BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST

‘What must I do to be saved?’ the jailor asked. Yet he had been the man who so callously had beaten Paul and Silas, put them in the inner cell and thrust their feet in the stocks. What had changed the man to one about to commit suicide, and who now fell trembling before the Lord’s servants? He might have heard his two prisoners singing at midnight a song of content in bondage to God. The other prisoners certainly heard them, indeed, ‘were listening eagerly’, v. 25. Never before had they heard such words sung in such a place. God answered by an earthquake. What was strange about this earthquake was that the doors were flung open, chains fell off, but the building was not destroyed. God was working, and God was speaking, but the voice the jailor heard was Paul’s. It came from the inner cell, and it was dark midnight, yet the prisoner knew what the jailor was about to do. Did not God reveal it to Paul? Then the jailor had to do with a God who could see in the dark, who knew everything, before whom ‘all things are naked and open’. There was more. The prison doors were open, the chains off, yet no prisoner had run away. The God who used His power to blast open doors and break chains, also used His power to keep the prisoners from escaping. He is a God of almighty power. He is also a God of love who prevented the jailor from committing suicide by the call of the apostle. No wonder he came in trembling and called for a light. When a soul is awakened from the sleep of death the first thing he wants is light. Light from God penetrated his heart the moment he called for mercy. Salvation was what he wanted, not from any sentence of death from the Roman authorities, for his prisoners had not escaped, but salvation from his sins and their penalty. What had the slave girl shouted in the street, v. 17? He was wrong in supposing that he had to do anything, but he was absolutely right in knowing that he needed salvation. It is faith in a personal Saviour that they speak of to the convicted man, a committing of himself to the One who is mighty to save. It is Christ who saves us, and saves us through faith. The same way was open to his family, so the word of God was preached to them also, v. 32.