The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks ( Acts 16:22–24; ESV).
…But Paul said to them, “They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out.” The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens. So they came and apologized to them. And they took them out and asked them to leave the city. So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed (Acts 16:37–40; ESV).
These verses seem especially relevant right now. Our pastor is preaching through Philippians. That pushed me to remind myself of the planting of the church in Philippi (more about that in another essay) and the episodes surrounding it. These verses are particularly interesting in light of the new round of mask mandates going into effect again as the delta variant of Covid-19 surges across the US.
One of the first responses one sees and hears from American Christians is the assertion of their civil rights. To be sure, we live in a twofold kingdom (Calvin), and in the secular sphere of that kingdom American citizens do have certain “unalienable rights,” as we say in the Declaration of Independence. Those rights are protected by the constitution of the United States.
As a Roman citizen the Apostle Paul also had civil rights. They were clearly spelled out in Roman law. The punishment for violating those rights and for violating Roman law were severe. We know that the civil authorities in Philippi feared what might happen as soon as the Apostle Paul declared his citizenship and asserted his rights. The behavior and tone of the authorities changed dramatically. They knew immediately that they had violated the civil rights of a Roman citizen and were in grave jeopardy. Where they had just beaten him now they could not have been more solicitous. They apologized and begged him to leave.
Paul had them over a barrel. We know that he did not depart right away. Not only had he baptized the Philippian Jailer but he had baptized “all his” (καὶ ⸄οἱ αὐτοῦ πάντες: Acts 16:33), i.e., his household as he had done for Lydia and her whole household ( καὶ ⸆ ὁ οἶκος αὐτῆς; Acts 16:15). So, he stopped to fellowship and pray with and say goodbye to Lydia “and the brothers” (Acts 16:39) before leaving for Thessalonica.
What is remarkable about this episode is the way Paul voluntarily and deliberately allowed the Roman authorities to abuse him physically by beating him and then by jailing him in what was the equivalent of a high-security facility (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, 2.375). The beating he received was, as the ESV says, was with a wooden rod. This was the “punishment known formally in Lat. legal terminology as admonitio (BAGD, s.v. ῥαβδίζω). Clinton Arnold notes a passage Cicero where a man who was thus beaten during such an admonitio to death (ibid., 2.375). Arnold says, “[i]t is curious why Paul and Silas do not invoke their Roman citizenship at this point to avoid this painful and degrading punishment” (ibid., 2.376). There is a way to explain it: Paul prioritized his mission to Philippi over his Roman civil rights.
Paul knew what they were going to do to him and Silas and he let them do it. He could have stopped it with four words: We are Roman citizens. He did not. Here is a place where American evangelicals (and particularly Pentecostals and Charismatics, who fancy that they have apostolic power and authority) should seek to imitate the Apostle Paul. The new mask mandates rolling out are onerous and dubious. I have no brief for them as medical measures. The “experts” give conflicting testimony as to their value. That is not the point. The point here is that we who have a dual citizenship (and all Christians do have a dual citizenship—Paul wrote to the Philippian church: “But our citizenship is in heaven”) ought to prioritize our citizenship in the Kingdom of God over our citizenship in the kingdom of man.
