, called in Greek Strategoi, or in Latin Praetors, who ruled according to the laws of the Twelve Tables and after Roman methods, though perhaps all the neighbouring cities were still using their ancient laws and customs handed down from times long prior to the Roman Conquest. The details given us by St. Luke are in the strictest accordance in all these respects with the facts which we know independently concerning the history and political status of Philippi.
St. Paul and his companions arrived in Philippi in the early part of the week. He was by this time a thoroughly experienced traveller. Five years later, when writing his Second Epistle to Corinth, he tells us that he had been already three times shipwrecked; so that, unless peculiarly unfortunate, he must have already made extended and repeated sea voyages, though up to the present we have only heard of the journeys from Antioch to Cyprus, from Cyprus to Perga, and from Attalia back to Antioch. A two days voyage across the fresh and rolling waters of the Mediterranean, followed by a steep climb over the mountain Pangaeus which intervenes between Philippi and its port Neapolis, made, however, a rest of a day or two very acceptable to the Apostle and his friends. St. Paul never expected too much from his own body, or from the bodies of his companions; and though he knew the work of a worlds salvation was pressing, yet he could take and enjoy a well-earned holiday from time to time. There was nothing in St. Paul of that eternal fussiness which we at times see in people of strong imaginations but weak self-control, who, realising the awful amount of woe and wickedness in the world, can never be at rest even for a little. The men of God remained quiet therefore {Act_16:12-13} till the Sabbath Day, when, after their usual custom, they sought out in the early morning the Jewish place of worship, where St. Paul always first proclaimed the gospel. The Jewish colony resident at Philippi must have been a very small one. The Rabbinical rule was that where ten wise men existed there a synagogue might be established. There cannot therefore have been ten learned, respectable, and substantial Jews in Philippi competent to act as a local sanhedrin or court. Where, however, the Jews could not establish a synagogue, they did not live without any external expression of religion. They knew how easily neglect of public worship is followed by practical atheism, as we often see. Men may say indeed that God can be realised, and can be worshipped anywhere, - a very great truth and a very precious one for those who are unavoidably cut off from the public worship of the Most High; but a truth which has no application to those who wilfully cut themselves off from that worship which has the covenanted promise of His presence. It is not a good sign for the young men of this generation that so many of them utterly neglect public worship; for as surely as men act so, then present neglect will be followed by a total forgetfulness of the Eternal, and by a disregard of the laws which He has established amongst men. The Jews at Philippi did not follow this example; when they could not establish a synagogue they set apart an oratory or Place of Prayer, whither they resorted on the Sabbath Day to honour the God of their fathers, and to keep alive in their childrens hearts the memory of His laws and doings.
The original name of Philippi was Crenides, or Place of Streams. Beside one of these streams the Jews had placed their oratory, and there St. Paul preached his first sermon in Europe and gained Lydia, his first European convert, a Jewess by blood, a woman of Thyatira in Asia Minor by birth, of Philippi in Macedonia by residence, and a dyer in purple by trade. The congregation of women assembled at that oratory must have been a very small one. When Philippi did not afford a sufficient Jewish population for the erection of a synagogue such as was found among the smaller towns of Asia Minor, and such as we shall in the course of the present tour find to have existed at towns and cities of no great size in Greece and Macedonia, then we may be sure that the female population, who assembled that Sabbath morning to pray and listen to the Scriptures, must have been a small one. But St. Paul and his companions had learned already one great secret of the true evangelists life. They never despised a congregation because of its smallness. I have read somewhere in the writings of St. Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva, a remark bearing on this point. De Sales was an extreme Roman Catholic, and his mind was injured and his mental views perverted in many respects by the peculiar training he thus received. But still he was in many respects a very saintly man, and his writings embody much that is good for every one. In one of his letters which I have read he deals with this very point, and speaks of the importance of small congregations, first, because they have no tendency to feed the preachers pride, but rather help to keep him humble; and secondly, because some of the most effective and fruitful sermons have been preached to extremely small congregations, two or three persons at most, some one of whom has afterwards turned out to be a most vigorous soldier of the Cross of Christ. The most effective sermon perhaps that ever was preached was that delivered to Saul of Tarsus when to him alone came the voice, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" And here again, in the Philippian Oratory, the congregation was but a small one, yet the Apostle despised it not. He and his companions bent all their powers to the work, threw their whole hearts into it, and as the result the Lord rewarded their earnest, thorough, faithful service as He rewards such service in every department of lifes action. The Lord opened the heart of Lydia so that she attended to the apostolic teaching, and she and all her household when duly instructed became baptised disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.
