Acts 21:1-26

Acts 21:1–26 (ESV)✞: Paul Goes to Jerusalem, Paul Visits James

Passage

I’ve combined together a couple of passages here. Verses 1–16✞ are mostly a recounting of Paul’s journey toward Jerusalem, and verses 17–26✞ are him and James strategizing on how to keep Paul out of jail once he arrives. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t work, but that’s a topic for another post.)

For the most part, as mentioned, verses 1-16 are just a straightforward travelogue: we went from here to here, and then from there to here, and then from there to here, … However, sprinkled through this section are a couple of mentions of people prophesying to Paul that he shouldn’t go to Jerusalem, either for unnamed reasons (v. 4✞) or because he’s going to be imprisoned (vv. 11–14✞). The thing is, Paul already knows this, it’s been mentioned in previous passages that he himself has had similar prophecies/warnings from the Spirit, so they’re not telling him anything new. In v. 14✞ they give up on trying to persuade him and decide to let the will of the Lord be done.

When he arrives in Jerusalem one of Paul’s first acts is to go and visit James, who is still one of the leaders of the Christian Church in Jerusalem.

At this point, what happens here in Acts 21 becomes very reminiscent of what happened back in Acts 15:

Action	Similarities
There is an assembly	Happened both times
Paul recounts all he’s been doing among the Gentiles	Happened both times
There is controversy about Jewish laws and circumcision	This is the main point of both sections, though the controversy is of a different nature
They make a plan so Paul won’t offend the Christians of Jewish background	Acts 21
A letter is been sent to the Gentile believers about abstaining from food sacrificed to idols, blood, and food that has been strangled, as well as from sexual immorality	Acts 15 is when they created that letter, and it’s mentioned again in Acts 21

That last part is the part that’s most confusing to me: isn’t that the letter that Paul himself carried to the Gentiles? In Acts 21, why are they telling him about this letter that he may have had a hand in crafting, and at the very least was the messenger of? I’m assuming it’s a reminder, but it feels like an unnecessary one.

Regardless, as mentioned, the controversy around Jewish laws, and circumcision in particular, is different this time.

Acts 15 Controversy	Acts 21 Controversy
Christians from a Gentile background were being told they weren’t real Christians if they didn’t follow a number of Jewish laws, including / especially the rule that they had to be circumcised	Christians from a Jewish background were being told that Paul (and others, probably) were forbidding following the Jewish law, especially around circumcision, and telling people they couldn’t be circumcised.

Their plan to appease the Jewish Christians is simple, though: there are a number of men under a Nazarite vow, and are about to go to the Temple to complete the ritual. The elders suggest that Paul go with them and pay their expenses to show that he is not against such traditions / customs. So he does:

Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself along with them and went into the temple, giving notice when the days of purification would be fulfilled and the offering presented for each one of them.

Acts 21:26 (ESV)✞

Thoughts

I think I might have mentioned this in a previous post, but it seems that Paul is being drawn inexorably toward Jerusalem, just as Jesus was before his crucifixion. Similar to Jesus he knows that something is going to happen to him there, but, also similar to Jesus, he knows that he needs to go there anyway.

None of this, of course, would be a surprise to Paul. He knew all the way back in his conversion in Acts 9:1–31 that he was going to have to suffer for the name of Jesus.

Giving up on Warning Paul

Verses 1–16✞ are the kind of verses one is tempted to skip over—just a list of names of places outlining Paul’s journey—but in this case doing so would have meant missing something that, personally, I find kind of confusing. Or maybe it’s not confusing at all, maybe it’s just an example of human nature at work. (This could be one of those opportunities to tell people they should never skip over any section of Scripture but that would be hypocritical; I definitely find myself skipping over—or maybe skimming—passages like genealogies. So I’m not throwing stones¹.)

