Suppose a man stops you in the parking lot after church. He is shaking. He takes hold of your arm and says, "I need to know. What must I do to be saved?" What would you tell him?
I am afraid a lot of church folks in this country would stammer. Some would say, "Well, start coming to church." Others would say, "Get baptized," or "Pray this little prayer after me." The world has a thousand answers to that question, and nearly all of them start with the word do. Do more and try harder, and maybe it will all come out right on the scales.
Most of us are familiar with the Philippian jailer. We know he asked that question. Fewer of us know the backstory, how Paul and Silas ended up in his jail in the first place, and that backstory matters. God used a fortune-teller, a mob, a beating, and an earthquake to bring one hard man to the most important question a sinner will ever ask. The answer God gave him has never changed: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved." It is the same answer He gives you.
A Spirit Silenced
Paul and his company had been in Philippi "for some days" (Acts 16:12). Luke calls it "a Roman colony," a little piece of Rome planted in Macedonia, and the people there were proud of it. There does not seem to have been a synagogue in town. The few who worshiped the true God met down by the river outside the gate, and that is where the Lord opened Lydia's heart. She was the first convert we know of in all of Europe. Notice the little word "we" in verse 16. Luke was there. This is an eyewitness talking.
One day, on the way to that same place of prayer, they were met by a servant-girl with "a spirit of divination." What in the world is that? The modern translations all use about the same phrase, and it means she was a fortune-teller. Luke's Greek literally says she had "a python spirit." The Greeks tied the python to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and folks believed the god spoke through girls like this one. Luke simply calls it a spirit, and Paul treats it as exactly what it was, a demon. She had demonic power to tell fortunes.
That was big business, and it still is. The whole trade is built on superstition and demonic or spiritual attraction. People will seek out a fortune-teller to learn the future or to find something that has been lost. You can drive up the highway and see the palm reader's sign, or pull up your horoscope on the phone in your pocket. Nothing has changed but the packaging.
Look who profited. She was "bringing her masters much profit." Masters, plural. A group of men owned this girl and split the take. She was a slave twice over, owned by men and held by a devil.
Verse 17 is strange at first. She followed Paul and his men around town, crying out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation." Every word of that is true! So why would it bother Paul?
Because truth out of the devil's mouth is still the devil's work. Satan does not mind saying true things when they serve his purpose. Look at the footnote in your LSB. It says literally "a way of salvation." In a city crowded with gods and shrines, "a way" is exactly what the devil wants folks to hear. One more road among many. Pick the one that suits you. Paul preached the only way there is, and Peter had already said so plainly in Jerusalem:
She kept it up "for many days," and Paul was "greatly annoyed." The word means worn down and troubled through and through. Matthew Henry put it this way in his commentary:
Paul finally had heard enough. He turned and spoke straight past the girl to the spirit: "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to leave her!" There was no ritual and no show. Paul had no power of his own to throw out a demon. He had the name of Jesus Christ, and that was plenty. "And it left at that very moment."
Her life was changed for the better. Luke does not tell us what became of her after that day, but the devil's grip on her was broken. That is where the trouble began for Paul and Silas.
Luke uses the same word twice, and it is no accident. In verse 18 the spirit "left." In verse 19 their "hope of profit had left." When the demon went out, the money went out right behind it. They cared about the cash, and a girl set free meant nothing to them.
Someone once observed that wherever Paul went, either a revival or a riot broke out. That is the way it is sometimes when we try to live for the Lord. People will either rejoice at the preaching of the Word or they will get angry, and in this case there was anger. The masters were upset. They were going to lose some money!
Watch how they dressed it up in court. They never mentioned the money, not one word about profit. They charged Paul and Silas with stirring up trouble, and they leaned hard on prejudice: "being Jews" on one side, "being Romans" on the other. Anti-Jewish feeling was in the air in those days. Luke tells us later that the emperor "Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome" (Acts 18:2). So the masters played the crowd, and the crowd joined in.
