Acts 24:1-27

The Guilty Dog

When I was a kid in Elementary School there was a saying that we all knew: “The guilty dog always barks first.” What it meant was simply that if a situation came up where a group was under suspicion and the group was asked, “Who did it?”, the first one to deny responsibility was usually the guilty party. Obviously it was just a rule of thumb, but it was often right.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve noticed several corollaries to this saying. One of these is that the greater the doubt the stronger the defense. In other words, if a person might actually be guilty of something they will tend to very vigorously protest and defend their innocence. If, on the other hand, there is simply no basis to the charges the accused tends to be less concerned with mounting a defense.

The charges against Paul sounded serious and with a little spin doctoring could appear to be true. Paul really doesn’t address them at all. He basically just says, “These things aren’t true and these accusers can’t prove them.” I love it. Part of the reason of course was because the charges weren’t true and these accusers couldn’t prove them. Another reason was because God had already told him that he was going to Rome. (Though Paul didn’t know just how at the moment.) But the bottom line was that Paul simply trusted that his life was totally in God’s hands and that was that.

We live in an age when so many Christians are so ready to “stand up for their rights” and defend “this” and defend “that”. The problem is that we don’t really see that example set before us to emulate. It wasn’t the example Paul set and it certainly wasn’t the example Christ set. Perhaps their confidence level in the Father was so high they didn’t feel the need to defend themselves. After all, the guilty dog tends to bark first.