Both spheres of God’s Kingdom are real but both are not equally ultimate. The Kingdom of God is eternal. The Roman Empire has been effectively gone for most of 1600 years. Jesus still reigns. To have a citizen in the Kingdom of heaven is to have an everlasting citizenship. Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. Were my kingdom of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I should not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world” (John 18:36). Paul was imitating Jesus, who allowed the Jewish authorities to try him and and the Roman authorities to beat and murder him for the sake of his mission. The Apostle Paul would eventually be martyred for the sake of the mission: to announce the law and the gospel everywhere and to call all humans to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
You and I are not the Apostle Paul but we can learn something from this episode. A piece of cloth or even blue paper is hardly equivalent to being beaten with wooden rods, being shackled and jailed but when we are asked by civil authorities to cover our faces in the interests of public health should we not ask ourselves how the pagans hear our objections to masks in public places? This is not a plea to withdraw from public life. Christians are citizens and they do still have a right to petition the government for redress. They have a right and even a duty to make reasoned, gracious, calm arguments in the public square. Perhaps you have seen the videos of the parents testifying before school boards objecting to masks or the videos of citizens of San Diego County testifying before the Board of Supervisors against mask mandates. Clearly some of those have not been well served by the legalization of marijuana in San Diego. The intemperance of other speakers has discredited their cause. When we publicly identify ourselves as Christians and then abuse Scripture (here I am thinking of the poor woman who proudly announced that she was not a sheep but a goat) in order to resist mask mandates we do no service to the Kingdom of God.
After they had been beaten and jailed, the Apostle and Silas were “praying a psalm with respect to God” (προσευχόμενοι ὕμνουν τὸν θεόν; Acts 16:25—we should not substitute our modern idea of “hymn” here, as most English translations do, since it is almost certainly a psalm since “hymns” designates a type of Psalm in the LXX). They were giving witness to Christ to the other prisoners. Luke mentions that the prisoners heard them. Paul and Silas were letting them know that they had been jailed for the sake of Christ and that they were innocent but had voluntarily suffered for Christ’s sake.
Christian, before you give vent to your outrage about the infringement of your civil rights over being asked to wear a mask, give a thought about Paul and Silas, who permitted themselves to be beaten and jailed unjustly for the sake of Christ, his gospel, and his Kingdom. Fulfill your duties wisely and graciously in God’s twofold kingdom but remember to keep the two spheres in their proper order.
©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.
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Really helpful, Scott. And, to further your excellent point, Paul wanted to stand before Nero (that wicked tyrant) to preach the gospel. He was willing to go through a lot of unjust abuse for that primary mission and cause. What would many Christians want to say to “Nero” today if they had the opportunity to stand before him? It’s exposing as to how we’ve confused politics with our primary mission.
Thank you Chris for doing such a fine job week by week in the study and from the pulpit.
I’ve seen some criticism, posted on Facebook, of this essay.
1. I’m not addressing vaccine mandates. I think those are another animal. There is a case for religious or medical exemptions. I oppose state-mandated vaccination. I suppose private employers may do whatever the law allows.
2. Some have apparently accused me of speculating about Roman law. Nonsense. Roman law is not a mystery.
Coleman-Norton, Paul R. Roman State & Christian Church: A Collection of Legal Documents to A.d. 535. London: S.P.C.K, 1966.
Crawford, Michael H. Roman Statutes. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement, 64. London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 1996.
Justinian. The Digest of Roman Law: Theft, Rapine, Damage and Insult. Translated by C. F Kolbert. Penguin Classics. New York: Penguin Books, 1979.
Justinian, ed. Theodor Mommsen, and C. H. Monro. The Digest of Justinian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Morey, William C. Outlines of Roman Law: Comprising Its Historical Growth and General Principles. 12th impression. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902.
Nicholas, Barry. An Introduction to Roman Law. Reprinted with corrections ed. Clarendon Law Series. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
Sherwin-White, A. N. Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. The Sarum Lectures, 1960-1961. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978.
Watson, Alan. Roman Slave Law. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
Wolff, Hans Julius. Roman Law: An Historical Introduction. [1St ed.]ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1951.
Reading the Scripture in light of its historical setting and context is basic to Reformed hermeneutics.
But in Acts 22, Paul actually uses his Roman citizenship to bring mistreatment to an end. Why isn’t that the example of Paul we should follow?
I think there is a good case to wear masks and to fight against mandates to wear masks. Both are good things to do for the health of our society–both physical and civil.
LT,
Yes, after he had been beaten and jailed. That’s the point.
