‘But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, touching the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.” '
We are not told the details of the proceedings that followed this rather inauspicious opening. Some discussion clearly took place and it would seem that no one was quite sure what he was guilty of and it seems probable, in view of what follows, that the Sadducees began to harp on about his claim that ‘angels' had spoken to him and refer to his talk about Jesus having risen from the dead. Both these ideas would be totally unacceptable to them, but they were not sufficient to condemn a man for. No alternative charge of any weight appears to have been put forward. The whole situation seems to have been remarkably vague.
So we need not assume that what is said in this verse happened immediately. Indeed it actually probably arose from things that were being said, which were being allowed to pass unnoticed simply because the Pharisees were too busy disdaining Paul and not sufficiently busy in following what was being said. But Paul's astute mind recognised only too well the true significance behind some of the things being said by the Sadducean opposition, things which the Pharisees were allowing to slip by because their minds were on Paul as someone worthy to be condemned.
Thus when he surveyed the Council and recognised there a number who would in fact agree with his main proposition, the resurrection from the dead, and should have been supporting him more vociferously in his claim that angels spoke to men, that is, if they had been properly following what lay behind what was being said, he decided to draw their attention to this fact.
We must not see this as just a ploy. Paul, who saw these proceedings as having become weighed down by inessentials, was genuinely concerned to establish the truth of the resurrection, and of ‘heavenly beings' speaking to men, and of his defence of them, especially in the eyes of Claudius Lysias. That was after all what his testimony had been all about. And he would thus want the trial to follow that course. He certainly did not want to finish up condemned on false grounds simply because of the prejudice of the Sadducees reacting against his Pharisaic beliefs. If he was to be condemned let it be for something worth while, something that will enable Claudias Lysias to recognise that what he is being charged with is simply a subject on which the Jews themselves were in dispute. For the trial to become a dispute about Jewish teaching would strongly aid his case.
Furthermore, once the subject of the trial altered and became fixed on the resurrection he would then be able to remind them that Jesus had risen from the dead. That was what he really wanted men's thoughts to be concentrated on, and the arguments to be about.
So he points out that what he is really being condemned for is something that is dearly held by a number of them, the hope of the resurrection. For every genuine Pharisee lived his life with only one final aim in view, that he might attain eternal life and the resurrection from the dead.
‘I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, touching the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question' he declares. Let all now recognise what is central in his thinking, the resurrection from the dead. This is what his ministry is all about, life from the dead. From this point on this subject of the ‘hope of the resurrection' becomes a theme in Acts, appearing again in Acts 24:15; Acts 26:6-8, and being sandwiched between two descriptions of the appearance of the risen Jesus. His trial as it is being conducted here, he points out, should have nothing to do with the trumped up charges that have been previously brought. It is the basic teaching about angels and the resurrection and the afterlife and how they are viewed and whether they are accepted that is the important question. That is the real reason why the High Priest and his set are so strongly against him, and want to condemn him, because of the Sadducean prejudice against the resurrection and against angels, and the Pharisees among them do not seem to be noticing it. Paul felt that it was time that the Pharisees supported him on this.
Some have referred the reference to ‘the hope' as meaning the hope of the Messiah, which was also held by the Pharisees, to be held along with that of the resurrection. However, Acts 24:15 suggests that ‘the hope' is of the resurrection of all men, both the just and the unjust. On the other hand Acts 26:6-8 might be seen as confirming that the hope in mind is the hope of both the Messiah and the resurrection. This would also tie in with Acts 17:18, ‘Jesus and the resurrection'.