Did the apostle Paul miss the will of God in one of the most important decisions of his ministry? Such a question might seem ludicrous to those who rate Paul barely a notch below Jesus, but some sincere students of the Bible believe there is a case to be made that Paul got it wrong. See what you think.

The debated decision involves Paul’s last trip to Jerusalem, a trip in which he ended up arrested. Following the arrest, he languished in legal limbo for nothing short of two full years. Finally, he appealed his case directly to Caesar and was transported to Rome for trial. But even that voyage wasn’t without peril as his ship got caught in a terrible storm, foundered, and eventually ran aground on Malta (Acts chapter 27). If you think all that sounds like a nightmarish two years or so, you’re right. It gets even worse, though, when you learn that God had given Paul several warnings beforehand about what would happen to him if he made that trip to Jerusalem. Consider the following passages (all from the N.K.J.V.):

“And see, now I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city, saying that chains and tribulations await me.” (Acts 20:22-23, emphasis mine)

When we had sighted Cyprus, we passed it on the left, sailed to Syria, and landed at Tyre; for there the ship was to unload her cargo. And finding disciples, we stayed there seven days. They told Paul through the Spirit not to go up to Jerusalem. (Acts 21:3-4, emphasis mine)

And as we stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. When he had come to us, he took Paul’s belt, bound his own hands and feet, and said, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.'” Now when we heard these things, both we and those from that place pleaded with him not to go up to Jerusalem. (Acts 21:10-12, emphasis mine)

It isn’t hard to see how these passages might lend support to the idea that Paul missed God’s will in forging on ahead to Jerusalem. And it’s because of them that some prominent Bible-teachers have maintained that Paul missed it at this crossroad in his life. Let me name a few of those men and share what they had to say on this subject.

James Montgomery Boice, in his commentary Acts, wrote:

…though Paul was driven by high motives, what he did at this time of his life was wrong. Being wrong, it had unfortunate consequences for him and perhaps also for other people.

John R. Rice, in his Acts commentary entitled Filled With the Spirit, expressed the same view when he wrote:

Those warnings of impending imprisonment and persecution were given only because Paul ought not to have gone…..the warnings of God about Jerusalem meant that he should not go…..Thus he went on to imprisonment, two or three sad and relatively empty years before he got to Rome and before he could resume a large ministry.

Donald Grey Barnhouse, in his Acts commentary, came down even more harshly on Paul’s decision. He wrote:

By this time Paul was an opinionated, stubborn man and was determined to have his own way. It’s a great, yet sad, picture of what happens in the lives of far too many Christians…..Believe me, my friends, God sometimes has to deal sharply with those of His people who defy His will. So, with Paul. He was determined to do things his way, no matter what God wanted.

Similarly, Harry Ironside, in his Acts commentary, also left plenty of room for the possibility that Paul might have stepped outside God’s will in this matter. He said:

Did he make a mistake in doing so? Did Paul really disobey the voice of the Lord? It is hard for us to say. We may be sure of this, that if he did make a mistake, he made it from the best of motives. If he blundered here, he blundered out of an overpowering love for the Jewish people. I am afraid that some of us cannot say of our mistakes that they have always been motivated by love…..we are apt to think of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ as though they were men of a much higher caliber than ourselves, and therefore there is no possibility of our being used as they were. But we learn as we study the book of Acts that these same men were of like passions as ourselves. They had the same fallible judgment that we have. They could be misled as we are misled.

Lastly, Ray Stedman, in his Acts 21:1-26 message Paul’s Mistake, lays out quite a case that Paul should not have gone to Jerusalem at that time. Here are some selected quotes from Stedman’s message:

As I have studied this passage, and worked with it through the years, I have come to the very deep conviction that it was not necessary for Paul to have been a prisoner. I know that the Lord Jesus, when He first called Paul on the Damascus Road, said that he was to suffer great things — but not necessarily as a prisoner. Paul had already suffered many things by this time.

Many commentators have struggled with this passage. I suppose we are all reluctant to attribute any wrongful action to the Apostle Paul…And yet, taken at its face value, this sentence (Acts 21:4) indicates a command of the Holy Spirit which the apostle, for motives we shall examine, chose to ignore.

Others say that Paul was right and that it was the disciples who were wrong, that they should not have tried to stop him, because Paul was following an inner leading of the Spirit which they should have acknowledged. But that is to ignore three crucial words — it was “through the Spirit” that they told Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. We must face the full implications of these words. They were recorded by Luke, who was Paul’s friend. He wrote this account several years after these events, and with the advantage of hindsight, he looked back over the whole circumstance that followed. And yet, led by the Holy Spirit in recording this inspired book, he wrote down at this juncture that it was “through the Holy Spirit” that these disciples told Paul that he was not to go up to Jerusalem. The Greek is very strong here — much stronger than our English text. Literally they said, “Stop going up to Jerusalem!”

Okay, so, by now perhaps you are ready to pronounce the verdict “Guilty as charged” upon Paul’s decision. But don’t do that before you hear from some of the noteworthy Bible-teachers who have taught that Paul didn’t miss God’s will in this decision. For example, G. Campbell Morgan wrote in his commentary, The Acts of the Apostles:

My conviction is that Paul was right. His conviction was one resulting from the guidance of the Spirit of God.