In fact, he was thus beaten three times. All of those were elective and violations of Roman law. The authorities assumed that, because he was a Jew he was not a citizen. This is why they were so surprised and shocked when they discovered that he was a Roman citizen. BTW, all he had to do was to invoke his citizenship, as we see when he said,”I appeal to Caesar.” All the proceedings against him stopped and off he went. No one dared even claim Roman citizenship without actually possessing it because the penalties were so severe.
If you read again what I wrote, you will see that I argued that Paul’s is a good example to follow. It’s not whether to invoke our rights as Roman citizens, as it were, but when and how. I did not say that we should never invoke our rights. I said the opposite.
It’s a matter of wisdom. In some cases it may be wiser not to let the authorities violate our civil rights. In other cases, wisdom and the cause of the kingdom may require that we postpone the invocation of our rights.
Does every believer have the same evangelistic mission as Paul? Most of us are trying to raise and educate families and bear witness as the circumstances dictate.
I think you’re concerned about Christian witness because of masks but unbelievers are not at all in agreement with the mandates. They were told they could go back to normal after we distributed vaccines. They were lied to. Again. Some unbelievers want to wear them permanently. Some want to go back to normal. Walking around Home Depot yesterday evening, it was split evenly, often within the same couple. Also, we’re not wearing them at church.
Walt,
We are not all missionaries as Paul was but we are all Christians.
Those believers who were arrested and martyred by Nero’s officers, in Rome, weren’t full-time missionaries. They were ordinary Christians fulfilling their vocations and living quietly. The same is true of those Christians who were arrested, tortured, and martyred in the early second century and following through successive waves of persecution.
Are we there yet? No. Are we getting there faster than I thought we would? Yes.
How the pagans look at us is one issue but what I’m really asking American Christians to do is to evaluate their priorities. We are very quick to assert our civil rights. As you can see from some of the comments I’ve received, some will go to great exegetical and theological lengths to justify their opposition to mask mandates.
As to private property, there is as yet no indoor mask mandate in San Diego County. Thus, the church is within the law. Most commercial businesses in the area have a sign asking everyone or at least the unvaccinated to wear a mask. Those who refuse don’t seem to understand how private property works. One’s right not to wear a mask ends when one enters private property. Theoretically, a business could ask customers to wear masks even were there no Covid-19. Christians ought to wear masks in such a case out of respect for the owners of the property.
It’s true that there are pagans who also oppose mask mandates. As a matter of our civil/secular life those Christians who are opposed to them may cooperate with them to change public opinion or change policy but what we shouldn’t do is to scream about our rights without thought of what message we are sending to the world or to how we are prioritizing the two spheres of the Kingdom.
So how does Paul giving up his rights strategically to strengthen the church and win converts as a commissioned church evangelist apply to obeying mask mandates? I’m not following. I could see why clergy would say this, but I don’t see how it applies to laity and I’m worried the divide between the two has grown over the past 22 months.
Flesh this one out for us. I’m not following.
Most normal people think we’re on a slippery slope towards vax passports next month. Many think the time to resist this is now with the mask mandates.
I look at this differently. Many people are asserting their “civil rights” because that’s all they know how to do. Really, they’re tired of being lied-to and feel conscience-bound to stop enabling lying, capricious elites who don’t follow their own rules. It’s a matter of the ninth commandment and conscience. Sympathetic unbelievers understand this on a common-grace level but aren’t sophisticated-enough to articulate it.
If we were in a pre-industrial economy, I’d agree with you. Our economy is far different. Much commercial private property is owned by large entities such as BlackRock that are basically arms of the government. Big banks are, for example, an arm of the Fed. On a large scale, the distinction between public and private disappears.
Have you talked to these owners? Many have the sign up to ward-off liability, not because they actually care whether customers wear masks.
Walt,
There is a distinction to be made between clergy and laity but both are Christians and it is, to a large degree, a distinction that matters more inside the church than outside.
