Acts 22:3 I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day.
Remember your Primary Citizenship
Yesterday I voted in the Rutherford County primaries. When I got to the little table where you fill out paperwork so you can vote, there were a couple of ladies at the table whom I knew. One of them looked up at me and asked, “Well, I have to ask you. Are you voting Republican or Democrat?” The reason she asked in the way that she did was because she probably could have guessed the answer. She would have made assumptions about how I would vote based on what I believe.
Now I also noticed that most of the candidates running in the primaries in Rutherford County, Tennessee are church people. At least in Tennessee, it is generally still helpful for a candidate to have some kind of church affiliation. There is a difference between voting as I vote because I am a believer, and being a Baptist in order to get votes in Tennessee. What I am saying is that it is very important, especially today, that you and I remember what our primary citizenship is.
In Acts 22, Paul is very savvy in understanding different groups and their politics, being very clear in his mind about his primary citizenship, and then making bridges to people to gain them for Christ. There were three groups in particular, Jews, Romans, and Pharisees. He appealed to one by language, the second by rights of Roman law, and the third by a doctrine they held.
The mob was angry at Paul. This Jewish mob feared Paul was trying to do away with the Law of Moses. On his way to the palace, Paul asked for an audience with the people, which the Roman guards allowed. He basically gets their attention and says, “Let me make a defense.”
Verse 2 says, “And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence: and he saith…” Then Paul gives them his testimony. He talks about how he was brought up as a Jewish man and was taught at the feet of the esteemed teacher, Gamaliel. He was a Jew of the Jews. The truth is that Paul was more devout than most of the people who were accusing him at that moment, but he had had an encounter with Jesus of Nazareth, God the Son, that totally changed his life.
These people listened in rapt attention until he talked about the fact that he was taking the good news to the Gentiles. At that point they just erupted into a riot. Nevertheless, Paul made a connection to these people because, like them, he was a Jewish man and spoke Hebrew.
Verse 25 says, “And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?” Second, Paul makes a connection to people of Roman citizenship.
It is interesting to remember that the Roman guards didn’t know a thing that Paul had just said to the mob because they were not Hebrew. His nationality is something Paul had in common with the mob. But now he is making a connection to the guards as a Roman citizen, His question about scourging put fear in their hearts because, like them, Paul had Roman citizenship, the rights of a Roman citizen.
Third, Paul made a connection even to Pharisees. The Roman authorities brought together a council to confront Paul. Acts 23:6 says, “But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.”
He caused dissention between the Pharisees who believed in a resurrection and the Sadducees who believed there was no resurrection. So great was the division that the Pharisees said, “We don’t find any fault in this man.” They had this temporary pause of heart because they perceived him to be, in some sense, at this moment, one of their own.
Paul made a bridge of sorts to the Pharisees, but the entire time he was doing this he remembered his primary citizenship, His citizenship in Heaven. My dad used to tell me whenever we were going somewhere without him, “Wil, remember whose boy you are.” God would have you remember whose child you are.
Are you are a Republican who happens to be a Christian, or are you a Christian who votes the way you vote, speaks the way you speak, and thinks the way you think because you are a believer in the Lord Jesus. I am a Southerner, an American, and a Baptist. All those things are important, but they should all be informed by my submission to Jesus Christ.
Who is in the driver’s seat in your life? Is your gospel witness being hampered, harmed, or blunted because you are too much a citizen of some other group? Paul’s belief in the Lord Jesus and citizenship in Heaven didn’t deny any of these other citizenships, but it informed all of them. He made connections to the Jewish men, the Roman authorities, and even to the Pharisees, but all the while his main citizenship was in Heaven. That informed the way he lived, acted, and thought. That citizenship should inform our actions as well.