“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God, even as you all are this day, and I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women. As also the high priest does bear me witness, and all the estate of the elders, from whom also I received letters to the brethren, and journeyed to Damascus to bring them also who were there to Jerusalem in bonds to be punished.”
First he lays down his credentials:
§ He was a Jew - this he declares clearly and emphatically. He was a Jew through and through, and proud of it. Compare 2 Corinthians 11:22; Philippians 3:4-5. This was important because God's revealed purpose has been that it is the Jews who will bring the light of His truth to the world. Salvation is of the Jews.
§ He was born in Tarsus of Cilicia where there were large numbers of respected Jews, and his family were so ‘Jewish' that they arranged for him to be educated in Jerusalem.
§ He was educated at the feet of the respected Gamaliel, who was called ‘Rabban' (our teacher) as against ‘Rabbi' (my teacher), and was a disciple of Hillel. It was later said of him, ‘Since Rabban Gamaliel the Elder died there has been no more reverence for the Law, and purity and abstinence died out at the same time.' At the time when Paul was speaking he had been dead about five years, and was hugely respected. And it was by him that Paul had been ‘instructed according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers'. Thus his Jewish education was second to none.
§ He was ‘zealous for God, even as you all are this day'. No one had been more hot under the collar at a whisper of heresy than Paul. His zeal for the God of Israel at least paralleled that of his listeners if not exceeding it.
§ He had demonstrated his zeal in that he had ‘persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women'. He had hounded down Christians and had committed them to prison, even the women. For a Pharisee to bother about women was zeal indeed, for to a Pharisee women were of little account. And he had sought the death penalty on many. No clearer evidence of dedicated intent could be found. And all because of his zeal for God.
§ He had been so zealous that he had the high priest as a witness, and all the estate of the elders, that he had received from them letters to the brethren. He had been an official appointee of the highest officials in the land, and it was as that that he had journeyed to Damascus to bring back those who had escaped from Jerusalem and were finding refuge there, hauling them back in bonds to be punished. In his zeal against Christians he had gone to other cities so as to haul back to Jerusalem those who had fled from there.
So his credentials as a Jew, and as a zealous Jew, were impeccable. None had been more zealous than he. And his only desire had been to serve God. This alone must prove his genuineness. And then something had happened which had changed the whole course of his life, something which happened while he was on the way to Damascus to arrest and drag back to Jerusalem fleeing Christians.