In the pre-Christian world, the pagans did not distinguish between laity and clergy when they arrested and punished people for refusing to say “Caesar is Lord” and for refusing to renounce Christ. At that point the distinction doesn’t matter much does it?
People are not going to look at laity whom they see as showing disregard for the public welfare and say, “Oh, well, they are laity and so I won’t hold their disregard against them.”
What have I written that suggests that Christians may not organize and calmly, rationally, and graciously oppose mask mandates?
One need not be sophisticated and articulate to be able to prioritize the eternal ahead of the temporal. I’ve seen ordinary Christians do that all my Christian life and frequently they do it better than the sophisticated and articulate.
This is sophistry. On this rationale one could justify theft because the wrong entity owns the property. This dog won’t hunt.
Private property is private property whether owned by a multi-national corp or by a mom and pop.
Why the property owners do it is their business. Either way I’m morally obligated to cooperate or take my business elsewhere. How does it help the owner if I defy the requirement and thus create a crisis or expose him to liability?
It’s not my property. My presence there is conditioned upon his permission and his permission requires a mask. Done.
Scott,
It seems like you’re done or want to move this discussion to email. I’m not trying to badger but I think we’re working from very different definitions and framing of this situation.
Not under those circumstances, no. It sounds like you’re saying the circumstances matter and we disagree over the application of God’s law to the circumstances.
While I agree with this point, we’re arguing over whether the public actually sees the mandates as public welfare. Half do not. Half see them as another shifting of the goalposts/lying by leaders, which are a public harm. Half of parents see them as harming children. Masks are not a neutral public health measure. They have public health benefits and harms. The trade-offs are debated by scientists but the public’s perception of the benefits is highly divided. We’re arguing more over the public’s perception of the matter rather than the measures themselves.
You haven’t, and I thank you. However, the timing of these articles from clergy are perceived by the laity to reinforce the magistrate’s capriciousness and wickedness rather than our ability to take action. Many of us feel undermined by the clergy. In the coming months, I think Israel will be fleeing to its own tents.
I don’t agree with this framing – setting the eternal against the temporal. It’s a matter of conscience and the ninth commandment for many of us. God alone is Lord of conscience.
No, this is reality. This is our monetary system. The Fed prints money and sends it through big banks which buy property. This is going on right now which is why home prices are so high.
I am in agreement in the case of Mom and Pop.
Where else will you take your business where large corporations have monopolized the market?
The government is effectively handing enforcement to business owners, many of which are large corporations. This is the de facto type of governance we have. To be clear, the “owner” in many cases is large shareholders to whom the Board reports. In the case of Pfizer, for example, the board is composed of men who sit on multiple boards of multi-billion dollar corporations such as FaceBook and who used to work for the FDA. The government sees them as an arm of the government. If we’re limiting the discussion to Mom and Pop, I certainly agree. But that’s not reality.
Walt,
1. The bad things that other people do not become warrant for us to do bad things.
2. I agree that there is an unhealthy collusion between corporations, BigSocMedia, and the federal government. I just posted a bit from Chris Arnade about that very thing. So what? Well, we still have the liberty and the right to organize, to seek redress etc.
By all means do it if you feel so compelled.
God the Spirit didn’t inspire the Book of Acts as mere entertainment nor merely as a set of inspiring stories about how wonderfully the Spirit used Paul and company. We’re to learn something about how we live in the world. Yes there are discontinuities but any Christian can make the same choice as Paul, to prioritize the eternal over the temporal.
I’m not seeking to bind anyone’s conscience about how to behave in any particular circumstance but I am trying help people think through what it means to live in a twofold kingdom and how to apply that paradigm in our time.
We may well have irreconcilable differences here brother. Go in peace.
