Acts 16:25-40--The Philippian Jailer Converted

Acts 16:25-40
English Standard Version

The Philippian Jailer Converted
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, 26 and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's bonds were unfastened. 27 When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” 29 And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33 And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. 34 Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.

​35 But when it was day, the magistrates sent the police, saying, “Let those men go.” 36 And the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, “The magistrates have sent to let you go. Therefore come out now and go in peace.” 37 But Paul said to them, “They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out.” 38 The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens. 39 So they came and apologized to them. And they took them out and asked them to leave the city. 40 So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.

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This section of Scripture has one of those "gospel in a nutshell" verses that we like to quote, but there are reasons some people prefer to quote this verse to other similar verses, and there are certain people that latch onto this verse and this story for what it doesn't say.  I'll make note of it when I get there, but that is poor biblical hermeneutics.  If something is clearly said and commanded elsewhere, don't go looking for a place where it might be less clear and cling to the less clear passage at the exclusion of the passage that is clear because you don't like the clarity provided in the other passages.  Don't assume failure to say something means that somehow that means that God or the author doesn't find that issue important--it just may not have needed to be addressed in this particular case (the specific issue at hand is the lack of a command to repent, but I think we'll see that the jailer was already brought to the point of repentance and wondered what to do or say next to make proper confession).

When we left Paul and Silas last time, they had been jailed by the city's magistrates because they had upset the merchants of the city by casting out a demon from one of the slave-girls in the marketplace that had been used as a fortune teller.  Without the demon living in her any more she no longer could tell fortunes and the owners could no longer make money off of her.  There was such a riot by the people over this that the magistrates (not knowing that Paul and his companions were Roman citizens, but thinking they were only Jews without Roman citizenship) beat them and threw them into the stocks in the deepest part of the prison to try to quell the rebellion and pacify the mob.  The guards actually had to watch the doors of the prison to try to keep the mob out and the jailer (probably the warden) of the prison was given the responsibility of personally protecting Paul and Silas.

We'll join them now that even at midnight they are choosing to pray and sing hymns to God, and all the other prisoners (and I'm sure all the other prison guards) were listening to them.  There was then a great earthquake that shook the foundations of the prison and opened all the doors to the cells and loosed all the bonds of the prisoners, including the stocks that Paul and Silas were in (this was no natural earthquake, but an act of God).  Paul and Silas could have gotten up and walked out at this point, but they knew their work was not done.  They commanded everyone listening to them to stay in their cells--there would be no jailbreak tonight.

The jailer (again, this is probably the warden of the prison) woke at the sound of the earthquake and saw all the prison doors open and assumed all the prisoners had escaped.  In the Roman culture, if he had failed at his duty and let these prisoners escape, his life was forfeit, but it was more honorable for him to kill himself that to let himself and his family be shamed by public trial.  So, the jailer drew his sword (probably a short sword that we'd call a dagger) and was ready to kill himself, but Paul cried out to him, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”

The jailer has made all these assumptions based off of what he can see in the darkness at midnight--the darkest part of the night.  It was only after Paul called to him that he called for torches to illuminate the darkness so that he could see clearly that Paul was telling the truth and that all the prisoners had remained in their cells even though they all had been freed from their bonds.  He brought Paul and Silas out, for he knew that this act of God had to be in relation to them and the message they were preaching, and he asked them plainly, "What must I do to be saved?."  His heart is already at the point of repentance here.  He knows that he needs salvation and he clearly knows that he is worthy of death, but even death was not going to give him any relief or escape--he knew that.  He is looking for the hope from the gospel that he has heard about them preaching, though he himself did not have the chance to hear it.

Their message to him is probably abbreviated here by Luke but it is one of our verses we like to quote to people when they ask this same question, "What must I do to be saved."  Many times we read this verse wrong and assume that Paul is answering the jailer's question by saying that our belief is some kind of work that we must do, but we know from other texts that even our repentance and our confession of faith are given to us and we do nothing to save ourselves--we just respond in obedience to the work that the Holy Spirit has already done within us.  Paul is not giving a formula to the jailer to say "repeat the Sinner's Prayer as I say it."  No, he is calling for the jailer to make a believe in the Lord Jesus Christ at the exclusion of all other gods and to make a public profession of faith and for him to be baptized.  How do I know that?  We need to simply look at the next verses to see how this jailer responded to the command to "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ."  It seems he knew what they meant and did everything consistent with what we have seen others in the book of Acts do, so even if Luke doesn't record all the words that Paul and Silas used to speak to the jailer at this moment in time when that man was in crisis and about to take his own life, we should look at the man's actions for a fuller picture of the conversation they probably had with him and his family (even if those parts of the conversation were not recorded for us).  We should not assume that just because we don't see that part of the conversation doesn't mean it didn't happen, and we should be careful about looking at any verse in isolation without the context of the entire passage around it and in this case we should not assume that Paul and Silas are preaching a different gospel to this jailor then they do to everyone else they speak to in the book of Acts.