Matthew Henry, in his legendary The Matthew Henry Commentary, offers this same opinion as he says of those disciples in Tyre:

It was not at all their fault to think so, but it was their mistake, for his trial would be for the glory of God and the furtherance of the gospel, and he knew it.

John Phillips, in his commentary Exploring Acts, points to the depth of Paul’s spiritual discernment as evidence that Paul made the right decision. Phillips writes:

He was a godly man, spiritually sensitive and guided by the Holy Spirit. It hardly seems possible that Paul’s decision to go to Jerusalem was a case of stubborn, deliberate, and willful defiance of the Holy Spirit. He must have had some inward permission from the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem, or he would not have gone.

Taking a different approach to reach the same conclusion, David Jeremiah, in his The Jeremiah Study Bible, points out the difference between a warning and a forbidding, He writes:

Paul took the words of the believers in Tyre as a warning through the Spirit of what would happen in Jerusalem. Less concerned about his physical well-being than he was with the will of God, Paul did not yield to the counsel of the Christians in Tyre because he knew what God was calling him to do.

W.A. Criswell, in his The Criswell Study Bible, also goes with this interpretation as he writes:

Paul was convinced that God’s Spirit wanted him to go to Jerusalem. Others who were equally led of the Spirit had prepared Paul by warning him that imprisonment was imminent if he persisted in his journey to the Holy City. Paul’s evaluation of the situation is that none of the threats concerning him. Life on earth is no longer a real concern except as it relates to the completion of his mission.

Continuing with the idea that a warning is not a forbidding, Chuck Smith, in his The Word for Today Bible, suggests that those who told Paul not to go to Jerusalem simply mistook a warning for a message. He writes:

There is a question as to whether the Holy Spirit was directly forbidding Paul to go to Jerusalem or whether the Holy Spirit was warning that Paul would be imprisoned and afflicted in Jerusalem. It is quite possible that the Spirit told the disciples at Tyre concerning Paul’s impending imprisonment, and they misinterpreted that warning as a message from the Holy Spirit that Paul should not go to Jerusalem.

Chuck Swindoll concurs with this assessment. In volume 3 of his study guides on Acts, as part of a chapter entitled Man’s Advice Versus God’s Advice, Swindoll offers his opinion regarding that Acts 21:4 verse. He writes:

More likely, the Spirit was merely predicting what would happen to Paul in Jerusalem, but the disciples were misinterpreting those predictions as prohibitions.

Warren Wiersbe can be found in this same camp too as he writes in his The Bible Exposition Commentary:

On the pro side, the prophetic utterances can be taken as warning (“Get ready!”) rather than as prohibitions (“You must not go!”).

And then finally, along these same lines, William MacDonald, in his Believer’s Bible Commentary, writes:

It seems far more probable that Paul interpreted the advice of his friends as calculated to save him from physical suffering or even death. In his love for his Jewish countrymen, he did not feel that his physical well-being was the important consideration.

And so what is the correct answer to the question: “Did Paul miss God’s will in making that fateful trip to Jerusalem?” Well, like the debate regarding Paul’s “thorn in the flesh,” this debate will no doubt continue among Christians until we all get to heaven. As for me, though, in my humble and possibly wrong opinion, Paul missed it.

Since I’ve built this post around various quotes from noted Bible-teachers, let me close with an extended quote from Oliver B. Greene. Frankly, of all the things I’ve ever read concerning this debate, these words make the most sense to me. Whether you agree or disagree with Greene’s assessment, please give a hearing to what he wrote. In volume 4 of his commentary set The Acts of the Apostles, he writes:

We cannot but admire the zeal of the Apostle Paul, the strong determination he had; but his disregard of the warning in this instance cost him two years of valuable opportunities. He was not in Jerusalem long before he was bound as prophesied.

Paul was touched by the concern and the entreaties of his fellow Christians. But his love for the Jews was so great that he answered, “I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” This man possessed courage seldom matched in others. He never turned back from his duty as an apostle – but as if often the case with men of that caliber, his unusual strength was his weakness. On more than one occasion the apostle’s love for souls was mistaken for guidance, and his zeal drove him into cities and places where God did not lead him to go.

God called him as minister to the Gentiles, and he was faithful to that ministry; but he could not hide the disappointment of his heart. He obeyed the call to carry the Gospel to the Gentiles, but it would appear that he sincerely believed he was the man to win the Jews to Christ. It was always his custom when he entered a city to go first to the synagogue to reason with the Jews, expounding the Word of God, preaching the Gospel of God’s marvelous grace. When we compare spiritual things with spiritual, we are faced with the question as to whether or not Paul was justified in doing this. His burning passion to see Israel saved led him into many hardships, much suffering, and persecution…..even though I still believe the Apostle Paul was God’s most dedicated servant, in this instance he disregarded the warning, refused to change his plans, and stubbornly held to his determination to go to Jerusalem.