And they listened to him until this word, and then they raised their voices and said, "Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he is not fit to live!" Then, as they cried out and tore off their clothes and threw dust into the air… the commander ordered him to be brought into the barracks, and said that he should be examined under scourging, so that he might know why they shouted so against him. And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who stood by, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman, and uncondemned?" Acts 22:22-25

It is likely that the title of the blog post, “Saved by Who?” causes most believers intuitively to say, “Well, God, of course!” And of course, if we are speaking about salvation from sin, the correct answer is always, “God!” But in this meditation, think about the various kinds of “ordinary means” that God often uses to spare us from temporal troubles.

In this case, God used the civil authorities to “save” Paul from the angry mob that was crying out for Paul’s life. Don’t miss that in this case the civil authorities were not, and seldom ever are, godly. Paul’s “salvation” from the mob wasn’t pain free, as the Roman centurion’s plan was to interrogate Paul under scourging (torture).

But God wasn’t done using ordinary means to rescue Paul. As we’ll see in the following verses, God used Paul’s Roman citizenship to rescue him from the beating!

The take away I would encourage you to consider is that though God can, and sometimes may, deliver miraculously, more often than not, it is through ordinary means that God hears and answers our prayers. This is why I often pray for the sick, pleading for God’s mercy “whether by medicine or miracle.”

Let us neither reject nor expect (much less demand) miracles. And when God answers our prayer in ways that are not miraculous, let us not fail to give God the thanks and glory, even when He is pleased to use ordinary means.