The Sins of Paul’s Past

Paul stood before Herod Agrippa II and the Roman governor Festus not because he had violated any Roman or Jewish law. Instead, the Apostle was on trial because of Jewish opposition to the Apostle’s understanding of how God had fulfilled His promise to Israel. Except for the party of the Sadducees, the first-century Jews understood that the Lord had promised His people resurrection from the dead, which they thought would happen at the end of history. Paul and the early Jewish Christians, however, proclaimed that this resurrection was happening in stages. Jesus, the Messiah, was the first to be raised, never to die again, as the firstfruits of the resurrection of God’s people. But many Jewish contemporaries could not accept this. They thought it incredible that God would raise the dead—not because they thought resurrection impossible but because in raising Jesus from the dead and not immediately crushing the Roman Empire, our Creator was not inaugurating the resurrection in the way that they expected (Acts 26:1–8; see 1 Cor. 15).

Having expressed incredulity that anyone might deny the resurrection of Jesus, Paul went on to explain the course of his ministry and that he had violated no law in proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah. The remainder of his speech to Agrippa II and Festus recorded in Acts 26:9–23 combines his personal testimony with the teachings of the Jewish Scriptures—the Old Testament—to demonstrate his faithfulness to the revelation of God. In verses 9–11, we read Paul’s summary of his life as an enemy of the church before his conversion to Christ. The Apostle stresses his unflinching opposition to Jesus, stating his preconversion conviction that he “ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus.” He recounts how he pursued and arrested Jewish believers in Jesus in Jerusalem and elsewhere, casting his “vote against” Christians when they were sentenced to death. Some commentators suggest that this reference to vote casting means that Paul was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that handed down such sentences, but that seems unlikely. Probably Paul was just emphasizing his full dedication to the death of Christians. That Paul was so opposed to Christianity made him the most unlikely convert and forces people to pay special attention to his conversion. If such an inveterate opponent of Jesus could be converted, perhaps Jesus really is the Messiah after all.