Reading for Tuesday, May 15: Acts 28

In Luke’s final chapter, we find Paul continuing to engage in the practices of ministry: healing, teaching, declaring Good News. In each place in Luke’s writing, we’re reminded again of God’s role as central character. The language we’ve used several times in this study is “animate”; God, through the Spirit, animates the believers, moving them to speak, teach, heal, and pray in power. Luke’s final chapter wraps up this block of Scripture with the same themes as before.

Luke closes out Acts with Paul in Rome. It may seem odd that Luke doesn’t give us the verdict to Paul’s legal problems…until you realize that this same Luke has been writing with another power in mind all along. It’s not Rome who holds all the cards, anyway; it’s God, who reigns in His Kingdom and is working through the followers of Jesus to bring this Kingdom reign to fruition here — “on earth as it is in heaven.” So, in the end, it doesn’t matter what Rome decides re: Paul’s fate, because his eternal destiny is secured on the authority of a power higher than Caesar.

So, it’s really fitting, then, that Luke draws the curtain to a close the way he does:
“He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.”

With all boldness.
Without hindrance.

That’s Paul, animated by God’s Spirit.