LIFE SCRIPTS

22 The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!” 23 As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, 24 the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. 25 As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?” 26 When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.” 27 The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” “Yes, I am,” he answered. 28 Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.” “But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied. 29 Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.
Acts 22:22‭-‬29 NIV

https://bible.com/bible/111/act.22.22-29.NIV

What do you do when you have privileges on your side? You use them to your advantage. But not Paul. In the his entire discourse, he spoke about God’s faithfulness in his life yet at no one time referred to his Roman citizenship. Now when he was about to be flogged, he brought out the ace card to the surprise of the authorities. But before this, his testimony seemed to have rubbed the crowd the wrong way. Paul, spoke in the local dialect, Aramaic in order to reach out to the local people. But he also did so in order to identify with them. When people hear you speak their dialect, they become more attentive. So when it seemed as if he was convincing them about the Way, things took a cruel turn when some of them started chanting slogans against him. Such was the uproar that the Roman guards had to escort him to the barracks for safety. Our stance for the truth will be challenged because not all people seek after truth. Infact in today’s social media driven world, truth seems elusive. Just as Paul, we shall face hostility when we uphold the truth…the truth about forgiveness of sin through the cross of Christ. This truth, though evident for all to see, has been veiled from those who reject it. But we are still called to radiate it in a fallen world…a world in which we ourselves had been trapped in until we were forgiven. God redeems us from the world so that we reach out to that same world. He promises us that He’ll be with us all through. We see this in Paul’s life…called from sin and sent to the Gentiles…suffered for Christ, arrested, flogged, shipwrecked, nearly lynched, abused, rejected, conned etc…not a very favorable list ain’t it? But God has called us into the world to radiate His truth and He’ll be with us.