The magistrates did not hold a trial. They tore the clothes off of Paul and Silas and ordered them beaten with rods. A Roman beating meant your shirt was ripped off so the blows landed on bare skin. The rods were carried by officers whose whole job was to swing them, and those officers show up again in verse 35. This was a very painful and severe punishment. The Jews limited a beating to forty lashes, and they stopped at thirty-nine to be safe. The Romans had no such limit. Luke simply says they were given "many wounds." It was one of three times this happened to Paul. Years later he wrote, "Five times I received from the Jews forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods" (2 Corinthians 11:24–25).
Then into the prison. They got no sympathy and no medical treatment as they lay there bleeding. The jailer, "having received such a command," took no chances. He threw them into the inner prison, the darkest and dampest part of the place, and fastened their feet in the stocks. The footnote says literally "wood." Their legs were locked in heavy timbers for added security. This jailer was a hard man doing a hard job, and he did it well.
There are two things here for us. First, do not take the devil's endorsement. It flatters a Christian when the world says something nice about his faith. "I think it's wonderful you've found something that works for you." "All roads lead to the same place." That sounds friendly, but it is the servant-girl's "a way of salvation" all over again. When your coworker or your cousin puts Jesus on the shelf next to every other option, be grieved like Paul was, and kindly tell them there is "no other name under heaven." If you have a horoscope app on your phone or a deck of tarot cards in a drawer because you thought it was harmless fun, get rid of it this week. Paul did not think that spirit was harmless.
Second, expect faithfulness to cost something. When the gospel touches somebody's wallet, look for trouble. Maybe you lost a sale because you would not shade the truth. Maybe a friend cooled toward you once you stopped laughing at the jokes. You are in good company. Paul and Silas did nothing but good in Philippi, and it got them a beating.
Songs at Midnight
Paul and Silas did right, and they ended up bleeding in the inner prison with their feet locked in wood. So what do you do at midnight, when obedience has landed you in the dark?
I have heard men wonder why they waited until midnight to pray and sing. I think we have answered that. They were in miserable shape when they got there, backs torn open and legs locked in the stocks. Nobody sleeps like that.
Midnight in a Roman jail is when you would expect to hear groaning and cursing. Instead the other prisoners heard two men "praying and singing hymns of praise to God." Luke's wording tells us they kept at it. This was no quick verse sung through gritted teeth.
"And the prisoners were listening to them." That word means they were listening closely, leaning in. Luke uses it only here in the whole New Testament. Picture those men in the dark, chained up, ears tuned to the inner cell. They had never heard anything like it.
Years later Paul wrote a letter from another prison to this same church at Philippi, and he told them this:
The church that heard that letter read aloud knew Paul was not writing theory. Some of them had seen his back. The jailer himself may have been sitting in that room.
"And suddenly there came a great earthquake." That was just luck, right? No, that was the Lord! The Spirit of God moved that ground. Earthquakes knock walls down. They do not unfasten every chain on every prisoner and swing every door wide at the same moment. That was the hand of God.
Notice what did not happen. Nobody escaped. The doors stood open and Paul and Silas stayed right where they were. God was not arranging a jailbreak that night. He was arranging a conversion. Luke does not tell us why the other prisoners did not run either. Maybe they were too stunned. Maybe a man who has been listening to hymns at midnight does not want to leave the men who sang them. Whatever the reason, God kept every one of them in that jail.
Then the jailer woke up. He saw the doors standing open and did the math. Why would he reach for his sword? In the Roman world, a guard who lost his prisoners paid for it himself. We saw that back in Acts 12, when Peter walked out of Herod's prison:
The jailer figured he was a dead man either way. Better to fall on his own sword that night than face disgrace and execution in the morning.
"But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Do not harm yourself, for we are all here!'" Paul could have walked out that door. He had every reason to. This was the man who had thrown him into the inner cell and locked his bleeding legs in wood. In the middle of all that pain and trouble, Paul and Silas still had a burden for the lost, including those who had not been so kind to them! Paul cared more about that jailer's soul than he did about his own freedom.