This was an important incident in the history of the Philippian Church, and was attended by far-reaching results. Lydia herself, like so many others of Gods most eminent saints, disappears at once and for ever from the scene. But her conversion was a fruitful one. St. Paul and his friends continued quietly but regularly working and teaching at the oratory. Lydia would seem to have been a widow, and must have been a woman of some position in the little community; for she was able to entertain the Apostle and his company as soon as she embraced the faith and felt its exceeding preciousness. When inviting them, too, she uses the language of a woman independent of all other control. "If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there," are words with the tone of one who as a widow owned no superior, and whose will was law within her own household; as well as the language of a woman who felt that the gospel she had embraced demanded and deserved the consecration to its service of all her worldly possessions. Previously to this conversion St. Paul had lived in hired lodgings, but now he moved to Lydias residence, abiding there, and thence regularly worshipping at the Jewish oratory. The presence of these Jewish strangers soon attracted attention. Their teaching too got noised abroad, exaggerated doubtless and distorted after the manner of popular reports. And the crowd were ready to be suspicious of all Eastern foreigners. The settlers in the colony of Philippi belonged to the rural population of Italy, who, after the manner of countrified folk of every generation, were a good way behind, for good or ill, their city brethren. The excavations made at Philippi have brought to light the fact that the colonists there were worshippers of the primitive Italian rustic gods, specially of the god Silvanus, eschewing the fashionable Greek deities, Jupiter, Juno, Venus, Diana, Apollo, and such like. A temple of Silvanus was erected at Philippi for the hardy Italian veterans, and numerous inscriptions have been found and have been duly described by the French Mission in Macedonia to which we have already referred, telling of the building of the temple and of the persons who contributed towards it. These simple Western soldiers were easily prejudiced against the Eastern strangers by reports spread concerning their doctrines, and specially concerning the Jewish King, of whose kingdom they were the heralds. Political considerations were at once raised. We can scarcely now realise the suspicions which must have been roused against the early preachers of Christianity by the very language they used. Their sacramental language concerning the body and blood of Christ, the language of Christian love and union which they used, designating themselves brethren and sisters, caused for more than two centuries the dissemination of the most frightful rumours concerning the horrible nature of Christian love-feasts. They were accused of cannibalism and of the most degraded and immoral practices; and when we take up the Apologists of the second century, Justin Martyr and such like, we shall find that the efforts of these men are largely directed to the refutation of such dreadful charges. And as it was in morals so was it too in politics. The sacred and religious language of the Christians caused them to be suspected of designs hostile to the Roman Government. The apostles preached about a King who ruled the kingdom of God. Now the Romans abhorred the very name and title of king, which they associated with the cruel acts of the early tyrants who reigned in the times of Romes fabulous antiquity. The hostility to the title was so great that, though the Roman people endured a despotism worse and more crushing at the hands of the Caesars, they never would allow them to assume the title of kings, but simply called them emperors, imperators or commanders of the army, a name which to their ears connoted nothing savouring of the kingly office, though for moderns the title of emperor expresses the kingly office and much more. The colonists in Philippi, being Italians, would feel these prejudices in their full force. Easterns indeed would have had no objection to the title of king, as we see from the cry raised by the mob of Jerusalem when they cried in reference to Christs claim, "We have no king but Caesar." But the rough and rude Roman veterans, when they heard vague reports of St. Pauls teaching to the Jews who met at the oratory by the river-side, quite naturally mistook the nature of his doctrine, and thought that he was simply a political agitator organising a revolt against imperial authority. An incident which then occurred fanned the sleeping embers into a flame. There was a female slave the property of some crafty men who by her means traded on the simplicity of the colonists. She was possessed with a spirit of divination. What the nature of this spirit was we have not the means of now determining. Some would resolve it into mere epilepsy, but such an explanation is not consistent with St. Pauls action and words. He addressed the spirit, "I charge thee in the name of Jesus Christ to Come out of her." And the spirit, we are told, came out that very hour. The simple fact is that psychology is at the best a very obscure science, and the mysteries of the soul a very puzzling region, even under the Christian dispensation and surrounded by the spiritual blessings of the kingdom of God. But paganism was the kingdom of Satan, where he ruled with a power and freedom he no longer enjoys, and we can form no conception of the frightful disturbances Satanic agency may have raised amid the dark places of the human spirit. Without attempting explanations therefore, which must be insufficient, I am content to accept the statement of the sacred writer, who was an eye-witness of the cure, that the spirit of divination, the spirit of Python, as the original puts it, yielded obedience to the invocation of the sacred Name which is above every name, leaving the damsels inner nature once more calm and at union within itself. This was the signal for a riot. The slave-owners recognised that their hopes of gain had fled. They were not willing to confess that these despised Jews possessed a power transcending far that which dwelt in the human instrument who had served their covetous purposes. They may have heard, it may be, of the tumults excited about this same time by the Jews at Rome and of their expulsion from the capital by the decree of the Emperor, so the owners of the slave-girl and the mob of the city dragged the Apostles before the local Duumvirs and accused them of like disturbances: "These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, and set forth customs which it is not lawful for us to receive or to observe, being Romans." The accusation was sufficient. No proof was demanded, no time for protest allowed. The magistrates with their own hands dragged the clothes off the backs of the Apostles, and they were flogged at once by the lictors or sergeants, as our translation calls them, in attendance upon the Duumvirs, who then despatched their victims to the common prison. Here a question may be raised, Why did not St. Paul save himself by protesting that he was a Roman citizen, as he did subsequently at Jerusalem when he was about to be similarly treated? Several explanations occur. The colonists were Italians and spoke Latin. St. Paul spoke Hebrew and Greek, and though he may have known Latin too, his Latin may not have been understood by these rough Roman soldiers: The mob again was excited, and when a mob gets excited it is but very little its members attend to an unfortunate prisoners words. We know too, not only from St. Pauls own words, but from the testimony of Cicero himself, in his celebrated oration against Verres, that in remote districts this claim was often disregarded, even when urged by Italians, and much more when made by despised Jews. St. Paul tells us in 2Co_11:25, that he received three Roman floggings notwithstanding his Roman citizenship, and though the Philippian magistrates were afraid when they heard next day of the illegal violence of which they had been guilty, the mob, who could not be held accountable, probably took right good care that St. Pauls protest never reached the official ears to which it was addressed. These considerations sufficiently account for the omission of any notice of a protest on the Apostles part. He simply had not the opportunity, and then when the tumultuous scene was over Paul and Silas were hurried off to the common dungeon, where they were secured in the stocks and thrust into the innermost prison as notorious and scandalous offenders.
No ill-treatment could, however, destroy that secret source of joy and peace which St. Paul possessed in his loved Masters conscious presence. "I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christs sake," is his own triumphant expression when looking back a few years later over the way by which the Lord had led him, and therefore at midnight the astonished prisoners heard the inner dungeon ringing with unwonted songs of praise raised by the Jewish strangers. An earthquake, too, lent its terrors to the strange scene, shaking the prison to its foundations and loosing the staples to which the prisoners chains were fastened. The jailer, roused from sleep, and seeing the prison doors opened wide, would have committed suicide were it not for Pauls restraining and authoritative voice; and then the astonished official, who must have heard the strange rumours to which the words of the demoniac alluded-"These men are the servants of the Most High God, which proclaim unto you the way of salvation"-rushed into the presence of the Apostles, crying out in words which have ever since been famous, "Sirs, what must I do to be Saved?" to which the equally famous answer was given, " Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house." The jailor then took the Apostles, bathed their bruised bodies, set food before them, gathered his household to listen to the glad tidings, which they received so rapidly and grasped so thoroughly that they were at once baptised and enabled to rejoice with that deep spiritual joy which an experimental knowledge of God always confers. The jailor, feeling for the first time in his life the peace which passeth all understanding, realised the truth which St. Augustine afterwards embodied in the immortal words: "Thou, O God, hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee."