I admit the second part of their statement is a strange one and there others that latch onto this verse for that reason to as they would like to believe that members of the household can be saved by the faith of the leader of the household even without a personal decision by each individual member.  We do see some instances in the book of Acts where the leader of a household believes and everyone in the household (this would likely included not only the wife and children, but also any servants and slaves in the household) would follow their lead.  This is the way that is was in that culture for the head of the household made the decision for who and how they would worship in their household.  We will see instructions later in the New Testament for if a wife became a Christian apart from her husband or if a slave became a Christian apart from their master and they are in a household that believes differently and worships a different god, but we don't see any such discussion for if the husband is a believer and the wife is not or if the master is a believer and the slave is not, for that would not happen in this culture.  The wife, children and servants would all follow the example set by the master of the house, though I believe in this case that they gospel was preached to them as well as Paul and Silas were invited back to his house with him and they preached to all the household and all of them believed before they were baptized.  So then this statement of saying "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household" probably was Paul saying "You're going to want to take us home with you so that everyone else in your household can hear what you've just heard and can believe what you just believed and also receive eternal life and the gift of the Holy Spirit."  We again should not look at this verse at the exclusion of other similar texts for we see that Cornelius invited everyone to hear the message Peter had to preach and they all heard and believed and it was at that time that everyone in his household was saved and baptized.

We have no indication in any of these "household" situations that there were young children unable to understand and process the gospel who were baptized without their own personal belief and profession of faith.  This is one of the passages along with the earlier passage in Acts with the household of Cornelius and another passage in 1 Corinthians that mentions the household of Stephanas, the first converts in Achaia, that those who believe in infant baptism will point to and try to read into the text something that isn't there to claim that there might have been infants there and if the whole household was baptized then that would have to include these infants and that would mean that this kind of baptism would have to mean something different than what believer's baptism means.  That's a lot to try to make the passage say when it says none of that and there are no other supporting Scriptures that I know of for this viewpoint.  The word baptism clearly means to submerge in a liquid (like a dye) so that the object you are baptizing (like the cloth) has a permanent and visible change in its identity (the cloth that was white now becomes purple or red or whatever other color and that change cannot be undone).  We can't force such a change in identity to a child even though it appears that happened with the nation of Israel with the sign of the Old Covenant that is called circumcision.  Yes, the male children were circumcised on the eighth day to show that they belonged to the LORD and were part of the LORD's people, but the Bible is clear that circumcision is not what saved them or even made them Jewish.  Read the book of Romans and the book of Galatians if you are confused about that.  There is nothing we can do externally to our children to mark them in any way to make them more acceptable to God.  We can however dedicate them to the Lord and vow to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord as we are commanded to do in Ephesians 6, but there is no need to involved the word "baptism" with that baby dedication and confuse the issue.  The practice of infant baptism is a holdover from Roman Catholicism that taught that only those who had been baptized by the Church were eligible to go to heaven (so the Church could withhold baptism from anyone who believed differently than them) but this then lead to the question about if children who were not yet old enough to make a profession of faith would go to heaven when they died, so they instituted a two-tiered system of infant baptism but then a time of catechism and confession during their teenage years and baptism was divorced from the profession of faith--it was never like that in the book of Acts.  Repentance, belief, confession, and baptism all happened in quick succession, nearly simultaneously so that they all seem to be part of one event.  So it is here.

32 And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33 And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. 34 Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.

What we see here is a shared faith now.  It's not just the faith of Paul and Silas, nor is it just the faith of the jailer, but everyone in the household believed and was baptized and they all rejoiced in the common faith that they had together.  We also see them tending to the wounds of Paul and Silas here.  That has nothing to do with salvation specifically, but it does show a change in heart, for you would not be concerned about the wounds of a man that had received just punishment.  You'd want them to suffer--that is the point of the lashing they received.  However, if you realized they were unjustly accused and beaten without cause, then you would have mercy on them and tend to their wounds.  It seems clear that the jailer and his household made up their mind that Paul and Silas should be treated as guests in their house and not prisoners for they also had food set before them that I'm sure was far better than anything they would have received in prison.

The next day, the magistrates realized that the mob had settled and they ordered for Paul and Silas to be let go from prison with the order that they were to leave the city quietly.  However, Paul refused to go quietly because he wanted the magistrates to know that they had mistreated two Roman citizens and thrown them in prison without trial.  They are now in a Roman-controlled region and Roman citizenship (especially the kind you were born with and not the kind that the wealthy could purchase) really meant something.  It seems that Paul wanted the word to get out that he, Silas, Timothy, and Luke were Roman citizens and not just Jews, and hopefully they would not be so easily mistreated by the civil authorities moving forward.  This will not be the last time that we see Paul use his Roman citizenship to his advantage in his efforts to share the gospel.  He will know his rights and know when it is the proper time to exercise those rights, and when it is correct to surrender those rights.

Paul forces the magistrates to come and get them and deliver their message in person.  So the magistrates came to them in person and apologized for how they had mistreated them for they had no idea that they were Roman citizens.  They then asked Paul and Silas (and their companions) to leave town but they did not compel them to do so.  This gave Paul and Silas time to go visit Lydia before leaving and to see all the brothers from the city.  Note that when they arrived there were no "brothers" to speak of--not even Jewish brethren, but now it seems that there several male believers who God will probably use to plant the church there in Philippi.  They wanted to make sure to encourage these new believers before they left--probably to make sure they knew they were not being abandoned.  It is then time for them to leave and move onto the next place where God wanted them to minister.