It was a singular sight, Paul purifying himself to show that he walked orderly and kept the law. He was evidently walking according to the thoughts of others, which no more glorifies God than it satisfies man. “And when the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia when they saw him in the temple stirred up all the multitude and laid hands on him, crying out, Men of Israel, help. This is the man that teacheth all everywhere against the people, and the law, and this place; and moreover he brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath defiled this holy place. For they had before seen with him in the city Trophimus the Ephesian, whom they supposed that Paul brought into the temple. And the whole city was moved, and the people ran together, and they laid hold on Paul and dragged him out of the temple; and forthwith the doors were shut. And as they were seeking to kill him, tidings came up to the chief officer (chiliarch) of the cohort, that the whole of Jerusalem was in confusion, and immediately be took soldiers and centurions, and ran down upon them; and they, when they saw the chief officer and the soldiers, ceased beating Paul. Then the chief officer came near and laid hold on him, and commanded him to be bound with two chains, and inquired who he might be, and what he had done. And some shouted one thing, and some another, among the crowd. And when he could not know the certainty because of the uproar, he commanded him to be brought into the castle (literally, camp). And when he came upon the steps, so it was that he was borne upon the soldiers, because of the violence of the crowd. For the multitude of the people followed after, crying out, Away with him” (Acts 21:27-36).
No more devoted servant of the Lord ever lived. This however did not hinder the effects of a mistaken position. He had departed from those to whom the Lord sent him, out of his excessive love for the ancient people of God. At the instance of others he had sought to conciliate them to the uttermost, but the effect in no way answered to the desire either of James or of Paul. Can we say that in going up to Jerusalem, there was such a following of Christ as he loved to commend to the saints? “Be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ.” When the Lord went up for His last and fatal visit, how great the difference! He cast out all them that sat and bought in the temple, He overthrew the tables of the money changers, and of them that sold doves; He healed the blind and lame that came to Him. There He confounded those that demanded His authority, He laid before them—the proudest—their inferiority to the publicans and harlots whom they despised, and set out their past and present history in the light of God, so that they could not but own the miserable destruction which impended over their wickedness, and the passing away of God’s vineyard to other husbandmen, who should render to Him the fruits in their seasons. And whatever their enmity, they feared the multitude because they took Him for a prophet. And when the chief religions leaders came in succession to tempt Him, He silenced them, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians; and wound up the entire scene by the great test question for the Jews, how David’s son could be, as He incontestibly is, David’s Lord. A question which no Jew was able to answer then, any more than from that day to the present. Hence He could only pronounce woes upon their actual state, and on their proved rain prophesy of the kingdom which He is Himself to bring in as the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.
Undoubtedly, none the less was He rejected and crucified, but He was the faithful witness. There was not a shadow of a compromise: He said nothing, did nothing, seemed nothing, but the truth to the glory of God. He witnessed a good confession before Pontius Pilate, the high priest of Israel having shown himself baser and more cruel than the most hard-hearted heathen, who condemned the Lord to be crucified.
Yet assuredly the apostle loved the Lord, and answered to His mind as no man did, even among the apostles; still he was a man; and human feeling in its most estimable shape betrays him into, I will not say, a contrast with, but, a deflection from, our Lord in Jerusalem. For Christ, whatever the depth of His humiliation, oh! what triumph hung on His decease which He accomplished there.
For Paul it was not death at Jerusalem, but the hatred which threw him into the hands of the Gentiles to be, as yet a prisoner only, not yet to die, though ultimately what befell him among the Gentiles was his true glory, and there he suffered simply and solely a witness for the truth. He had his heart’s desire, the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death. “And as Paul was about to be brought into the castle, he said unto the chief officer, May I say something unto thee? He said, Dost thou know Greek? Thou art not then the Egyptian who before these days stirred up to sedition, and led out into the wilderness, the four thousand men of the assassins (or Sicarii)? But Paul said, I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city; and I beseech thee give me leave to speak unto the people. And when he had given him leave, Paul standing on the steps beckoned with his hand unto the people, and when there was great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying” (Acts 21:37-40).
Here again Paul takes very different ground from that which was his wont, he pleads his Jewish race to the commander. Elsewhere who so firm to hold to the grand truth that Christ is all? who more completely above any human distinction or plea in the service of the Lord? It was Paul the apostle indeed, yet not here in the Gentile province assigned him, but in Jerusalem, seeking to reconcile the irreconcilable. There is the weakness of one who was strong by grace beyond all others on his own ground.