Let us look for a little at the question of the jailer and the answer of the Apostle. They are words very often used, and very often misused. The jailer, when he rushed into St. Pauls presence crying out "What must I do to be saved?" was certainly not the type of a conscience-stricken sinner, convinced of his own sin and spiritual danger, as men sometimes regard him. He was simply in a state of fright and astonishment. He had heard that these Jewish prisoners committed to him were preaching about some salvation which they had to offer. The earthquake seemed to him the expression of some deitys wrath at their harsh treatment, and so in his terror he desires to know what he must do to be saved from this wrath. His words were notable, but they were not Christian words, for he had yet much to learn of the nature of sin and the nature of the salvation from it which the Apostles were preaching. The Philippian jailor was a specimen of those who are saved violently and by fear. Terror forced him into communion with the Apostles, broke down the barriers which hindered the approach of the Word, and then the power of the Holy Ghost, working through St. Paul, effected the remainder, opening his eyes to the true character of salvation and his own profound need of it. St. Pauls words have been misunderstood. I have heard them addressed to a Christian congregation and explained as meaning that the jailor had nothing to do but just realise Christ Jesus as his Saviour, whereupon he was perfect and complete so far as the spiritual life was concerned; and then they were applied to the congregation present as teaching that, as it was with the jailor, so was it with all Christians; they have simply to believe as he did, and then they have nothing more to do-a kind of teaching which infallibly produces antinomian results. Such an explanation ignores the fact that there is a great difference between the jailor, who was not a Christian in any sense and knew nothing about Christ when he flung himself at St. Pauls feet, and a Christian congregation, who know about Christ and believe in Him. But this explanation is still more erroneous. It misrepresents what St. Paul meant and what his hearers understood him to mean. What did any ordinary Jew or any ordinary pagan with whom St. Paul came in contact understand him to mean when he said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved"? They first had to ask him who Jesus Christ was, whence He had come, what He had taught, what were the obligations of His religion. St. Paul had to open out to them the nature of sin and salvation, and to explain the obligation and blessing of the sacrament of baptism as well as the necessity of bodily holiness and purity. The initial sacrament of baptism must have held a foremost place in that midnight colloquy or conference concerning Christian truth. St. Paul was not the man to perform a rite of which his converts understood nothing, and to which they could attach no meaning. "Believe on the Lord Jesus" involved repentance and contrition and submission to Christian truth, and these things involved the exposition of Christian truth, history, doctrines, and duties.
This text, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved," is often quoted in one-sided and narrow teaching to show that man has nothing to do to be saved. Of course in one sense this is perfectly true. We can do nothing meritoriously towards salvation; from first to last our salvation is all of Gods free grace; but then, viewing the matter from the human side, we have much to do to be saved. We have to repent, to seek God for ourselves, to realise Christ and His laws in our life, to seek after that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. There were two different types of men who at different times addressed practically the same inquiry to the Apostles. They were both outside the Church, and they were both seekers blindly after God. The Jews on the day of Pentecost said, "Brethren, what shall we do?" and Peter replied, "Repent ye, and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, unto the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Such was apostolic teaching to the Jews of Jerusalem. The jailor demanded, "What must I do to be saved?" and St. Paul replied, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved." Such was apostolic teaching to an ignorant pagan at Philippi; more concise than the Jerusalem answer, but meaning the same thing, and involving precisely the same doctrines in the hands of such a great master of the spiritual life as was the Apostle of the Gentiles.
The remainder of the story is soon told. When the morning came there came quiet reflection with it as far as the magistrates were concerned. They became conscious of their illegal conduct, and they sent their lictors to order the release of the Apostles. St. Paul now stood upon his rights. His protest had been disregarded by the mob. He now claimed his rights as a Roman citizen. "They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned men, that are Romans, and have cast us into prison; and do they now cast us out privily? Nay, verily; but let them come themselves and bring us out." These are St. Pauls words, and they are brave, and at the same time wise words. They were brave words because it took a strong man to send back such an answer to magistrates who had treated him so outrageously only the day before. They were wise words, for they give us an apostles interpretation of our Lords language in the Sermon upon the Mount concerning the nonresistance of evil, and shows us that in St. Pauls estimation Christs law did not bind a man to tolerate foul injustice. Such toleration, in fact, is very wrong if it can be helped; because it is simply an encouragement to the wicked doers to treat others in the same scandalous manner. Toleration of outrage and injustice is unfair and uncharitable towards others, if they can be lawfully redressed or at least apologised for. It is a Christian mans duty to bring public evil-doers and tyrants, instruments of unrighteousness like these Duumvirs of Philippi, to their senses, not for his own sake, but in order that he may prevent the exercise of similar cruelties against he weaker brethren. We may be sure that the spirited action of St. Paul, compelling these provincial magnates to humble themselves before the despised strangers, must have had a very wholesome effect in restraining them from similar violence during the rest of their term of office.
