Acts 26

1. THEN Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art permitted to speak for thyself. Then Paul 2 stretched forth the hand, and answered for himself: I think myself happy, king Agrippa, because I shall answer for myself this day before thee touching all the things whereof I am 3 accused of the Jews: especially because I know thee to be expert in all customs and ques- 4 tions which are among the Jews: wherefore I beseech thee to hear me patiently. My man- ner of life from my youth, which was at the first among mine own nation at Jerusalem, 5 know all the Jews; which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after 6 the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee. And now I stand and am judged 7 for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers: unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come. For which hope’s sake, 8 king Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead? 9 I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of 10 Jesus of Nazareth. Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put 11 to death, I gave my voice against them. And I punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted 12 them even unto strange cities. Whereupon as I went to Damascus with authority and com- 13 mission from the chief priests, at midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with 14 me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and say- ing in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick 15 against the pricks. And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou 16 persecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this pur- pose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and 17 of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; delivering thee from the people, and 18 from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness 19 of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. Where- 20 upon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: but shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judæa, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. 21 For these causes the Jews caught me in the temple, and went about to kill me. 22 Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should 23 come: that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the 24 dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the Gentiles. And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth 25 make thee mad. But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words 26 of truth and soberness. For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing 27 was not done in a corner. King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou 28 believest. Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. 29 And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds. 30 And when he had thus spoken, the king rose up, and the governor, and Bernice, and 31 they that sat with them: and when they were gone aside, they talked between themselves, 32 saying, This man doeth nothing worthy of death or of bonds. Then said Agrippa unto Fes- tus, This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Cæsar.

Both almost, and altogether.—What matters it to the skillful seaman, that with helm in hand, and eye continually upon sea and sky, he has carried his well-trimmed bark over many a league of ocean, and filled her with the treasures of other lands, and steered her through many a rocky channel, and carried her through many a furious gale, if, just as the haven is in sight, the tempest takes her and whelms her in the deep? And what matters it if we be almost, if we be not altogether, Christians? Hanna.—It is he that holdeth out to the end that must be saved; it is he that overcometh that shall inherit all things; it is not every one that begins. Agrippa took a fair step for a sudden. “Almost,” saith he to Paul, “thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” Ah, it was but almost; and so he had as good have never been a whit; he stepped fair indeed, but yet he stepped short. O this almost! I tell you, this lost his soul Bunyan.

1-5. After expressing his satisfaction in stating to the king Agrippa the matters in issue between the accusing Jews and himself, Paul proceeds to vindicate his consistency as a true spiritual Israelite, while he explains and justifies his mission as the apostle to the Gentiles. What he was known to be as a Pharisee, when and how he was converted and commissioned by Christ, and how he had fulfilled his commission in accordance with the teachings of Moses and the prophets: these comprise the leading points in this instructive address.

6-8. Paul asserts the Chief Ground of the Jews’ Accusation to be his Preaching of the Messiahship and the Resurrection of Christ. His Appeal to Agrippa.—This hope of a Messiah he declares to be based upon the promise of God to the Patriarchs and Leaders of Israel. They had not received the fulfillment; hence a future life was essential if God’s word to them was true. And the true Israel, even all that remained of the twelve tribes, following the faith and hope of the earlier generations, were still looking for the fulfillment of the promise. He had found the Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth; and the proof of his Messiahship he saw in the resurrection of Christ from the dead. And, knowing the Sadducean tendencies of Agrippa, he turns upon him with the pointed argumentative question, Do you think a resurrection incredible, knowing all that God has done in Israel, knowing, too, God’s promise of a deliverer, who should be a conqueror of death?