Masks don’t do anything because if you’re forced to wear one to walk into a restaurant and then suddenly it’s safe to take it off because you’re sitting down and eating, any rational person knows that doesn’t make sense and hence the mask does nothing. But clearly many people are irrational because they wear the woke mask to bed, in the shower, there is no sacred place for them. They wear it in the car alone because they literally believe they can get covid from the dashboard and their steering wheel. They would wear it in the desert if they were the last person on earth so they can signal their virtue to themselves. Masks have nothing to do with health, it’s all about control. Masks do little to nothing and mask mandates only create hate. I’m not saying anyone has a right to go into a store that demands masks and not wear the woke mask. I can wear it for 10 minutes while I get milk. I move it under my nose so I can breathe, nobody says anything to me because most people knows these cheap little masks don’t do anything.
https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1429469022542864387
Not That I care to carry water for the speaker but they do seem to be outdoors. Is she advocating masks to be worn outdoors?
Masking is murder. It is not only helpful, or neutral but bad for their wearers and the community. It also hides our greatest symbol of being made in God’s image, our faces. We need to return to a general ban of federal masking, circa 2 years ago, before the Great Hysteria.
Chris,
I’ve read these claims repeatedly.
Honestly, they seem unhinged. Can you justify them factually? I’ve been wearing a cloth mask off and on for 18 months. Lots of people wear them full time. It’s no fun and, in some case, it might not be healthy but “murder”?
As to the argument regarding the image, that’s just not true. I do think that our bodies are part of the image broadly defined but to say that wearing a mask hides “our greatest symbol of being made in God’s image” is too much. It’s not warranted by Scripture or our confessions. When I wear a face mask in the cold, am I concealing God’s image? Should football players not wear face masks or motorcyclists not wear tinted face shields?
This seems like a case of looking for justifications for a personal preference against masks.
Personally, I don’t like them but we do the faith no credit when we make easily discredited arguments against public policy.
You couldn’t be more right. It’s not a personal preference against masks, it’s common sense.
I think I first heard the sound counsel that Christians are not to insist on their rights from the then popular, but now disgraced Bill Gothard. I agreed with it then and now.
Likewise, a piece of cloth or a surgical mask is hardly the equivalent to being beaten with a rod and incarcerated. But that said, we do know where this is going, don’t we?
The same goes for being told to mask up “in the interests of public health”?
Not only have our civil and public health authorities lied like a shag carpet, deep enough to bury a soccer ball, if not a basketball, they have insouciantly and hypocritically refused to follow their own “mandates”. Geo. Orwell notwithstanding, this “pandemic” does not have a high fatality rate, quarantines now apply to the healthy, neither cloth or surgical masks can stop an aerosol virus, alternatives to the FDA emergency vaccines have been criminally suppressed and now one of the guys that was in on the development of the experimental gene mRNA therapy is saying the vaccines seem to be backfiring and causing the variants.
All of this accompanies the increasing demonization by our betters in govt. and media of anybody so selfish or unscientific to remain unmasked or worse, unvaxxed. (Never mind that many have already got the virus and recovered, thank you very much.) Being unvaxxed is well on its way to being inducted into the noble company or the other unforgivable sins: That of being a Western white
Neanderthalheterosexual Christian that might even be so racist to acknowledge the natural distinction between men and women, much more objective reality. IOW the final variant is totalitarianism, the way the medical fascism is being ramped up.Which is to say as our very own cultural revolution continues to chug merrily along, to paraphrase Thomas Dalrymple’s comments, ‘the purpose of the corona virus propaganda is not ultimately to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponds to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies/act like they are true, they are in danger of compromising their sense of probity. To assent/co-operate with obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to manipulate.’ IOW Dalrymple is no believer, but he understands something about the 9th commandment.
If it is just a mask, it behooves us to ask what it is masking. A genuine viral pandemic or mass psychosis, strong delusions and sincere and well meant – if not malicious – bumblers?
All of course in the good providence of God.
Job 17:4 For thou hast hid their heart from understanding:
Thank you.
Brilliant!
There are hills worth dying on. For me, masks aren’t one of those hills.