Such was St. Pauls stay at Philippi. It lasted a considerable time, and made its mark, as a flourishing Church was established there, to which he addressed an Epistle when he lay the first time a captive at Rome. This Epistle naturally forms a most interesting commentary on the notices of the Philippian visit in the Acts of the Apostles, a point which is worked out at large in Bishop Lightfoots Commentary on Philippians and in Paleys "Horae Paulinae." The careful student of Holy Writ will find that St. Pauls letter and St. Lukes narrative when compared illuminate one another in a wondrous manner. We cannot afford space to draw out this comparison in detail, and it is the less necessary to do so as Dr. Lightfoots writings are so generally accessible. Let us, however, notice one point in this Epistle to the Philippians, which was written about the same time (a few months previously, in fact) as the Acts of the Apostles. It corroborates the Acts as to the circumstances under which the Church of Philippi was founded. St. Paul in the Epistle refers again and again to the persecutions and afflictions of the Philippian Church, and implies that he was a fellow-sufferer with them. St. Paul dwells on this in the beginning of the Epistle in words whose force cannot be understood unless we grasp this fact. In the sixth verse of the first chapter he expresses himself as "Confident of this very thing, that He which began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ: even as it is right for me to be thus minded on behalf of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defence and confirmation, of the gospel, ye all are partakers with me of grace." St. Paul speaks of the Philippians as personally acquainted with chains and sufferings and prison-houses for Christs sake, and regards these things as a proof of Gods grace vouchsafed not only to the Apostle, but also to the Philippians; for St. Paul was living at that high level when he could view bonds and trials and persecutions as marks of the Divine love. In the twenty-eighth verse of the same chapter he exhorts them to be in no wise "affrighted by the adversaries," and in the next two describes them as persons to whom "it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer in His behalf: having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me," words which can only refer to the violence and afflictions which they witnessed as practised against himself, and which they were now themselves suffering in turn. While to complete St. Pauls references we notice that in an Epistle written some five years later than his first visit to Philippi he expressly refers to the persecutions which the Philippian Church in common with all the Macedonian Churches seems to have suffered from the Very beginning. In 2Co_8:1-2, he writes: "Moreover, brethren, we make known to you the grace of God which hath been given in the Churches of Macedonia; how that in much proof of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality." Now all these passages put together confirm for us what the Acts expressly affirms, that from the very outset of their Christian career the Philippian Church had endured the greatest trials, and experienced a fellowship in the Apostles sufferings. And surely we may see in the character of the Philippian Epistle something eminently characteristic of this experience! It has been remarked that the Philippian Epistle is the only Epistle addressed to a Church in which there is no trace of blame or reproof. Temptation and trial and chastisement had there worked their appointed purpose. The Philippian Church had been baptised in blood, and grounded in afflictions, and purified by the cleansing fires of persecution, and consequently the tried Church gathered itself closer to its Divine Lord, and was perfected above all others in His likeness, and profited above all others in the Divine life.
After the terrible experience of Philippi Paul and Silas passed on to other towns of the same province of Macedonia. The Apostle, however, when quitting Philippi to do the same evangelistic work, breaking up the ground in other towns after the manner of a pioneer, did not leave the Church of Philippi devoid of wisest pastoral care. It is most likely, as Dr. Lightfoot points out in the Introduction to his Commentary on Philippians, that St. Luke was left behind to consolidate the work which had been thus begun by such a noble company. Then Paul and Silas and Timotheus proceeded to Thessalonica, one hundred miles west, the capital of the province, where the proconsul resided, and where was a considerable Jewish population, as we see, not only from the fact that a synagogue is expressly said to have existed there, but also because the Jews were able to excite the city pagan mob against the Apostles and drag them before the local magistrates. St. Paul at Philippi had for the first time experienced a purely pagan persecution. He had indeed previously suffered at the hands of the heathen at Lystra, but they were urged on by the Jews. At Philippi he gained his first glimpse of that long vista of purely Gentile persecution through which the Church had to pass till Christianity seated itself in the person of Constantine on the throne of the Caesars. But as soon as he got to Thessalonica he again experienced the undying hostility of his Jewish fellow-country-men using for their wicked purposes the baser portion of the city rabble. St. Paul remained three weeks in Thessalonica teaching privately and publicly the gospel message, without experiencing any Jewish opposition. It is an interesting fact that to this day St. Pauls visit to Thessalonica is remembered, and in one of the local mosques, which was formerly the Church of Sancta Sophia, a marble pulpit is shown, said to have been the very one occupied by the Apostle, while in the surrounding plains trees and groves are pointed out as marking spots where he tarried for a time. The Jews were at last, however, roused to opposition, possibly because of St. Pauls success among the Gentiles, who received his doctrines with such avidity that there believed "of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few." In Thessalonica, as elsewhere, the spirit of religions selfishness, desiring to have gospel promises and a Messiah all to themselves, was the ruin of the Jewish people. The Jews therefore, assisted by the pagans, assaulted the residence of Jason, with whom St. Paul and his friends were staying. They missed the Apostles themselves, but they seized Jason and some of the apostolic band, or at least some of their converts whom they found in Jasons house, and brought them before the town magistrates, who, acting under the eye of the resident proconsul, did not lend themselves to any irregular proceedings like the Philippian praetors. A charge of treason was formally brought against the prisoners: "These all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another King, one Jesus"; in the words of which charge we get a glimpse of the leading topic upon which the Apostles insisted. Jesus Christ, the crucified, risen, glorified King and Head of His people, was the great subject of St. Pauls teaching as it struck the heathen. The Thessalonian magistrates acted very fairly. They. entered the charge, which was a serious one m the eye of Roman law. Bail was then taken for the accused and they were set free. The Apostles, however, escaped arrest, and the local brethren determined that they should incur no danger; so while the accused remained to stand their trial, Paul and Silas and Timotheus were despatched to Beroea, where they were for a time welcomed, and free discussion permitted in the synagogue concerning the truths taught by the Evangelists. After a time, however, tidings having reached Thessalonica, agents were despatched to Beroea, who stirring up the Jewish residents, St. Paul was despatched in charge of some trusty messengers, who guided the steps of the hunted servant of God to the city of Athens. We see the physical infirmities of St. Paul, the difficulties he had to contend with, hinted at in the fourteenth and fifteenth verses of the seventeenth chapter. "Then immediately the brethren sent forth Paul," and "They that conducted Paul brought him to Athens," words which give us a glimpse of his fearfully defective eyesight. His enemies might be pressing upon him and danger might be imminent, but he could make no unaided effort to save himself. He depended upon the kindly help of others that he might escape his untiring foes and find his way to a place of safety.
