Fallen human beings tend to suspect their neighbor of something bad, and most often of more than one thing. So it was with Paul: when a snake bit him, the first thought that came to those around him was that before them...
Fallen human beings tend to suspect their neighbor of something bad, and most often of more than one thing. So it was with Paul: when a snake bit him, the first thought that came to those around him was that before them stood a criminal, even a murderer, whom God was punishing for his crime and not allowing to survive.
In reality, everything turned out just the opposite. Judging by the sacred writer's testimony, this lesson did good to everyone who saw what happened to the apostle. Of course, the event described became a vivid illustration of the Savior's words that Christians will not die even if they drink deadly poison. Needless to say, this is not about testing our strength by collecting every possible poison and trying them all on ourselves. It is precisely about situations like the one in which Paul found himself.
It was a situation that, by every human expectation, should have ended in the apostle's death, but did not. And the point is not that Christians have some special immunity to poisons or diseases, or that they know some secret techniques for dealing with illness or poisoning. The point is rather what could be called the quality of a person's spiritual life, the quality of that process, both spiritual and natural, that is called life.
What matters is what predominates in that process: spirit or nature. And who determines its course: God or the person himself. Of course, in any case a person is responsible for his own life. The only question is how much he allows God to be near when he makes decisions connected with his own life. How often he lets God into the making of those decisions. For a Christian, the only normal situation is one in which God is always near, in which decisions are made with His direct participation and His voice is decisive. Then there is no room for chance in a person's life.
If Paul had died then from the snakebite, humanly speaking, it would have been an absurd and tragic accident. But for God it would have meant that His plan had been destroyed. Of course, the simplest thing would have been to arrange matters so that Paul never met the snake that bit him. Paul, of course, had to end up on that island, but the snake did not have to be where Paul was; unlike Paul, it was almost indifferent to the direction it moved within the ecological niche of which it was a part.
God evidently needed to give Paul's companions a visible lesson, and He gave it. The apostle's life was preserved in its fullness, for the natural component of his life flow was completely determined by the spiritual component of that same flow. And those around him saw a miracle, not the miracle of deliverance from death after a deadly bite, but the miracle of the Kingdom manifesting itself in the life of a particular person.
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28:4 And when the barbarians saw - they said - Seeing also his chains, Doubtless this man is a murderer - Such rarely go unpunished even in this life; whom vengeance hath not suffered to live - They look upon him as a dead man already. It is with pleasure that we trace among these barbarians theforce of conscience, and the belief of a particular providence: which some people of more learning have stupidly thought it philosophy to despise. But they erred in imagining, that calamities must always be interpreted as judgments. Let us guard against this, lest, like them, we condemn not only the innocent, but the excellent of the earth.
28:5 Having shaken off the venomous animal, he suffered no harm - The words of an eminent modern historian are, "No venomous kindof serpent now breeds in Malta, neither hurts if it be brought thither from another place. Children are seen there handling and playing even with scorpions; I have seen one eating them." If this be so, it seems to be fixed by the wisdom of God, as an eternal memorial of what he once wrought there.