CRITICAL REMARKS
Acts 26:19.—Begins the third part of Paul’s defence, and furnishes the reason for his Gentile mission. Whereupon.—Lit., whence, wherefore, accordingly—i.e., having been so instructed.
Acts 26:20. Showed first unto them of Damascus.—(Compare Acts 9:20.) No contradiction to Galatians 1:17, which does not assert that Paul’s evangelistic work did not commence till after his return from Arabia (Holtzmann).
Acts 26:21. Works meet for repentance.—I.e., such works as proved repentance to be sincere. It is simply ridiculous to find in this an evidence of non-historicity, since Paul’s doctrine was that of justification by faith alone (Zeller).
Acts 26:22. Witnessing.—If μαρτυρούμενος (Received Text) be correct, then the rendering should be “borne witness to” (see Acts 6:3, Acts 10:22, Acts 22:12); but, as Paul was not witnessed to, but accused by small and great, the reading μαρτυρούμενος (Revised Text) is to be preferred, in which case “witnessing,” “testifying,” is an accurate translation.
Acts 26:23. That Christ should suffer.—Better, how that, or if, or whether—εἰ presenting the points—ζητήματα questions (Acts 25:19)—as Paul was wont to discuss them.
1. Whether the Messiah, not must suffer, but is capable of suffering—παθητός, passibilis (Vulgate); i.e., not whether He should have a nature capable of suffering, but whether the idea of suffering was possible to be harmonised with the conception of Messiah laid down in the Old Testament. And
2. Whether by rising from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:22; Colossians 1:18) He should be the first to show (or proclaim) light unto the people and to the Gentiles (Ephesians 2:17). As the revelation contained in the law and the prophets had been called (Isaiah 2:5), so was the gospel (2 Corinthians 4:4) now styled, “Light.”
HOMILETICAL ANALYSIS.—Acts 26:19-23
Paul’s Subsequent Career as a Christian; or, how he turned to the Gentile Mission
I. The hidden impulse of his ministry.—The heavenly vision of the glorified Saviour who had appeared to him, pardoned, called, and appointed him to his special life-work. Captivated by that “vision” he felt himself to be no longer a freeman, but the bond-slave of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:1). It remained in and with him, a memory unfading, which cheered him in solitude and depression, strengthened him in weakness and weariness, and generally rendered it an absolute necessity to preach the gospel and keep ever moving on towards regions beyond (1 Corinthians 9:16; 2 Corinthians 10:16). It accompanied him wherever he wandered, supplying him at every stage and in every time of need with fresh inspiration, zeal, and courage. Whatever he had been and done since that memorable day, he told the king, had been due to that “heavenly vision” to which he had not been disobedient. Did Christ’s people evince the like joyful submission to, and cheerful following of, the “heavenly visions” which shine in upon their souls, they might emulate, if they could not rival, the apostle in lofty characters and noble deeds.
II. The wide extent of his ministry.—
1. It commenced in Damascus. There he preached in the synagogues and confounded the Jews, proving that Jesus was the Christ (Acts 9:20; Acts 9:22).
2. It advanced to Jerusalem. There he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus and disputed against the Grecians (Acts 9:29).
3. It extended throughout Judæa. Not before or immediately after his first visit to Jerusalem, when he retired to Syria and Cilicia (see Galatians 1:22). Perhaps when he repaired to the Metropolis on the occasion of the famine (Acts 11:30), or when he visited the capital between his first and second missionary journeys (Acts 18:22).
4. It passed to the Gentiles. First in Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:46), and ever afterwards, as opportunity presented, in Iconium (Acts 14:1), in Lystra (Acts 14:15), in Philippi (Acts 16:17), etc. Note the ever-widening circles of the apostle’s usefulness. First in Damascus, where he had been converted; next in Jerusalem, where he had been known from his youth up (Acts 26:4); then in Judæa, among the homes and haunts of his countrymen, for whose salvation he ardently longed (Romans 9:3; Romans 10:1); and lastly in the heathen world, beyond the confines of Palestine.
III. The unvarying burden of his ministry.—
1. That the Messiah predicted by Moses and the prophets had come, as was testified by the correspondence between their writings and Christ’s sufferings, death, and resurrection. If Paul attempted to establish Christ’s Messiahship by finding in the Old Testament allusions to His death and resurrection, this cannot, with reasonable fairness, be ascribed to the apostle’s Pharisaic Bible studies and vivid imagination, but must be set down to the fact that such allusions are really in the Old Testament, although prior to the illumination shed upon these by the events in Christ’s history, they were not perceived by him any more than by the other apostles (John 2:22).
