Daily Thoughts from Acts: Religious Freedom (Acts 21:27-40)
When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him, crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place. Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. Then all the city was stirred up, and the people ran together. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut. And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. Then the tribune came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. He inquired who he was and what he had done. Some in the crowd were shouting one thing, some another. And as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks. And when he came to the steps, he was actually carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd, for the mob of the people followed, crying out, “Away with him!”
As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the tribune, “May I say something to you?” And he said, “Do you know Greek? Are you not the Egyptian, then, who recently stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins out into the wilderness?” Paul replied, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no obscure city. I beg you, permit me to speak to the people.” And when he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the steps, motioned with his hand to the people. And when there was a great hush, he addressed them in the Hebrew language, saying: (Acts 21:27-40 ESV)
As Paul is going through purification himself he goes to the temple, but Jews from Asia, where Paul has just recently been ministering (perhaps Ephesian Jews), see an opportunity to get him killed by accusing him of bringing a Gentile into the court of the temple reserved for Jews. Of course, no one produces a Gentile to prove their accusation and they begin to beat Paul. Only the Roman guard rescues him from certain death, the mob’s cries echoing what was said by the crowds who called for Jesus’ crucifixion.
When the Tribune learns that Paul is not an Egyptian who had recently led a rebellion and fled into the wilderness but rather a “citizen” of Cilicia and a Jew, he lets him speak to the crowd, likely because he feels this will help explain what the root cause of this mob action really is. Paul wants to give witness to Christ.
It has not been uncommon for foes of the gospel to manufacture or trump up charges against those who propagate the gospel in order to halt their activity. The same thing has been done to religious proponents who do not preach Christianity (Jehovah’s Witnesses are one example, though some would confuse them as being Christian, Hare Krishna is another). It would seem that Christians should be the last to resort to false means of shutting down a voice of a religionist and instead should advocate for their freedom to preach their message, assuming it is not hate and violence arousing. We don’t want to be falsely shut down and should not want anyone else shut down that way either. We believe our message is the truth and can compete with any other message and that the Spirit will bring to faith those He calls. We don’t have to shut down the competition in order to see our view succeed. We are contradicting our own message if we do.
Future President James Madison, in a carefully argued essay titled “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” the soon-to-be father of the Constitution, eloquently laid out reasons why the state had no business supporting Christian instruction. Signed by some 2,000 Virginians, Madison’s argument became a fundamental piece of American political philosophy, a ringing endorsement of the secular state that “should be as familiar to students of American history as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,” as Susan Jacoby has written in Freethinkers, her excellent history of American secularism.
Among Madison’s 15 points was his declaration that “the Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every…man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an inalienable right.”
Madison also made a point that any believer of any religion should understand: that the government sanction of a religion was, in essence, a threat to religion. “Who does not see,” he wrote, “that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?” Madison was writing from his memory of Baptist ministers being arrested in his native Virginia.
As a Christian, Madison also noted that Christianity had spread in the face of persecution from worldly powers, not with their help. Christianity, he contended, “disavows a dependence on the powers of this world…for it is known that this Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them.”
About the Author
Randall Johnson
A full-time pastor since 1979, Randall originally graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary (ThM) in 1979 and from Reformed Theological Seminary (DMin) in 1998. He is married with four grown children and a pile of epic grandchildren.