Your midnight is when the prisoners are listening. The coworker who knows your mama is dying is listening, and so are your children when the doctor calls with bad news. People learn more about your God from how you act at midnight than from anything you say at noon. Can you pray and sing in the inner cell? That kind of praise comes from a life already spent with the Lord before the trouble came.
Is there somebody who has done you wrong whose soul you have quit caring about? Paul shouted for the man who locked him up.
Maybe you know a little of what that jailer felt with the sword in his hand, with the doors flown open on your life and no way through that you can see. Hear Paul's voice: "Do not harm yourself." Do not carry that alone. Contact us and let us pray with you, and if you are in danger right now, call or text 988. There is a better way out than the sword, and it comes in the very next verse.
The Question That Matters Most
Paul's loud voice stopped the sword. But the jailer still had a bigger problem than lost prisoners, and he knew it. He came in trembling with a question.
The earthquake woke the jailer from a physical sleep so he could be awakened spiritually. He called for lights and rushed into that inner cell, the same cell he had shoved these men into a few hours before. He fell on his face before them, "trembling with fear." Then he brought them out and asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
Stop and think about that question. What did he mean by "saved"? He was not worried about Rome anymore. Every prisoner was accounted for. His job was safe and so was his neck. He was asking about something bigger than the magistrates.
Where would a Roman jailer even get that word? Go back to verse 17. For "many days" a girl had been crying through the streets of Philippi that these men were "proclaiming to you the way of salvation." The whole town had heard it, and it is hard to believe the jailer had not. Then at midnight he heard these men praying and singing, and then God shook the ground under his feet. The devil meant that girl's shouting for mockery, and God turned it into a signpost. So a hard man ended up on his face asking the very question the whole city had been hearing about.
Those exact words, "What must I do to be saved?", appear only here in all the Bible. Praise God, Paul and Silas knew the answer.
Others came close to that question. A rich young ruler once asked the Lord Jesus something very similar: "Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" (Luke 18:18). Jesus pointed that man to the commandments, and the man answered, "All these things I have kept from my youth" (Luke 18:21).
Why such different answers to such similar questions? The ruler thought he was a good man, and he needed the law to show him he was not. The jailer was already face down and trembling. A man who already knows he is lost needs to be told where to run.
Notice one more little thing. The jailer called them "Sirs." The word is "lords." He was ready to bow to Paul and Silas, and they would have none of it. They pointed him straight past themselves to the one Lord: "Believe in the Lord Jesus." That answer has four parts, and every one of them matters.
"Believe." He asked what he must do, and they told him whom to trust. Faith brings nothing to God but an empty hand, and that hand takes hold of what Christ has already done. Paul spelled it out for the Romans:
"To the one who does not work, but believes." The jailer's whole life had run on orders and duties. That night the answer to his biggest question was to stop working and believe.
Believing means more than agreeing that some facts about Jesus are true. The devil's servant-girl knew facts. Paul summed up his own preaching like this:
Repentance and faith come together. You turn from your sin, and you turn to Christ. The jailer ran to Christ, and you will see in a minute that his whole life turned around with him.
If you live around Brunswick, you have driven over the Sidney Lanier Bridge, and you have never inspected a cable on it. Nobody made you take a course in engineering before you crossed. You put your whole weight on that bridge, your car with your family in it, and it carried you over the Brunswick River. Saving faith is like that. It quits standing on the bank admiring Jesus and puts its whole weight on Him.
"In the Lord Jesus." Faith is only as good as what it rests on, so Paul and Silas pointed the jailer to a Person. He is the Lord, God the Son, sovereign over earthquakes and over you. His name is Jesus, the name the angel gave Him:
Look at verse 34. Luke says the jailer "believed in God." Verse 31 told him to believe in the Lord Jesus, and three verses later Luke calls it believing in God. To trust Jesus is to trust God, because Jesus is God.
"And you will be saved." That is a promise, with no "maybe" in it. God gave His word, and God does not lie.
