Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Acts 26:4 - 26:8

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Paul Kretzmann Commentary - Acts 26:4 - 26:8


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

v. 4. My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among mine own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews;

v. 5. which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.

v. 6. and now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers,

v. 7. unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come. for which hope's sake, King Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews.

v. 8. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?

Early in life, at the beginning of the period of his youth, Paul had come to Jerusalem. And his manner of living, the habits of his life, how he comported himself in every way: all this, since it had taken place from the very beginning of his formal education, from his early youth, in the midst of his nation and in Jerusalem itself, all the Jews knew and were familiar with, for they knew him before and from the beginning. If they would but choose to testify, they might say the truth, that in accordance with the most severe sect, the strictest body of men in their own midst (Paul here includes himself and Agrippa with the Jews), he lived the principles. followed the religious cult, as a Pharisee. The point which the apostle here makes is that he was most unlikely to violate the Jewish feeling, for their customs were inbred and ingrained in him. and according to the strictest interpretation at that. And now, with his whole life before the people like an open book and with his thorough Jewish training as an argument for his orthodoxy. he stood condemned on account of his hope in the promise made by God to the fathers. For that he was on trial in the Roman court, for that he was condemned by the Jews. And yet the twelve tribes of Israel together hoped to gain, to attain to, this same promise by a service in all intentness both by night and by day; regarding which hope he was being accused by Jews. as he emphatically declares to the king. That was to Paul the strangest feature of the whole affair, that Jews could be so blind as to deny their own teaching and belief in the attempt to do him harm. It causes him to cry out: Why is it considered incredible by you that God should raise the dead? Why should they oppose it with all the force of unbelief if God raises the dead? This puzzled question might well be repeated in our days concerning this greatest truth of revealed religion, the fact upon which the Christian religion is based. The opposition of the unbelievers results in their losing the most glorious assurance that may come to man, and we cannot see their reason for such obstinacy.