“Man Proposes, God Disposes”
“MAN PROPOSES, GOD DISPOSES”
ROMANS 15:22-33
Paul writes about his plans to visit Rome.
The passage is moving and autobiographical. In pursuing his bold plan of winning the empire for Christ, Paul had set Spain in his program of evangelism. It was a sure instinct. Spain gave Rome much. The bulk of the meager remains of Latin literature which have survived from the fifties and the sixties of the first century was the work of Spaniards. Seneca, Nero’s tutor and prime minister, his nephew Lucan, the epic poet, and several others prominent in Rome’s contemporary cultural life, came from Spain. Spain was also to provide three emperors, including Trajan and Hadrian.
We do not know whether Paul ever reached the great western peninsula. If he did not, the plan was wrecked by his visit to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was home to the stubborn Pharisaic wing of the Christian church. Paul, who had been a Pharisee, yearned to win them. He knew they looked suspiciously at his Gentile evangelism, and his scheme was to demonstrate Gentile love by carrying to Jerusalem a large sum of money, contributed by the Christians of the empire, to relieve poverty in the Jerusalem community.
The poverty was no doubt real and may have come about to some extent because of the short-lived experiments in Christian community living recorded in the first chapters of Acts. Jerusalem was tense amidst the growing terrorism of the countryside and the deepening opposition to Roman rule. The empire sought to hold the turbulent province with a meager garrison of 3,000, based at Caesarea. Government by the procurator was weak and inadequately armed. Paul knew that he risked his life (15:30,32). He persisted in his project, as Luke frankly narrates, against all advice. He failed to win the dissidents. The journey led to his arrest and imprisonment. God overruled and brought him nevertheless to Rome. Precious documents of the New Testament, the “prison epistles,” no less than Luke’s two books, for which the research was undertaken while Paul was in protective custody at Caesarea, arose from what, on the face of it, was a catastrophe. Read the story and assess Paul’s mood and his expectations in Acts chapters 21–23.
To ponder What can we learn from Paul’s desire to serve others and his request for prayer?