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How Paul had carried out the work of his call:
v. 19. Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision;
v. 20. but showed first unto them of Damascus and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.
v. 21. For these causes the Jews caught me in the Temple, and went about to kill me.
v. 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 come:
v. 23. that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should show light unto the people and to the Gentiles.
The miraculous vision, as well as the words of Christ in extending to him this call as apostle, had decided Paul; upon the strength of all this he had not been disobedient to the heavenly vision, the Lord's merciful power had wrought the change in his heart, making him willing and eager to become the ambassador of the Most High, of the exalted Christ. He had begun in Damascus, preaching Christ that He is the Son of God, chap. 9:20. He had spoken boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus in Jerusalem, chap. 9:29, and throughout all the coasts of Judea. Finally, he had made at least three missionary journeys into the heathen world. And everywhere his message had been the same; it had been the message of the Baptist, it, had been the message of Jesus, namely, that men should repent and turn to God. First comes the acknowledgment of sin and of its damnableness; then the sinner despairs of himself and all his unrighteousness and turns to God for help and salvation as he hears the glorious news of the Gospel; and then come the works which are worthy of repentance, which measure up to the standard of actual repentance, with nothing of sham or deceit about them, but embodying the sincere effort of the Christian to lire worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For these causes, for the fact that Paul proclaimed the Gospel in all its glorious purity, the Jews had seized him in the Temple and had tried violently to put him to death. All the other points which they had alleged were partly pure fiction and partly perversion of truth, in order to harm the course of the Gospel. The identical thing happens in our days whenever the enemies of Christ invent excuses to suppress the preaching of the truth. But Paul had been fortunate in obtaining help from God, and thus stood firm to that day, bearing witness before the small and the great alike, making no distinction of persons, saying nothing but that which the prophets had, literally, spoken that it was destined to happen, and also Moses. The message of the New Testament does not differ essentially from that of the Old Testament; the believers of the time before Christ had the prophecies of the salvation to come in the Messiah; the believers since His time look back to, and trust in, the salvation as it has been gained by Christ's birth, life, death, and resurrection. What Moses and the prophets preached, the great central doctrine of Christianity, salvation through faith in Jesus, that is the subject of Christian preaching to the end of time: that Christ was to suffer by the will and counsel of God, that He, as the first to rise from the dead, was destined as a light to proclaim the blessings, to bring the message of light to all people, even the heathen, to Jews and Gentiles alike. As usual, Paul insisted upon it that the identity of the Messiah with Jesus of Nazareth was proved not only by His suffering, as foretold, but also by His resurrection, and by the power which the message of this resurrection was exerting in bringing the blessings of spiritual and eternal light to the hearts of men.