Rome - Paul's First Two Years in his "Hired House"
“SUCH A ONE WAS PAUL THE AGED”--Session II
Tuesday Morning Bible Study
June 8, 2015, the Year of Our Lord
Acts 28:30: “Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came to him.”
Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans 3-5 years before going to Rome in 60 A.D.
It is conclusive that before he personally set foot in this city, there was already the nucleus of a flourishing church. In Romans 16: 1-15, he names twenty-six believers in Rome. In addition he mentions two of their “households” as well as other “brethren” and “saints” (vs. 14, 15).
Several of these were natives of the capital, who, on account of an edict of Claudius, had been expelled from their homes on the Tiber, and driven as fugitives to cities bordering on the Mediterranean.
In the places of their exile they had become converts to the faith through the Apostle’s preaching. There were others now in Rome, “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord,” whom Paul had not yet seen in the flesh.
They were only known to him by their steadfast faith, devoted lives, and by their “obedience which had come abroad unto all men” (Ro. 16:19).
Even though he has never been to Rome, the passion and burden for its Church had a constant place in his prayers. Romans 1:9: “Without ceasing, I make mention of you in my prayers”.
Our prayers will birth a church, redeem a nation, and catapult us into the nations.
Every church has first been soaked in weeks and months of prayer before being established. Then it is established upon the foundation of the preaching and teaching of the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In that list of names, at least some of them would have been among the number who met the Apostle-prisoner at the Appii Forum. On seeing them, the Apostle, “thanked God and took courage”.
The members of the infant church in Rome met him in “his own hired house”. “He received all that came in unto him, preaching the Kingdom of God, a teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.”
What was the condition of the Christian church in Rome? Truly, they were as sheep in the midst of wolves. An inhuman tyrant was reigning in the halls of Caesar. The multitudes were ready with fire and sword to destroy the hated Nazarenes.
They were trembling on the edge of a volcano ready to burst forth. It would be human nature to be under strong temptation to abandon the struggle, to surrender the unequal fight, and renounce the name of Christ. It is for these brave yet desponding believers the cheering words of the Roman Epistle were penned.
It is the rallying-cry of their great hero, ---the trumpet-blast to nerve and prepare them for the battle.
The words in the matchless eighth chapter have encouraged and rallied Christians for two millenniums. “There is therefore, now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus!” “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
These saints would be summoned to cruel tortures and death. “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed!”
In the gloom of the dungeon, or the horrors of the sword, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.”
As Christ’s warriors, they would be sustained with the thought that they would be made “more than conquerors” through Him that loved them.
Paul’s mission and announcement to the Romans as I stated last week was to preach the Gospel of Christ as “the power of God unto salvation”. In his epistle to the Romans the height of his message is the revelation of “THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD.” “For therein is the Righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith.” (Ro. 1:17)
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“Now the Righteousness of God without the law is manifest…even the Righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe.” “We are made the Righteousness of God in Him.” “that as sin has reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
The music of the same key-note of his Roman letter, is his dying song, and forms the closing glorious outburst of his dying lips---“Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me at that day.” (2 Timothy 4:8)
“The righteous Lord loves righteousness; His countenance does behold the upright.” (Psa. 11:7)
At the entrance-gate f heaven the summons is heard, “Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation, which keeps the truth may enter in” (Isa. 26:2). It is “the righteous” who shall experience the fullness of the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom (glory) of the Father.”
The King’s daughter must be thus “all glorious,” her “clothing of wrought gold,”
Where is such Righteousness? Can man himself effect or secure it? No! “There is none” and there can be none “righteous, no not one”. The holiest and best, weighed in the balances are found wanting. We will all enter heaven with the scars of the enemy, but covered with the righteousness of the Blood of Jesus.
“Though I wash myself with snow-water and make my hands never so clean, yet will you plunge me in the ditch, and my own clothes shall abhor me.” (Job. 4: 31-32)
If we, then as sinners despair of having a personal righteousness, then we must have a borrowed righteousness. We must stand indebted to another for what we cannot obtain for ourselves. Like the Hebrews of old at the Exodus, we must not only go forth from Egypt with chains broken, but with borrowed jewels. With “earrings of gold, and chains and bracelets of silver.” That spangled attire in which God’s spiritual Israel is robed is the glorious Righteousness which Christ wrought out by the obedience of His life.
We cannot obtain it no matter how hard we work to be righteous. That Righteousness is imputed---put down to our account—reckoned as if it were our own. We stand accepted, in the garment of our Elder Brother. “I bring near”, says God, “My righteousness.” Daniel speaks of the advent of Messiah the Prince, after seventy weeks of years, “to finish transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness.”