"You and your house." Paul held out the same promise, on the same terms, to every soul under the jailer's roof. Each one would have to believe for himself. Look how Luke tells it:
Paul and Silas took time to teach. "They spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his household." In the middle of the night, with their backs still raw, they held a Bible study. Faith has content. People believe what they hear, and somebody has to tell them.
Then look at the change. "He took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds." It is the same word Luke used back in verse 23, the "many wounds" the rods had laid on them. The man who had added to their pain now tended it with his own hands.
Luke goes straight on: "immediately he was baptized, he and all his household." He believed, and that same night he went down into the water to show the world whose he was. Mind the order. He believed first, then he was baptized. His baptism announced that he had already been saved.
And oh, by the way, there is no proof of infant baptism in this passage. Just because he and his household were baptized does not mean anyone there was a baby. Luke tells us exactly who was in that household. They were people who could hear "the word of the Lord" (v. 32), and people who could rejoice because they had believed in God (v. 34). You do not preach to a newborn at one o'clock in the morning and expect him to rejoice that he has believed. Every one baptized that night was a believer.
Then he "brought them into his house and set food before them." The footnote says literally "a table." That was a risk. These were the magistrates' prisoners, and he brought them home and fed them. We see the changed life of the man who was once a hardened keeper of the jail. He and his family, as believers, submitted to baptism, and he had Paul and Silas as guests in his home. He was identifying with Christ and with Christ's people, out in the open.
Luke says he "rejoiced greatly with his whole household." At midnight he had a sword at his own chest. Before daylight he was sitting at a table praising God with his family. That is what the answer to the question does.
Believer, could you answer that question? If a trembling man asked you tomorrow, "What must I do to be saved?", could you tell him in one sentence, with Scripture? Skip the class and the program, and do not tell him to come back Sunday and talk to the preacher. Point him to Christ the way Paul did. If you have believed in the Lord Jesus but you have never followed Him in baptism, what are you waiting for? The jailer was baptized the same night.
If you have never asked that question for yourself, keep reading. I am coming back to you before we are done.
Servants Vindicated
By sunrise the jailer was a new man. Paul and Silas, though, were still officially prisoners, beaten in public without a trial. What would God do about the wrong done to His servants?
When day came, the magistrates sent word: "Release those men." Maybe the earthquake rattled them. Maybe they figured a night in the stocks was lesson enough. Luke does not say. The "policemen" they sent were the rod-bearers, likely the very men who had swung the rods the day before.
The jailer was delighted. Listen to the new believer talk: "Come out now and go in peace." A day earlier that man did not have any peace to wish on anybody.
Paul is told they are free to go, and his response is a bold one. He says no. They publicly beat two Roman citizens and put them in jail without a trial, and Paul will not slip out the back door. Their error needs to be acknowledged. Under Roman law, beating a citizen without a trial was a serious crime, and a magistrate could lose his office over it. Remember what the masters said in verse 21? "Being Romans." This time it is Paul who says, "men who are Romans." The men who hid behind their citizenship had just beaten two citizens in the public square.
Why did Paul not say so the day before? Luke does not tell us. Maybe he tried and the mob drowned him out. Maybe he chose to suffer. We do not know.
We do know why he spoke up now, and it was not pride or revenge. Paul was about to leave a brand-new church behind, with Lydia and the jailer's household at the heart of it. If Paul and Silas sneaked out of town at dawn, that little church would carry the stain of following two jailbirds who left in the dark. A public release told all of Philippi that these men had done nothing wrong. Paul was protecting the flock.
The magistrates heard that they were Roman citizens, and they became afraid. The same men who had ordered the beating came down to the jail hat in hand. They brought them out and kept asking them, please, to leave town. God publicly vindicated His servants on this occasion. Sometimes He does that in this life. He will do it for every one of His people at the judgment.
Paul did not lose his nerve over what happened in Philippi either. He wrote to the next church down the road:
After they were let out, they went to Lydia's house. Remember her? She was the seller of purple, the woman who was saved earlier in this chapter. Her house may have been the first meeting place for the church at Philippi. They met with the brethren there, encouraged them, and then went on their way.
