Meeting the Jews in Rome

Based on the chronology given in the book of Acts as well as the testimony of other ancient sources that give us information on sea travel in the first century, we know that Paul’s journey from Caesarea to Rome took more than four months (Acts 27:1–28:16). Of course, the Apostle was taken to Rome as a prisoner because he appealed to Caesar after the Jews in Jerusalem brought charges against him (21:27–26:32). Yet that was not the entire story. Ultimately, Paul went to Rome because God had determined that the Apostle must bear witness to Jesus Christ in that city (23:11).

Certainly, the Lord intended for Paul to preach the gospel to the gentiles in Rome. Since the gospel is a message for “the Jew first and also . . . the Greek [i.e., gentile]” (Rom. 1:16), however, the Apostle preached first to the Jews in the capital city of the Roman Empire. Normally, Paul visited the Jews in the local synagogue when he preached the gospel in a city for the first time (e.g., Acts 17:1, 10; 18:1–4). Since the Apostle was under house arrest in Rome, that option was unavailable to him. So he gathered the leaders of the Jews in the city to explain his situation (28:17). From their initial response, we see that they had heard nothing about the charges made against Paul. They even seemed to have had a limited understanding of Christianity, knowing that people spoke against that sect but not knowing Paul’s own views (vv. 21–22). (They called it a sect because the official split between Judaism and Christianity had not yet taken place, and Jews saw the followers of Jesus as just another party within Judaism.) We can understand why their information about Paul would be limited. If it had taken the Apostle so long to get to Rome, Jews from Judea who wanted to charge him with wrongdoing would have been delayed as well.

The Apostle offered a brief summary of the events that had brought him to Rome, declaring his innocence. He called for an audience with the Jews not so much to proclaim that he was guilty of no crime but to proclaim to them the hope of Israel—the Messiah, Jesus our Lord (vv. 17–20). By the title “the hope of Israel,” Paul was saying that in Jesus is found the fulfillment of all the expectations of the Jews and eternal life. John Calvin comments, “No man does hope aright, but he which looks unto Christ and his spiritual kingdom; for when [Paul] places the hope of the godly in Christ, he excludes all other hopes.”