Acts 22 Studies

For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each chapter is divided into a number of studies and each study or passage has a simple four-Part, verse-by-verse approach, to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Acts 22:6-16 

6 ‘About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. 7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, “Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?”

8 ‘“Who are you, Lord?” I asked.

‘“I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 9 My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.

10 ‘“What shall I do, Lord?” I asked.

‘“Get up,” the Lord said, “and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.” 11 My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.

12 ‘A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. 13 He stood beside me and said, “Brother Saul, receive your sight!” And at that very moment I was able to see him.

14 ‘Then he said: “The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. 15 You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard. 16 And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptised and wash your sins away, calling on his name.”

A. Find Out:

1. What had happened on the Damascus road? v.6
2. Who had been speaking to him? v.8
3. What effect had it had on him? v.11
4. How did he describe Ananias? v.12
5. What had Ananias done? v.13
6. What had Ananias told him? v.14,15

B. Think:

1. What things in Paul’s story were outside his control?
2. Why do you think he described Ananias as he did?
3. Why was what Ananias did and said thus important?

C. Comment:

Remember Paul is speaking to a devoutly Jewish crowd. He wants to tell them about his conversion but he wants to do it in the most acceptable way possible. He does it by showing a) the circumstances were out of his control and b) they involved a devout Jewish man.

First the circumstances beyond his control: a bright light making him fall to the ground, a voice speaking to him, and finally blindness. These were all things outside himself that he had no power over; they were things imposed upon him.

Then the devout Jew: Ananias, described as a) a devout observer of the Law and b) respected by all the Jews living there. This makes Ananias acceptable to the listeners. The fact that Ananias then “performed a healing miracle” by making Paul see, adds to his credibility. It was Ananias who told Paul the import of what had happened to him and what he was now to do. In other word, everything Paul was doing came from the instructions of a devout and respected Jew! In all of these things, so far, Paul is preparing his listeners to receive the unacceptable by seeing it all in an acceptable and valid context, a Jewish context. So far, so good.

D. Application:

1. Everything of Christianity came out of a Jewish context.
2. Do we share with others sensitively?

Passage: Acts 22:17-22

17 ‘When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance 18 and saw the Lord speaking to me. “Quick!” he said. “Leave Jerusalem immediately, because the people here will not accept your testimony about me.”

19 ‘“Lord,” I replied, “these people know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. 20 And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.”

21 ‘Then the Lord said to me, “Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.”’

22 The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, ‘Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!’

A. Find Out:

1. What had later happened to Paul? v.17
2. What had he been told? v.18
3. But what had Paul replied? v.19,20
4. Yet what had he been told? v.21
5. How did the crowd react to this? v.22

B. Think:

1. What was the end reaction of the crowd to what Paul was saying?
2. What was it that seemed to stir them against him?
3. How had he sought to show the validity of what he was saying?

C. Comment:

Up until this part of Paul’s speech the crowd seem to be listening attentively. They have just listened to his testimony of how he met the Lord and now he jumps on to when he eventually went to Jerusalem and there had a vision of the Lord instructing him. Again he seeks to win their approval by saying it happened when he was praying in the temple, thus showing them that he is indeed a devout Jew. Yet what he then goes on to share is not likely to win them over.

He first mentions that God had told him to leave Jerusalem because his testimony wouldn’t be received there (that was a number of years back). That might have made the crowd feel a bit defensive. Paul had struggled with this because he knew that his reputation there as a persecutor of the Christians was strong and he anticipated that people would remember that and accept him. Finally the Lord told him that He would be sending him to the Gentiles and (implied) that’s why he went off on his missionary journeys.

It is at this point that the crowd boil up again. Their views of the Gentiles was very low. They hadn’t realised that God had a heart for the whole world, not just the Jewish part of it. The fact that this devout Jew should apparently be sent away from Judaism to the Gentiles was beyond them. This was virtually heresy! They revolt!

D. Application:

1. God loves the whole world, not just small groups within it.
2. Spiritual blindness stops us seeing the immensity of God’s love.

Passage: Acts 22:23-29

23 As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, 24 the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. 25 As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, ‘Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?’

26 When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘This man is a Roman citizen.’

27 The commander went to Paul and asked, ‘Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?’

‘Yes, I am,’ he answered.

28 Then the commander said, ‘I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.’

‘But I was born a citizen,’ Paul replied.

29 Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realised that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.

30 The commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews. So the next day he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the members of the Sanhedrin to assemble. Then he brought Paul and set him before them.

A. Find Out:

1. What was happening? v.23
2. What 3 things did the Roman commander instruct? v.24
3. What did Paul ask? v.25
4. What effect did this have? v.26
5. What was the difference between the commander and Paul? v.28
6. What effect did this have? v.29

B. Think:

1. How was the commander shown to be hasty?
2. Why do you think he was acting like this?
3. What does this passage show about being a Roman citizen?

C. Comment:

The riot is about to break loose again and so the army commander who had come to arrest Paul continues with the course of action he started before Paul started speaking (21:33,34) and have Paul taken into the barracks and be interrogated. To make the subject more pliable the Romans would first flog him and as they go to do this Paul, almost casually, asks if they usually flog Roman citizens without trial.

At that moment, the whole situation changes. The man in charge immediately goes and tells the commander what they are doing. They are about to offend one of Rome’s most important rules – abuse a citizen without fair trial. To be a citizen of the Roman empire meant you had either to be born to a Roman citizen or you could buy the privilege if you could afford it. Obviously, the former was of greater status, and thus was Paul. The commander had bought his citizenship and realises he could be in trouble for being so casual in the arrest, where he had nearly flogged a citizen. They draw back from beating Paul and presumably also release him from chains, although they do hold onto him overnight. In all this we observe that Paul was almost reticent to rely upon his human qualifications to protect himself. It seems he would rather trust himself to the sovereignty of God.

D. Application:

1. We are citizens in the kingdom of God, under God’s protection.
2. Can we rest in the knowledge of that, secure in God’s love?