NOTES for Act 16:25-40

The rights of Roman citizens in the Roman Empire were strictly observed. Paul, as is clear, did not fail to make use of this. Roman citizenship gave him immunity from any local laws applying to those who did not have Roman citizenship. Conquering ever new territories, the Romans as a rule left local laws in force for the local population. But Roman citizens, wherever they found themselves, were under the protection of their own Roman laws.

Roman citizenship could be held not only by those born in Rome, but also by inhabitants of other territories in special cases. In principle it could be granted to any inhabitant of the empire, and sometimes it truly was granted, for special merits or for large donations to public or state needs. Paul, for example, was a hereditary Roman citizen, although he had no real connection with Rome itself: he was born in Asia Minor. Now the apostle uses his status as a Roman citizen, whom local authorities had no right either to imprison or to subject to corporal punishment, from which Roman citizens were exempt.

What is this: a desire to get even, to put in their place the local authorities who clearly exceeded their powers? Hardly, since in that case Paul could have declared his Roman citizenship from the very beginning. A kind of compensation for moral harm inflicted? Partly yes: the issue is in fact a public admission by representatives of the local authority that they were wrong. But the matter was not only this admission and not only Paul personally or his companions. The matter was the witness Paul was carrying.

Of course, the admission of wrongdoing by local officials was forced. But it was forced not only by Paul's status as a Roman citizen, but also by the events that accompanied his imprisonment. The issue was recognizing the reality and significance of these events, in which the manifestation of God's power is clearly visible. And therefore recognizing the reality of Paul's witness, which has the right to exist, so that everyone may see: God and His Kingdom can be ignored only for a time. Even by representatives of Roman authority.

In today's reading from Acts, a certain strangeness is visible. Paul and Silas pray, the prison doors open (so far everything is logical), but the prisoners do not leave. The question is, why did the Lord open the door for them?

The passage ends with the jailer and his whole family coming to believe in God, struck by the miracles shown to them. And the miracle here is not only the opened prison doors, but also the prisoners who did not run away, but sit and wait. One can suppose that this second circumstance became the greater miracle for the jailer: that the prisoners did not scatter, that Paul did not want his death, that those who should have hated him instead cared for him...

It is interesting that as a result the jailer himself voluntarily exposes himself to danger by inviting the prisoners into his house. But this is already his free choice - and for the sake of this choice, properly speaking, everything had been set in motion. The most important thing in today's reading is this jailer's encounter with Jesus.

One can imagine the history of the first centuries of our era as an "ideological confrontation" between Christians and the pagan world. However, from today's reading we can see that this confrontation is a special one. Indeed, Jews and Gentiles, Roman officials and craftsmen of Asia Minor, authorities and the plebs rose up against the apostles (a few decades later these persecutions would grow into bloody slaughters in Roman circuses and the fires of Nero).

But Christians never answer evil with evil. They bear the message of forgiveness, of reconciliation with God. They conquer not by force of arms, but by the power of Christ living in them. We all know how greatly the situation changed a thousand years later: fires, executions, and pogroms became the work of Christians. What will happen in our time depends on us.