9-11. His Prejudices had been Bitter and his Hostility Virulent toward Christ and his Disciples.—Taking up the account of himself from verse 5, he narrates how with a conscientious enmity he had persecuted and imprisoned those he now knew to be saints, as he himself was now persecuted and imprisoned. “I gave my voice, or vote, against them.” Whether this word is to be taken literally, implying his act as a member of the Sanhedrim, or figuratively (as it may be), signifying only a moral assent to proceedings in the synagogues, can not be decisively determined. A strong objection to the former and favorite view is that it is wholly unsupported by other evidence, especially by other words of his own. And the fact, if it was a fact, of his membership of the great Jewish Council would have sharpened many an argument, and strongly enforced all that he says of himself in Phil. 3 and elsewhere.

12-18. Paul’s Second Statement of his Conversion sion and Commission by Christ.—The first had been given to the Jews from the Temple stairs (ch. 22). (Compare both statements with Luke’s account, ch. 9.) Paul has spoken of his own mad hostility to the name and to the saints of Christ. How this hate was changed to love, and this hostility to supreme devotion, he proceeds to tell. B.

The apostle knew so well the fruit which the world would gather from his conversion, that he employs it as a favorite argument in his preaching. Of the five discourses by him, which have been preserved to us in the Acts, two derive their subject from this event, not to speak of the repeated allusions which he makes to it in his Epistles. After the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the descent of the Holy Spirit, the gospel history has no evidence equaling the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. Monod.—Nowhere throughout the Sacred Annals is the power of divine grace over the sinful heart so fully shown as in his sudden change from a self-righteous, fanatical persecutor of Jesus and Christians, to a humble, self-sacrificing servant of Christ and his Church; nor is it easy to see how an honest inquirer can resist a fact so confirmatory of the gospel as the open advocacy of its faith by the most logical, accomplished, and determined spirit that ever battled on the side of its enemies. Bethune.

His appointment to preach and what he was instructed to preach to the Gentiles, are the main points in this address, the last and most complete made by the apostle. The sublime themes of his testimony and the grand results of his ministry he sums up in these four realities of spiritual experience: 1. Divine enlightenment—a vision of God and knowledge of the truth he has disclosed. 2. A turning or conversion, and so a deliverance, from the kingdom of darkness and the enslaving power of its Prince into the kingdom of light and of God. “Darkness and light are common figures of the New Testament, not only for ignorance and knowledge of spiritual things, but for the states of which these are necessary incidents, a state of sin and one of holiness.” (J. A. A.) 3. Forgiveness of sins. 4. An abiding inheritance with the saints in glory. Of this pardon and inheritance Dr. Arnot says: “The gift, like the work, is twofold: it removes from a believer what he deserves, and bestows upon him the deserts of his Redeemer. The birthright of condemnation is taken away, and the birthright of sons is conferred. Christ has taken your portion, and you obtain his. The pardon and the inheritance go together." Of all these spiritual effects and experiences, Christ declares to Paul, there is one condition essential for every soul’s reception. It is FAITH IN ME—trust, not in human works or offerings, not in creeds, in ceremonials, or in descent, but in Christ alone! B.

The germ of all Paul’s epistles, the key-note to which all his writings are but the melody that follows, the mighty voice of which all his teaching is but the prolonged echo, we find in these words: “To open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God; that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith that is in Me.” What of Paul’s gospel is not here? Man’s ruin, man’s depravity, the state of darkness, the power of Satan, the sole redemptive work of Christ, justification by belief in that, sanctification coming with justification, and glory, rest, and heaven at last—there they all are in the very first words that sounded upon the quickened ear of the blinded man when he turned from darkness to light. A. M.