Look who did the encouraging. The two men with torn-up backs were the ones comforting the brothers. Think about who was in that room, too: a wealthy merchant woman from Thyatira and a rough Roman jailer with his family, sitting together as one church. Only the gospel builds a church out of folks like that.
Paul used his rights for the sake of the church. Is there a weaker believer you could stand up for this week? Maybe it is a young Christian at work who is getting picked on for his faith, or a widow in your church who is being taken advantage of. Use what God has given you to cover them.
Notice where Paul and Silas went the minute they got out. They went straight to the house where the brethren met, sore backs and all. When you come through a hard week, do not stay home when the church gathers. Get to the house where God's people meet. You may find, like Paul did, that the Lord sends you there to encourage somebody else.
What Must You Do?
This chapter opened with a demon-possessed girl shouting about "a way of salvation," and it closes with a whole household that found the way. In between, two men were stripped and beaten without a trial and locked in the dark, and they sang. God shook the jail, and a sword came out and went back in its sheath unused. A hard man fell on his face and asked the right question, and before the sun came up he was baptized and rejoicing at his own table.
Not one bit of it happened by luck. God was in the fortune-teller's street and in the magistrates' court, in the earthquake and in the jailer's heart. He was working the whole time to bring one sinner to one question, and to put two of His servants close enough to answer it.
Some of you have asked that question. Some of you never have. I want every reader to know exactly what the Scripture says.
The jailer went to bed thinking he was the man with the keys. He woke up with a sword at his own chest, one breath away from eternity. Friend, you may think you are the one holding the keys too. The Bible says you are the prisoner:
"Shut up everyone under sin." That is a jail cell, and every one of us was born in it. The doors God opened in Philippi were made of wood and iron. The door in front of you is death, and then the judgment, and nobody comes back through that one to try again.
God's answer to you is the same one He gave the jailer: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved."
Who is He? He is the Lord, God the Son, who came down and took on flesh. What did He do? The jailer washed the wounds of two men who were beaten for preaching Christ, but those wounds could not wash away one of the jailer's sins. There is another set of wounds that can:
Jesus was stripped and beaten too. He was nailed to a cross, carrying the sins of every sinner who would ever trust Him, and He took the judgment they deserved. This is the gospel Paul preached everywhere he went:
What must you do? Quit trying to earn it. You cannot. Turn from your sin and put your whole weight on Christ. You do not have to get cleaned up first. The jailer came to Christ with the sword barely out of his hand. You do not have to understand everything first either, because he was a few hours old in the faith when he sat down at that table. You do have to come to Christ Himself. Baptism and a changed life followed for the jailer, the same night, but they came after he believed. Neither one answered his question. Christ did.
Maybe something stirred in you as you read this. Maybe you have felt the floor shake a little under your feet these last few months. That is not luck either. The Lord opened Lydia's heart down by the river, and He shook a jail for this jailer. If He is dealing with you, do not harden yourself against Him. Come, and hear what the Lord Jesus promised to everyone who does:
Never. He has never turned away one sinner who came to Him, and He will not start with you. Do not leave the question unanswered. Call on Him right where you are.
If you want to talk about it, reach out to us. I would count it a privilege to open the Bible with you, the way Paul and Silas did in that jailer's house.
Believer, take comfort in this. If you have believed in the Lord Jesus, the promise of verse 31 is settled: "you will be saved." It does not depend on how strong you feel this week. The same joy that filled that jailer's house at three o'clock in the morning belongs to you, because the same Lord holds you.
So this week, write Acts 16:31 on a card and carry it with you until you can say it without looking. Practice telling it in your own words, the way you would say it to a trembling man in a parking lot. Say it out loud to your family at the supper table. Get it ready before somebody needs it.
Then pick out your jailer. Think of somebody who has been hard on you, or hard on the faith, and pray for that person by name every day this week. Ask the Lord to shake his foundations, and ask Him to let you be close enough to answer when the question finally comes.
I cannot say whether any of us will end up in jail. If we do, we ought to be ready to share the gospel even with the jailers and with those who might beat us. Who knows how the Lord might bless?