This is the name whereby He shall be called, the Lord our Righteousness.”
Jesus the Lamb of God, in His life of sinless obedience has procured that robe for me. He has not only died in my room, to save me from sin’s penalty, but He lives in my room, to present me with a free gift of spotless righteousness.
The Elder Brother has a treasury filled with these garments---“the best robe”. All we need is the key of faith to unlock it. “it is the righteousness which is of God by faith.” Accept it; reach forth the hand of faith to take this glorious robe.
This is the subject of the life and character of the great Apostle whose footsteps we are now tracking in this city of his habitation.
Paul wrote the Philippian letter while he was a prisoner in his “hired house” in Rome. We would love to know all the history of those two long and eventful years in his “hired house”.
Phil 1:12-13: “I would you should understand, brethren, that the things which happened to me have fallen out rather to the furtherance of the gospel. So that my bounds in Christ are manifest in the palace, and in all other places.”
It would appear that he found great favor with the Roman officials who were not the least interested in hindering his work. From the letter to the Philippians we learn that Paul considered the time spent here to be extremely fruitful. The influence Paul exercised over the minds of the soldiers to whom he was chained was similar to the influence he had among the sailors in the Sea of Adria. In the case of prisoners, it was the custom for the soldier on guard to be relieved frequently, if not daily. In the course of “two whole years”, the number of sentinels who were positioned to see and hear the “ambassador in bonds;” listening at times to his dictations of those beautiful Epistles, written not for individual Churches alone, but for the ages.
The crowds flocked to his dwelling and were permitted to hold open conversation, “no man forbidding them”.
Not only did he win his guards to the Lord, but men and women from the palace as well. Luke affirms in Acts 28:31, his account of the gospel blazing away in the heart of the Roman Empire for two full years.
How many would go back, night by night, or day by day, to their barracks to retell the story of this prisoner in bounds; his boldness, earnestness, passion, covered in the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Among that mass of diverse human hearts, the Gospel would doubtless perform the work for which it was sent. “To one it is the savor of life unto life, or of death unto death.”
It is these believing sentinels in the Apostle’s lodging, who had listened to his wondrous story of God’s love in Christ, who would prove the most effective instruments in the spread of the truths of the gospel. In a military capital like Rome, soldiers would preach the gospel in the city, but in their foreign campaigns. These would become the missionaries carrying the Gospel to these distant lands.
The earliest historians explicitly state that Paul was released and undertook further missionary labors to Spain and may have reached the shores of Britain. Clement, Caius of Rome, Dionysius, Tertullian, Origen and Eusebius all insist that he was set free from his first imprisonment and continued to minister to the churches before he was re-arrested at Rome.
Besides the testimony of these historians, from Philippians 1:25 and Philemon 22, Paul’s states belief of his release based upon his promise to send Timothy to them for ministry (3: 19-23), and an anticipation also to pay them a personal visit (2:24).
Clement of Rome (late first century) makes a reference to the ministry of Paul after the end of Acts.
Romans 15:24: “Whenever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you, for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way there by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company.”
Romans 15:28-29: “When I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain. I am sure that when I come to you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.”
At the time of Paul’s imprisonment was when the armies of Rome were taking over Norfolk, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Colchester, St., Albans, and London. Some of the soldiers who had their hands chained to Paul in the “hired house” by the Tiber would carry the glad tidings received from his lips and proclaim them by the banks of Cam, the Stour, and the Thames.
His “bonds in Christ” were known not only in all the Palace (or Praetorian barracks), but in all other places.
As we continue this study through June, we will search out the effects of Paul’s presence and preaching on the higher ranks in the Roman capital, reaching even to the inmates of the Imperial Palace.
“Go in peace, Preacher of good tidings, and Guide of the salvation of the just”.
The gospel power of the all powerful name of Jesus of Nazareth was the watchword and the life-motto of this great soldier of the cross, from the hour he first lifted his sword, until the hours in this city of his closing years, he laid that armor down and the good fight was finished.
He nobly redeemed his pledge, upheld his testimony, and fulfilled his commission:
Acts 23:11: “Be of good cheer, Paul; for as you have testified of Me in Jerusalem, so must you bear witness also at Rome.”
“This Gospel of Christ is the power of God”.
To be continued next week – St. Paul in Rome - Onesimus
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries Church
Scripture from K.J.V. – I entered into the labors of C.S. Lovett’s Lights on the Book of Acts; John Ross MacDuff, St. Paul in Rome– Comments and conclusions are my own. The quest for this study came by a “quickening”.