Thus ended St. Pauls first visit to Thessalonica so far as the Acts of the Apostles is concerned; but we have interesting light thrown upon it from an Epistle which St. Paul himself wrote to the Thessalonians soon after his departure from amongst them. A comparison of First Thessalonians with the text of the Acts will furnish the careful student with much information concerning the circumstances of that notable visit, just as we have seen that the text of the Philippian Epistle throws light upon his doings at Philippi. The Thessalonian Epistles are more helpful even than the Philippians in this respect, because they were written only a few months after St. Pauls visit to Thessalonica, while years elapsed, eight or ten at least, before the Philippian Epistle was indited. First Thessalonians shows us, for instance, that St. Pauls visit to Thessalonica lasted a considerable time. In the Acts we read of his discussing in the synagogue three Sabbath days, and then it would appear as if the riot was raised which drove him to Beroea and Athens. The impression left on our minds by St. Lukes narrative is that St. Pauls labours were almost entirely concentrated upon the Jews in Thessalonica, and that he bestowed very little attention indeed upon the pagans. The Epistle corrects this impression. When we read the first chapter of First Thessalonians we see that it was almost altogether a Church of converted idolaters, not of converted Jews. St. Paul speaks of the Thessalonians as having turned from idols to serve the living God; he refers to the instructions on various points like the resurrection, the ascension, the second coming of Christ, which he had imparted, and describes their faith and works as celebrated throughout all Macedonia and Achaia. A large and flourishing church like that, composed of former pagans, could not have been founded in the course of three weeks, during which time St. Pauls attention was principally bestowed on the Jewish residents. Then too, when we turn to Php_4:16, we find that St. Paul stayed long enough in Thessalonica to receive no less than two remittances of money from the brethren at Philippi to sustain himself and his brethren. His whole attention too was not bestowed upon mission work; he spent his days and nights in manual labour. In the ninth verse of the second chapter of First Thessalonians he reminds them of the fact that he supported himself in their city, "For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached unto you the Gospel of God." When we realise these things we shall feel that the Apostle must have spent at least a couple of months in Thessalonica. It was perhaps his tremendous success among the heathen which so stirred up the passions of the town mob as enabled the Jews to instigate them to raise the riot, they themselves keeping all the while in the background. St. Paul, in First Thessalonians, describes the riots raised against the Christians as being the immediate work of the pagans: "Ye, brethren, became imitators of the Churches of God which are in Judaea in Christ Jesus. For ye also suffered the same things of your own countrymen as they did of the Jews"; a statement which is quite consistent with the theory that the persecution was originally inspired by the Jews. But we cannot further pursue this interesting line of inquiry which has been thoroughly worked out by Mr. Lewin in vol. 2 Ch 11, by Conybeare and Howson in ch. 9, and by Archdeacon Farrar, as well as by Dr. Salmon in his "Introduction to the New Testament," ch. 20. The careful student will find in all these works most interesting light reflected back upon the Acts from the apostolic letters, and will see how thoroughly the Epistles, which were much the earlier documents, confirm the independent account of St. Luke, writing at a subsequent period.
Before we terminate this chapter we desire to call attention to one other point where the investigations of modern travel have helped to illustrate the genuineness of the Acts of the Apostles. It has been the contention of the rationalistic party that the Acts was a composition of the second century, worked up by a clever forger out of the materials at his command. There are various lines of proof by which this theory can be refuted, but none appeal so forcibly to ordinary men as the minute accuracy which marks it when describing the towns of Asia Minor and Macedonia. Macedonia is a notable case. We have already pointed out how the Acts gives their proper title to the magistrates of Philippi and recognises its peculiar constitution as a colony. Thessalonica forms an interesting contrast to Philippi. Thessalonica was a free city like Antioch in Syria, Tarsus, and Athens, and therefore, though the residence of the proconsul who ruled the province of Macedonia, was governed by its own ancient magistrates and its own ancient laws without any interference on the part of the proconsul. St. Luke makes a marked distinction between Philippi and Thessalonica. At Philippi the Apostles were brought before the praetors, at Thessalonica they were brought before the politarchs, a title strange to classical antiquity, but which has been found upon a triumphal arch which existed till a few years ago across the main street of the modern city of Thessalonica. That arch has now disappeared; but the fragments containing the inscription were fortunately preserved and have been now placed in the British Museum, where they form a precious relic proving the genuineness of the sacred narrative.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On v35 35–40. The magistrates sent the serjeants. The lictors are…
35–40. The magistrates sent the serjeants. The lictors are meant. It is possible that the magistrates had, in some way, heard that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens. They wished, therefore, to quietly get rid of them. The Porcian and Valerian laws exempted all Roman citizens from stripes or torture. They had broken the law.
Let them come themselves and fetch us out. They had been publicly scourged and tortured as evil doers, in violation of law. Paul insisted that they should be as publicly vindicated, not for their own honor, but for the sake of the church at Philippi. Being Romans. We learn from Acts 22:25 that Paul was born a Roman citizen. His father, or some remoter ancestor, had been admitted to Roman citizenship, a great privilege and honor.
Read full note →
They feared. Had Paul insisted, the magistrates could have been severely punished. They might abuse aliens, but “to be a Roman was greater than to be a king.” Hence, they humbled themselves, and “came, and besought them, and desired them to depart out of that city.”
When they had seen the brethren. Who now met at the house of Lydia. The church thus planted grew and was afterwards honored with an apostolic letter. Departed. To another field of labor. The reader should pause to reflect that Philippi was the first place, so far as we know, where the gospel was preached in Europe, that a woman was the first convert, that the messengers of the cross were met with blows, torture, and the dungeon, but through grace and the power of God triumphed gloriously. While Paul was in his next field of labor, Thessalonica, this young church of Philippi twice sent contributions to sustain him (Phil. 4:15, 16).