19, 20. He affirms his Instant Obedience and his Steadfast Fidelity to the Heavenly Call of Christ.—This is one of the grand points of instruction and personal application in Paul’s whole career. He began on the instant, where he was, to obey. He sought on the instant and ever afterward (for now twenty-four years) to know and to do the Lord’s will. Day by day had he gone on as directed. He had sought to win men back to God, to reveal Christ and His complete work for man’s redemption, that they might trust, repent, and return to God; that, with a divinely renewed heart and reversed life, they might do works meet for repentance. 21-23. He goes on to say that, for this work of seeking to obey God and save men, the Jews had sought to kill him in the Temple. But God had been his deliverer, so that his ministry had been continued until now. And he adds the supreme fact that all he taught was in exact agreement with Moses and the prophets. This fact utterly overthrew all the charges of his accusers, and convicted them of rejecting the law and the prophets, which was the crime alleged against himself. For the Jewish Scriptures disclosed a suffering Messiah, who should rise from the dead, and who should bring a bright and glad redemption to the Gentiles. B.—That Christ should suffer, should rise from the dead, and should show light unto the Gentiles: these are the three chief points in the writings of the prophets; and precisely these three were most of all unwelcome to the Jews. The first gave them offense, the second was denied by them, and the third awakened their envy. Starke.—There was never any that understood the Old*

Testament so well as Paul, except John the Baptist and John the Divine. He dearly loved Moses and Isaiah, for they, together with King David, were the chief prophets. The words and things of Paul are taken out of Moses and the prophets. Luther.—These truths which Paul had preached, his accusers had disallowed and willfully rejected; and in justifying himself so fervently and conclusively, he preaches a living, burning gospel of Christ to Festus and Agrippa, and to the brilliant court in which they were central and sovereign.

24-26. The Excited Exclamation of Festus, and Paul’s Calm Reply.—To the Roman governor, deeply stirred by Paul’s impassioned utterance, the apostle’s words yet conveyed no meaning. B.—What Paul had said of a resurrection from the dead accomplished in Jesus as the first fruits, of a person coming from the Jews who should enlighten not only his own people but even the Gentiles, among the rest the polite and learned Greeks and Romans, and of the manner in which this was revealed to him—all this would lead such a half-thinker and pagan as Festus to conclude roundly that Paul was a visionary enthusiast. D.—“Much learning,” or “many writings,” had turned his brain, the idea being suggested by Paul’s many allusions to Moses and the prophets.

But Paul, “taught from the fullness of a heart which divine grace had convinced and blessed that Christianity is no fable and that faith is not madness,” replies with quiet Christian courtesy: “Not frenzied or mad, most noble Festus, but I speak of things that are real, and with perfect soundness of reason!” And instantly he refers for confirmation of his words to Agrippa, as one to whom the main facts of Christianity (of which he had spoken) were well known. B.

This thing was not done in a corner. The existence at this time of one called by his followers Christ, the place of his teaching, his execution by Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judea under Tiberius, the rapid spread of his doctrine through the Roman world, the vast number of converts made in a short time, the persecutions which they underwent, the innocency of their lives, their worship of Christ as God—are witnessed to by heathen writers of eminence, and would be certain and indisputable facts had the New Testament never been written. Tacitus, Suetonius, Juvenal, Pliny, Trajan, Adrian, writing in the century immediately following upon the death of Christ, declare these things to us, and establish, so firmly that no skeptic can even profess to doubt it, the historical character of at least that primary groundwork whereon the Christian story, as related by the evangelists, rests as on an immovable basis. These classic notices compel even those who set no value on the historical Christ to admit his existence; they give a definite standing-point to the religion, which might otherwise have been declared to have no historical foundation at all, but to be purely and absolutely mythic; they furnish, taken by themselves, no unimportant argument for the truth of the religion, which they prove to have been propagated with such zeal, by persons of pure and holy lives, in spite of punishments and persecutions of the most fearful kind; and they form, in combination with the argument from the historic accuracy of the incidental allusions, an evidence in favor of the substantial truth of the New Testament narrative which is amply sufficient to satisfy any fair mind. G. R.

