Acts 28:1-15

4. Ministry on the way to Rome 27:1-28:15

For a number of reasons Luke seems to have described this stage of the gospel expansion in detail. He evidently wanted to demonstrate God’s protection of Paul, to illustrate the increasingly Gentile nature of gospel expansion, and to document the sovereign Lord’s building of His church.

"Ever since the purpose of going to Rome had been planted in Paul’s mind by the Holy Spirit, his plans had been formulated with that goal in view (Acts 19:21). No warnings of dangers to come could make him deviate from that ultimate aim, nor from the intermediate stages (Macedonia, Achaia, Jerusalem). The intervening weeks had stretched into months and then into years, and Paul had been confronted with one crisis after another, but he had divine assurance that Rome would yet be reached (Acts 23:11). The means were not what Paul could have foreseen nor what he might have chosen, but God was in control and the apostle was fully willing to leave the details in His hands." [Note: Kent, p. 184.]

God led Luke to record Paul’s journey to Rome in a way that is very similar to the biblical record of Jonah’s journey. He may have done this so Luke’s readers would note these similarities and connect the purposes for both journeys, namely, the salvation of lost Gentiles.

The amount of detail in this section also raises the possibility that Luke, as a good storyteller, was building to his climax by emphasizing the improbability of Paul ever reaching Rome. He probably did this to produce a feeling of great relief and satisfaction in the reader when Paul finally did get there. Ancient Greek novelists often used this literary device for this purpose. Storms and shipwrecks were favorite obstacles heroes had to overcome to win their prizes, as in Homer’s Odyssey, for example. Luke purposely built to his climax in this section as he did in his Gospel. There he described in detail Jesus’ final trip to Jerusalem and His last days there, a feature peculiar to the third Gospel. [Note: See the map of Paul’s journey to Rome in Longenecker, "The Acts . . .," p. 251, or in Toussaint, "Acts," p. 425.]

"The story is told with such a wealth of detail that in all classical literature there is no passage which gives us so much information about the working of an ancient ship." [Note: Rackham, p. 476.]

This story also throws more light on the personality and character of Paul. Though he was a prisoner, he became the leader and savior of all those who travelled with him. Though he was weak, God made him strong (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10). He was God’s man, the Holy Spirit working in and through him, for the blessing of everyone he touched. Paul is the main subject. Some people on the trip even concluded that he was a god (Acts 28:6; cf. Luke 8:25; Luke 23:47).

Toward the end of the nineteenth century a group of Scottish unbelievers decided to expose errors in the Bible. They designated one of their number to visit all the places Luke mentioned that Paul visited with a view to proving the record in Acts inaccurate. The man chosen was Sir William Ramsay who, after thorough study of the matter, concluded that Luke was accurate in every detail. [Note: Ironside, Lectures on . . ., pp. 618-19.] Ramsay became a Christian and wrote several books on Acts and Paul in defense of God’s Word, some of which appear in the bibliography of these notes.