We’ve seen in previous passages that Paul seems to know he’s going to be imprisoned—or that something negative is going to happen, anyway—but he’s heading there anyway, seemingly prompted by the Spirit. And yet, all along his journey, we see his fellow Christians, especially prophets, warning him not to, because… he’s going to be imprisoned, or something worse is going to happen. Even those who aren’t prophets—including the author Luke himself—seem to be imploring Paul not to go, based on the word of those prophets. Often when I’ve read this passage I’ve wondered: why are all of these people who’re getting their prophecies from the same Spirit as Paul telling him not to go to Jerusalem, while the Spirit is telling Paul himself that he still has to go?

I think this is a matter of how much the Spirit is telling each prophet, and how s/he chooses to interpret what they’ve heard. (The ESV Study Bible points us to 1 Corinthians 14:29 (ESV)✞ and 1 Thessalonians 5:20–21 (ESV)✞ as examples of where Paul himself urges Christians to test prophets/prophecies – perhaps as a result of what he learned here in Acts 21?) The way I’m interpreting this passage is that the Spirit told various prophets that Paul was going to be imprisoned or that something negative was going to happen to him in Jerusalem (which was true), told Paul the same thing (still true), and also told Paul that he had to go anyway, which He didn’t make such a point of telling the other prophets.

So if I’m a prophet, who’s a friend of Paul, and the Holy Spirit tells me that Paul is going to be imprisoned in Jerusalem, I’m going to take that as a warning that I need to give Paul: don’t go to Jerusalem, or you’re going to be imprisoned! By verse 14✞ it starts to become clear to Luke and others that yes, Paul already knows this, but he’s also been told by the Spirit that this imprisonment is the Lord’s will.

The Vow

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s not true that Paul forbids circumcision. It is true that he forbids circumcision as a means of becoming a Christian—in very strong terms!—but not the act in and of itself. He said it in other passages: circumcision or un-circumcision is nothing. If a family is from a Jewish background, and become Christians, and have a son, and want to circumcise him because that’s their tradition, the Christian leaders (including Paul) seem to have no problem with this; if anyone goes to that family and tells them that their son can’t be a Christian unless he’s circumcised, they have a big problem with that.

As the ESV Study Bible puts it:

Acts 21:23 under a vow. Those under a Nazirite vow would abstain from wine, strong drink, grape juice, grapes, or raisins; would avoid any contact that would defile them (such as contact with a dead body); and would not cut their hair (cf. Num. 6:1–21). When the time of the vow was over (often 30 days), they would cut their hair and present an offering in the temple (cf. Mishnah, Nazir 6.3). If Paul went with them and personally paid for the cost of their offering, it would show that he did not object to Jewish converts following OT customs voluntarily, so long as those same customs were not required of Gentile believers … .

ESV Study Bible

Although Paul has been warned by the Spirit (as well as all of those prophets) that he’s going to be imprisoned in Jerusalem, it doesn’t mean he wants to be! If he can appease the folks who come from a Jewish background by showing them that this is a misunderstanding—which I believe it is—then maybe the situation will resolve itself.

As already mentioned, though, it won’t work. He’s going to be imprisoned in the next passage. I don’t think it’s wrong for him to try to avoid imprisonment, however; I don’t see it as him trying to thwart the word of the Spirit. I don’t see this as a case of the Spirit saying to Paul, “Go to Jerusalem and get imprisoned,” and Paul saying, “No!” Paul has already made it clear he’s willing to do whatever the Lord is going to require of him, but the Holy Spirit hasn’t given him a timeline as to when he’s going to be imprisoned or other details; Paul’s approach is to be “all things to all people, that by all means [he] might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:19–23 (ESV)✞ – or, frankly, all of Chapter 9✞), so it’s very much in character for him to try to clear up this misunderstanding with the folks from a Jewish background. And when it doesn’t work, he’ll accept that as the will of the Spirit.

Footnotes

• This is a shortened form of a saying we have in the West: “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” In other words: people who have certain faults shouldn’t criticize other people who have those same faults. ↩