Hey Paul, while you're here, can you do us a favor?

There are some passages of scripture that for many of us are indirect testimonies to its trustworthiness simply by their presence. While not an actual proof of anything, we read something and (properly) comfort ourselves that if this were all fiction, who would have thought to include this particular account? For me there are many examples of this, and the one I’ll discuss today is the arrival of Paul in Jerusalem with a gift from the Gentile churches, as described by Luke in Acts 21:

¹⁷ And when we had come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. ¹⁸ On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. ¹⁹ When he had greeted them, he told in detail those things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. ²⁰ And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord. And they said to him, “You see, brother, how many myriads of Jews there are who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law; ²¹ but they have been informed about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs. ²² What then? The assembly must certainly meet, for they will hear that you have come. ²³ Therefore do what we tell you: We have four men who have taken a vow. ²⁴ Take them and be purified with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads, and that all may know that those things of which they were informed concerning you are nothing, but that you yourself also walk orderly and keep the law. (Acts 21:17-24, NKJV)

First, allow me to point out something that I overlooked the first N times I read this. The brethren received Paul and his entourage gladly (v17), and the next day (v18) James (the brother of Jesus) and the elders (whoever they were) were called upon. They are (what I always missed) two distinct groups. Of course James and the elders also received Paul warmly, although they are unwittingly about to give him some nearly fatal advice.

There were scurrilous rumors circulating that Paul was teaching the Jewish converts to turn away from Moses and the national customs. At some level this was true, and at some level it wasn’t. Paul never forbid the practice of circumcision or Jewish customs, he denied the necessity thereof. He was quite happy to leave their practice to one’s conscience. And he in fact was quite willing, as we see here, to follow Jewish customs when among Jews (and Gentile customs when among Gentiles.) For the sake of the gospel, he was all things to all people, a lesson today’s legalists, including those found among the uber-reformed, have largely forgotten or willfully ignore.

So that James and the elders could avoid the embarrassment of having to defend him to the outraged Jews, and to demonstrate that he was not forbidding circumcision or the practice of customs, Paul readily agreed to their dog and pony show. He would partake in a very public and very Jewish custom of ritual purification, and even to pay the fees for four other men requiring purification, an act of charity that was considered especially pious and praiseworthy.

It all backfired, of course, when a riot broke out because certain Asian (as in from Ephesus, not Viet Nam) Jews, likely there for the feast of Pentecost, and possibly harboring resentment for Paul’s successful evangelistic activities in their homeland, created a fake-news bulletin that Paul had committed an act that was unspeakable (for the Jews it was a capital offense, to me it wouldn’t seem so bad), namely that he had escorted a Gentile member of his entourage into the inner courts of the temple. Luke tells us:

the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him, ²⁸ crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who teaches all men everywhere against the people, the law, and this place; and furthermore he also brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” ²⁹ (For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, whom they supposed that Paul had brought into the temple.) ³⁰ And all the city was disturbed; and the people ran together, seized Paul, and dragged him out of the temple; and immediately the doors were shut. (Acts 21:27b-30, NKJV)

Paul is rescued from injury (or death) by the Romans, all of which will lead to a fascinating set of legal battles for Paul. But if you are left wondering why this happened, some (I buy this, I think) have pointed to the end of v30:

immediately the [temple] doors were shut.

Paul had done nothing wrong, and yet the temple was now closed to him, and by (symbolic) extension closed to all Jewish Christians. A further indication that the providential grace period wherein Christianity hid in safety behind a thin veneer of being mislabelled as a “misguided Jewish sect” was coming to an end. Christianity would soon have to stand on its own.