²³And he called to him two of the centurions and said, “Get two hundred soldiers ready by the third hour of the night to proceed to Caesarea, with seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen.” ²⁴They were also to provide mounts to put Paul on and bring him safely to Felix the governor.

With the tip from Paul’s nephew, the commander took immediate action involving not one but two centurions and a militia of 470 military men. There was no way Paul would be assassinated on the commander’s watch! Remember, this was to thwart the much smaller squad of forty Jews. The Romans always met resistance with overwhelming force.

God was using the Romans to protect Paul from the Jews! This brings up the moral-spiritual-theological dilemma: how could God use the pagan Romans to do His will, especially against the Jews, who, though they acted wickedly, were at the least less evil than the Romans? That is the question the prophet Habakkuk had faced centuries earlier.

The prophet had called out to God to do something about the injustices in Israel. God revealed to him that He would send the Chaldeans (Babylonians) to punish Israel, to which Habakkuk objected:

Are You not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We will not die. You, O Lord, have appointed them to judge; And You, O Rock, have established them to correct. Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and You cannot look on wickedness with favor. Why do You look with favor on those who deal treacherously? Why are You silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than they? (Hab. 1:12–13)

The problem that Habakkuk needed to learn was that he did not understand the righteousness of God. He thought Israel, even with its bad behavior, was still more righteous than Babylon. God’s answer to him came immediately:

Then the Lord answered me and said . . . “Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him; but the righteous will live by his faith.” (Hab. 2:4)

When the Israelites sinned, they were just as unrighteous as the Babylonians—and as the Roman overlords in our passage today. The conspirators and Sanhedrin were not living by faith but were rebelling against God’s anointed, the apostle Paul. And God would use whatever means He so desired, even the godless Roman military, to protect Paul. So the commander escalated the issue to his higher authority, to Felix, the governor.

Lord, You have provided us the means to escalate all persecution against us when you instructed us to pray, “[D]eliver us from all evil.”