“Few persons, perhaps,” says Isaac Taylor, “give due attention to the relative position of the Christian history, which stands upon the very point of intersection where three distinct lines of history meet, namely, the Jewish, the Grecian, and the Roman. These three bodies of ancient literature alone have descended by an uninterrupted channel of transmission to modern times; and these three, by a most extraordinary combination of circumstances, were brought together to elucidate the origination of Christianity. If upon the broad field of history there rests the common light of day, upon that spot where a new religion was given to man, there shines the intensity of a concentrated brightness.” The Jews had their own literature; they had been formerly conquered by the Greeks, and the Greek language was in common use; they were also a Roman province, and “during more than a century, in the center of which stands the ministry of Christ, the affairs of Syria attracted the peculiar attention of the Roman Government. No other people of antiquity can be named upon whose history and sentiments there falls this triple flood of historic light, and upon no period in the history of this one people do these triple rays so precisely meet as upon the moment when the voice of one was heard in the wilderness of Jordan, saying, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’” Well, then, might an apostle say, “These things were not done in a corner.” It was in Jerusalem that Christ arose; in Asia Minor—the theatre of history from the first. It was, perhaps, the only place on earth in which a Roman governor would have called the three languages which contain the literature of ancient civilization into requisition, to proclaim at once the accusation and the true character of Christ. M. H.

27, 28. Paul’s Appeal to Agrippa, Agrippa’s Reply, and Paul’s Rejoinder.—To the Roman Festus Paul’s words had no meaning. But to the Jew Agrippa, familiar with the writings of the prophets, and to the grandnephew of Herod Antipas, familiar with the facts of a living, crucified, and risen Jesus of Nazareth, Paul has been powerfully preaching Christianity (while defending it) by exhibiting its unity with the Mosaic covenant and Prophetic promises. In here giving his preaching a personal turn (not offensively, for he compliments Agrippa’s intelligence and judgment), he takes high ground as becomes the ambassador of Jehovah, and uses a lofty tone of utterance. We must infer that something he saw in Agrippa’s expression, some manifestation of feeling (not certainly scorn or contempt), led the apostle to make this sudden appeal to the Jewish king, and so instantly and impressively himself to answer his own appeal.

King and Jew as he was, in face of the disparaging charge of madness by Festus, Agrippa had so felt in his inmost soul the power of the truth, and of Paul’s own mighty force of conviction, that his remarkable confession was forced almost unconsciously from his lips. His reply seems to be a parry, and to show that he had felt a thrust. About the meaning of this reply, as well as the spirit that actuated it, there is a difference of judgment among scholarly interpreters. The two words rendered almost are literally in small. The words rendered altogether in verse 29 are literally in great. The noun to be supplied may be either time, effort, degree, or measure. That Agrippa refers to the little time or effort used by Paul in this brief address, as insufficient to make of him a Christian, and that he speaks ironically or even indifferently (an interpretation favored by many modern commentators), seems to be out of keeping with all that precedes and follows. It accords neither with the subsequent course of Agrippa nor with the previous words of Paul; and still less with the serious, sympathetic, and fervent tone of Paul’s instant rejoinder. Agrippa’s sudden breaking up of the conference after Paul’s manly, touching expression of good will, surely intimates something other than a jesting or indifferent state of mind. And his serious, almost regretful words to Festus about Paul’s liberty that immediately followed, with their implied tone of sympathy with the apostle, can scarcely consist with an ironical or heedless spirit; so that we must still hold to the older and the widely accepted interpretation, which takes the words of Agrippa as spoken in earnest, and under some slightly aroused feeling. “In some small degree or measure (‘almost’ being too strong) thou persuadest me!”

And with this interpretation admirably agrees Paul’s large-hearted response. The picture is one of rare beauty and sublimity, as the words finely illustrate the spirit and epitomize the substance of his gospel. A prisoner, whose Christlike spirit and whose burning words had fascinated their attention, stands in the attitude of blessing while he prays: Not in small but in great degree would I have you

and all who hear me to know and rejoice as I know and rejoice in Christ and the Christian life. And, holding up his chained hands, he adds to his prayer for them, “except only these bonds.”