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv27, 34 27-34. The awakened and panic-stricken jailer, knowing that cruel…
27-34. The awakened and panic-stricken jailer, knowing that cruel Roman law will require his life as substitute for the fugitive prisoner, in the absence of Bible light on suicide, and with the noble examples of Cicero, the prince of Roman authors, and Cato, the champion Roman statesman, and many other mighty men who had preceded him in suicide, resolved at once to add his name to the honored catalogue. Through the wide-open doors Paul sees him in the act of killing himself, fortunately in time to save his life. This heathen jailer was a wicked, ungodly, ignorant man, acquiescent in the clamor of the roaring mob, and the verdict of the cruel magistrates; he looked upon Paul and Silas as black with crime, notwithstanding their street preaching had rung in his ears and left upon his memory their attitude as the avowed heralds of the most high God. The awful earthquake and the utter indisposition of the apostles to escape now send a lightning bolt of conviction to the bottom of his heart, precipitating him into a radical, true and hearty repentance, putting him on believing ground as a penitent sinner, where he has nothing to do but receive justification by faith. Therefore Paul commands him, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou and thy family shall be saved.” Here you see clearly and unequivocally that faith is the only condition necessary to the justification of a sinner, the exercise of this faith being utterly impossible till he gets on believing ground, which can only be reached by a genuine repentance wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost. Here we see that Paul assures the jailer that not only himself but his family shall be saved on condition of his faith. Parents, take courage, if you are truly faithful to God; here is a promise for the salvation of your families. It does not follow that they will be saved without personal faith, which God in due time will confer on them, pursuant to your faith. Now the jailer is converted and baptized that very hour, along with his family.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv30, 32
Acts
THE RIOT AT PHILIPPI
Read full note →
THE GREAT QUESTION AND THE PLAIN ANSWER
Act 16:30 - Act 16:31.
The keeper of a Macedonian jail was not likely to be a very nervous or susceptible person. And so the extraordinary state of agitation and panic into which this rough jailer was cast needs some kind of explanation. There had been, as you will all remember, an earthquake of a strange kind, for it not only opened the prison doors, but shook the prisoner’s chains off. The doors being opened, there was on the part of the jailer, who probably ought not to have been asleep, a very natural fear that his charge had escaped.
So he was ready, with that sad willingness for suicide which marked his age, to cast himself on his sword, when Paul encouraged him.
That fear then was past; what was he afraid of now? He knew the prisoners were all safe; why should he have come pale and trembling? Perhaps we shall find an answer to the question in another one. Why should he have gone to Paul and Silas, his two prisoners, for an anodyne to his fears?
The answer to that may possibly be found in remembering that for many days before this a singular thing had happened. Up and down the streets of Philippi a woman possessed with ‘a spirit of divination’ had gone at the heels of these two men, proclaiming in such a way as to disturb them: ‘These are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation.’ It was a new word and a new idea in Philippi or in Macedonia. This jailer had got it into his mind that these two men had in their hands a good which he only dimly understood. The panic caused by the earthquake deepened into a consciousness of some supernatural atmosphere about him, and stirred in his rude nature unwonted aspirations and terrors other than he had known, which cast him at Paul’s feet with this strange question.
Now do you think that the jailer’s question was a piece of foolish superstition? I daresay some of you do, or some of you may suppose too that it was one very unnecessary for him or anybody to ask. So I wish now, in a very few words, to deal with these three points-the question that we should all ask, the answer that we may all take, the blessing that we may all have.
I. The question that we should all ask.
I know that it is very unfashionable nowadays to talk about ‘salvation’ as man’s need. The word has come to be so worn and commonplace and technical that many men turn away from it; but for all that, let me try to stir up the consciousness of the deep necessity that it expresses.
What is it to be saved? Two things; to be healed and to be safe. In both aspects the expression is employed over and over again in Scripture. It means either restoration from sickness or deliverance from peril. I venture to press upon every one of my hearers these two considerations-we all need healing from sickness; we all need safety from peril.
Dear brethren, most of you are entire strangers to me; I daresay many of you never heard my voice before, and probably may never hear it again. But yet, because ‘we have all of us one human heart,’ a brother-man comes to you as possessing with you one common experience, and ventures to say on the strength of his knowledge of himself, if on no other ground, ‘We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God.’
Mind, I am not speaking about vices. I have no doubt you are a perfectly respectable man, in all the ordinary relations of life. I am not speaking about crimes. I daresay there may be a man or two here that has been in a dock in his day. Possibly. It does not matter whether there is or not. But I am not speaking about either vices or crimes; I am speaking about how we stand in reference to God. And I pray you to bring yourselves-for no one can do it for you, and no words of mine can do anything but stimulate you to the act-face to face with the absolute and dazzlingly pure righteousness of your Father in Heaven, and to feel the contrast between your life and what you know He desires you to be. Be honest with yourselves in asking and answering the question whether or not you have this sickness of sin, its paralysis in regard to good or its fevered inclination to evil. If salvation means being healed of a disease, we all have the disease; and whether we wish it or no, we want the healing.
And what of the other meaning of the word? Salvation means being safe. Are you safe? Am I safe? Is anybody safe standing in front of that awful law that rules the whole universe, ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap’? I am not going to talk about any of the moot points which this generation has such a delight in discussing, as to the nature, the duration, the purpose, or the like, of future retribution. All that I am concerned in now is that all men, deep down in the bottom of their consciousness-and you and I amongst the rest-know that there is such a thing as retribution here; and if there be a life beyond the grave at all, necessarily in an infinitely intenser fashion there. Somewhere and somehow, men will have to lie on the beds that they have made; to drink as they have brewed. If sin means separation from God, and separation from God means, as it assuredly does, death, then I ask you-and there is no need for any exaggerated words about it-Are we not in danger? And if salvation be a state of deliverance from sickness, and a state of deliverance from peril, do we not need it?
Ah, brethren, I venture to say that we need it more than anything else. You will not misunderstand me as expressing the slightest depreciation of other remedies that are being extensively offered now for the various evils under which society and individuals groan. I heartily sympathise with them all, and would do my part to help them forward; but I cannot but feel that whilst culture of the intellect, of the taste, of the sense of beauty, of the refining agencies generally, is very valuable; and whilst moral and social and economical and political changes will all do something, and some of them a great deal, to diminish the sum of human misery, you have to go deeper down than these reach. It is not culture that we want most; it is salvation. Brethren, you and I are wrong in our relation to God, and that means death and-if you do not shrink from the vulgar old word-damnation. We are wrong in our relation to God, and that has to be set right before we are fundamentally and thoroughly right. That is to say, salvation is our deepest need.
Then how does it come that men go on, as so many of my friends here now have gone on, all their days paying no attention to that need? Is there any folly, amidst all the irrationalities of that irrational creature man, to be matched with the folly of steadily refusing to look forward and settle for ourselves the prime element in our condition-viz., our relation to God? Strange is it not-that power that we have of refusing to look at the barometer when it is going down, of turning away from unwholesome subjects just because we know them to be so unwelcome and threatening, and of buying a moment’s exemption from discomfort at the price of a life’s ruin?
Do you remember that old story of the way in which the prisoners in the time of the French Revolution used to behave? The tumbrils came every morning and carried off a file of them to the guillotine, and the rest of them had a ghastly make-believe of carrying on the old frivolities of the life of the salons and of society. And it lasted for an hour or two, but the tumbril came next morning all the same, and the guillotine stood there gaping in the Place. And so it is useless, although it is so frequently done by so many of us, to try to shut out facts instead of facing them. A man is never so wise as when he says to himself, ‘Let me fairly know the whole truth of my relation to the unseen world in so far as it can be known here, and if that is wrong, let me set about rectifying it if it be possible.’ ‘What will ye do in the end?’ is the wisest question that a man can ask himself, when the end is as certain as it is with us, and as unsatisfactory as I am afraid it threatens to be with some of us if we continue as we are.
Have I not a right to appeal to the half-sleeping and half-waking consciousness that endorses my words in some hearts as I speak? O brethren, you would be far wiser men if you did like this jailer in the Macedonian prison, came and gave yourselves no rest till you have this question cleared up, ‘What must I do to be saved?’
There was an old Rabbi who used to preach to his disciples, ‘Repent the day before you die.’ And when they said to him, ‘Rabbi, we do not know what day we are going to die.’ ‘Then,’ said he, ‘repent to-day.’ And so I say to you, ‘Settle about the end before the end comes, and as you do not know when it may come, settle about it now.’
II. That brings me to the next point here, viz., the blessed, clear answer that we may all take.
Paul and Silas were not non-plussed by this question, nor did they reply to it in the fashion in which many men would have answered it. Take a specimen of other answers. If anybody were so far left to himself as to go with this question to some of our modern wise men and teachers, they would say, ‘Saved? My good fellow, there is nothing to be saved from. Get rid of delusions, and clear your mind of cant and superstition.’ Or they would say, ‘Saved? Well, if you have gone wrong, do the best you can in the time to come.’ Or if you went to some of our friends they would say, ‘Come and be baptized, and receive the grace of regeneration in holy baptism; and then come to the sacraments, and be faithful and loyal members of the Church which has Apostolic succession in it.’ And some would say, ‘Set yourselves to work and toil and labour.’ And some would say, ‘Don’t trouble yourselves about such whims. A short life and a merry one; make the best of it, and jump the life to come.’ Neither cold morality, nor godless philosophy, nor wild dissipation, nor narrow ecclesiasticism prompted Paul’s answer. He said, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’
What did that poor heathen man know about the Lord Jesus Christ? Next to nothing. How could he believe upon Him if he knew so little about Him? Well, you hear in the context that this summary answer to the question was the beginning, and not the end, of a conversation, which conversation, no doubt, consisted largely in extending and explaining the brief formulary with which it had commenced. But it is a grand thing that we can put the all-essential truth into half a dozen simple words, and then expound and explain them as may be necessary. And I come to you now, dear brethren, with nothing newer or more wonderful, or more out of the ordinary way than the old threadbare message which men have been preaching for nineteen hundred years, and have not exhausted, and which some of you have heard for a lifetime, and have never practised, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.’
Now I am not going to weary you with mere dissertations upon the significance of these words. But let me single out two points about them, which perhaps though they may be perfectly familiar to you, may come to you with fresh force from my lips now.
Mark, first, whom it is that we are to believe on. ‘The Lord,’ that is the divine Name; ‘Jesus,’ that is the name of a Man; ‘Christ,’ that is the name of an office. And if you put them all together, they come to this, that He on whom we sinful men may put our sole trust and hope for our healing and our safety, is the Son of God, who came down upon earth to live our life and to die our death that He might bear on Himself our sins, and fulfil all which ancient prophecy and symbol had proclaimed as needful, and therefore certain to be done, for men. It is not a starved half-Saviour whose name is only Jesus, and neither Lord nor Christ, faith in whom will save you. You must grasp the whole revelation of His nature and His power if from Him there is to flow the life that you need.
And note what it is that we are to exercise towards Jesus Christ. To ‘believe on Him’ is a very different thing from believing Him. You may accept all that I have been saying about who and what He is, and be as far away from the faith that saves a soul as if you had never hoard His name. To believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is to lean the whole weight of yourselves upon Him. What do you do when you trust a man who promises you any small gift or advantage? What do you do when dear ones say, ‘Rest on my love’? You simply trust them. And the very same exercise of heart and mind which is the blessed cement that holds human society together, and the power that sheds peace and grace over friendships and love, is the power which, directed to Jesus Christ, brings all His saving might into exercise in our lives. Brethren, trust Him, trust Him as Lord, trust Him as Jesus, trust Him as Christ. Learn your sickness, learn your danger; and be sure of your Healer and rejoice in your security. ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’
III. Lastly, consider the blessing we may all receive.
This jailer about whom we have been speaking was a heathen when the sun set and a Christian when it rose. On the one day he was groping in darkness, a worshipper of idols, without hope in the future, and ready in desperation to plunge himself into the darkness beyond, when he thought his prisoners had fled. In an hour or two ‘he rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.’
A sudden conversion, you say, and sudden conversions are always suspicious. I am not so sure about that; they may be, or they may not be, according to circumstances. I know very well that it is not fashionable now to preach the possibility or the probability of men turning all at once from darkness to light, and that people shrug their shoulders at the old theory of sudden conversions. I think, so much the worse. There are a great many things in this world that have to be done suddenly if they are ever to be done at all. And I, for my part, would have far more hope for a man who, in one leap, sprung from the depth of the degradation of that coarse jailer into the light and joy of the Christian life, than for a man who tried to get to it by slow steps. You have to do everything in this world worth doing by a sudden resolution, however long the preparation may have been which led up to the resolution. The act of resolving is always the act of an instant. And when men are plunged in darkness and profligacy, as are, perhaps, some of my hearers now, there is far more chance of their casting off their evil by a sudden jerk than of their unwinding the snake by slow degrees from their arms. There is no reason whatever why the soundest and solidest and most lasting transformation of character should not begin in a moment’s resolve.
And there is an immense danger that with some of you, if that change does not begin in a moment’s resolve now, you will be further away from it than ever you were. I have no doubt there are many of you who, at any time for years past, have known that you ought to be Christians, and who, at any time for years past, have been saying to yourselves: ‘Well, I will think about it, and I am tending towards it, but I cannot quite make the plunge.’ Why not; and why not now? You can if you will; you ought; you will be a better and happier man if you do. You will be saved from your sickness and safe from your danger.
The outcast jailer changed nationalities in a moment. You who have dwelt in the suburbs of Christ’s Kingdom all your lives-why cannot you go inside the gate as quickly? For many of us the gradual ‘growing up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord’ has been the appointed way. For some of us I verily believe the sudden change is the best. Some of us have a sunrise as in the tropics, where the one moment is grey and cold, and next moment the seas are lit with the glory. Others of us have a sunrise as at the poles, where a long slowly-growing light precedes the rising, and the rising itself is scarce observable. But it matters little as to how we get to Christ, if we are there, and it matters little whether a man’s faith grows up in a moment, or is the slow product of years. If only it be rooted in Christ it will bear fruit unto life eternal.
And so, dear brethren, I come to you with my last question, this man rejoiced, believing in the Lord; why should not you; and why should not you now? ‘Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.’ A look is a swift act, but if it be the beginning of a lifelong gaze, it will be the beginning of salvation and of a glory longer than life.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv26–39 26. The song of the apostles was a strange…
26. The song of the apostles was a strange sound to the other prisoners, but one most welcome to heaven; and God, who appeared almost to have forsaken his servants, came to their relief in a manner peculiar to himself, yet most surprising to all within the prison. (26) " And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bonds were loosed. " The prisoners were all awake when this occurred, having been awakened by the singing, and must instinctively have connected the phenomenon with those midnight singers.
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv30, 31, 35 (See Scofield "Rom 1:16").
saved
(See Scofield "Rom 1:16").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv29, 35 The conversion of the jailer:
The conversion of the jailer:
v. 29. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas,
Read full note →
v. 30. and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
v. 31. And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and thy house.
v. 32. And they spake unto him the Word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house.
v. 33. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway.
v. 34. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.
In the excess of his first terror, the keeper of the prison had not even thought of a torch, being concerned only about the prevention of any escape on the part of the prisoners. But now he called to the guards to provide lights, and rushed into the inner prison, and in a state of the greatest emotion and terror, from anguish of conscience and the fear of the supernatural, fell down before Paul and Silas. He probably remembered now that Paul, who had called to him, had been preaching salvation in the name of Jesus, and he assumed that there must be some connection between the rocking of the earth and the calm assurance of the apostle. The jailer therefore led Paul and Barnabas outside and asked them what he must do to be saved, the most important question which a man may possibly think of in his whole life. And this question of troubled and terrified souls must always be met with the answer as here: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and thy house. Paul and Silas did not accept the title "lords," but pointed the inquirer to the one true Lord and Master over all, in whom alone there is salvation. Faith in Jesus Christ delivers from death, hell, wrath, and judgment, and brings eternal salvation. Having given the jailer the great central thought and doctrine of the entire Christian religion, the missionaries now explained the way of salvation more fully, telling him and proclaiming to him the Word of the Lord, together with all those that belonged to his household, children and servants, freedmen and slaves. It was a brief, but comprehensive instruction preceding baptism. And so deeply was the man’s heart moved by the events of the night and by the voice of God in these events that he took the two prisoners in that same hour of the night,—for he could not wait to fulfill this necessary duty till morning, -and washed off their stripes, both to remove the clotted blood and to ease the smarting of the blows. And Paul and Silas, in turn, gave to both the jailer and all the members of his household a washing to remove all the stains on their souls, by baptizing them all without delay. This Sacrament assured to the poor, harrowed man the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, which he needed so greatly on account of the feeling of guilt and damnableness which had come upon him with the realization of his sin. Now the jailer took both Paul and Silas into his house as honored guests; the table was set for them and a meal served altogether unlike that which they had gotten in prison. And the jailer rejoiced greatly, with intense, exulting gladness, in which all the members of his household joined him, that faith in God had been worked in their hearts. The fact that the Lord works faith in the heart of any person, and also makes him willing to give evidence of such faith in deeds of kindness and brotherly love, is a source of continual rejoicing to every Christian.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv27, 29, 32, 35, 37 General Information:
General Information:
Here the word "we" refers to Paul, Silas, and all of the other prisoners but excludes the jailer. (See: Exclusive and Inclusive "We")
Read full note →
The jailer was awakened from sleep
This can be stated in active form. AT: "The jailer woke up" (See: Active or Passive)
was about to kill himself
"was ready to kill himself." The jailer preferred to commit suicide rather than suffer the consequences of letting the prisoners escape.
translationWords
prison
sword
Paul
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv26, 27, 29, 31, 37 16:26 The massive earthquake is reminiscent of the great…
16:26 The massive earthquake is reminiscent of the great earthquake at Jesus’ resurrection (Matt 28:2-3).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.