2. That Christ by His resurrection had brought light to both Jews and Gentiles,—light they did not possess and could not have possessed until after that event, as, e.g.,
(1) upon the personality of Christ Himself, showing Him to be both the Messiah and the Son of God (Romans 1:4);
(2) upon the purpose and plan of salvation, which had ever been through grace and by faith (Romans 3:24-26);
(3) upon the character and value of Christ’s death, which was thereby declared to have been an atonement for sin (Romans 4:25); and
(4) upon the reality of a resurrection to eternal life and glory (Romans 8:11; 2 Timothy 1:10).
3. That Jews and Gentiles both should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance. This had been a never-failing theme in Ephesus (Acts 20:21), in Athens (Acts 17:20), in Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 1:9), and elsewhere—as, indeed, it could not have been otherwise, if his mission were to be executed in accordance with instructions received (Acts 26:18).
IV. The enormous difficulty of his ministry.—This arose from—
1. The severe labours it entailed in travelling from place to place, on long and arduous journeys, amidst severe bodily weakness and much infirmity.
2. The manifold dangers it involved, of which the apostle furnishes an affecting enumeration in 2 Corinthians 11:23-27. But chiefly from
3. The ferocious enemies it aroused, who were principally found amongst his own countrymen, the Jews, the Gentiles having seldom opposed him except when stirred up by these. Note.—“There are three chief points in the writings of the prophets. Christ’s sufferings, Christ’s resurrection, and the publication of them among all nations. And it was precisely these three points that the Jews were most against; they were offended at the first, denied the second, and grudged the third” (Starke). And
4. The deadly persecutions it raised against him, from the period of his first evangelistic labours in Damascus (Acts 9:23) till the day when the Jews apprehended him in the temple at Jerusalem, and sought to kill him (Acts 26:21). Only a man of heroic spirit could have undergone the fatigues, hardships, oppositions, and persecutions, that fell to the lot of Paul; and not even he, any more than Paul, could have done it in his own strength.
V. The secret support of his ministry.—The help of God. As he claimed to be what he was solely by the grace of God (1 Corinthians 15:10), so he arrogated to himself no credit or glory for what he had done in the ministry of the gospel, but ascribed all to God’s power, which had been graciously vouchsafed to him (Philippians 4:13). Never before had the nothingness of human strength in the domain of religion been realised as it was by Paul, and certainly no one has surpassed, or even rivalled, him since in the feeling of dependence upon God. Paul, in all that he became, all the soul-grandeur which he exhibited, was like plastic clay in the hands of the potter; in all that he achieved he served as a passive instrument in God’s hand. “Not I, but the grace of God which was with me,” constituted his explanation of both phenomena. “That which impels him is never caprice; egoistic, subjective interests are wholly wanting in him. What impels him is to him always something higher than himself. The objective rules over him. His personality is only the ‘vessel’ for the heavenly contents” (Hausrath, Der Apostel Paulus, p. 51). At every stage in his life’s journey Paul could have sung:—
“Here I raise my Ebenezer,
Hither by Thy help I’m come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.”
Learn—
1. That the first act of a converted heart is faith.
2. That the first sphere of labour for a convert should be amongst his own.
3. That the first word in the gospel message should be “repent and turn to God.”
4. That the first sign of repentance should be forsaking old sins and performing new works.
5. That the first trial which a convert will encounter will be the opposition of the unbelieving world.
6. That the first qualification requisite to constitute Christ a Saviour was His resurrection from the dead.
7. That the first thing demanded by a Christian for the successful performance of his duty is the help of God.
HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Acts 26:19. The Heavenly Vision.
I. The highest privilege that can possibly be conferred upon a soul.—To see Christ by the eye of faith is to see God revealed as a Saviour, and is therefore the beginning of new life to the soul.
II. The most powerful force that can operate upon soul.—The soul that beholds that vision is immediately changed in its whole inner nature, lifted out of its old grooves of thought, feeling, and action, and started upon a new career, which will terminate in eternal life and glory.
III. The sublimest message that can be uttered by a soul.—Nothing greater can be told by human lips than what such a vision of the Divine love, grace, and pity, means for fallen man.
Was Paul’s Vision of Christ an Objective Reality?—“It is incontrovertible that Paul felt convinced that Jesus had there (i.e., before Damascus) stepped forth to meet him objectively, visibly, and audibly. He does not at all compare this appearance with the visions which, according to his own and others’ faith, continued even at a later time to be possible, and which he himself, along with others, actually shared—or with the wonderful subjective experiences in which, when in a condition of ecstasy, he saw and heard the Lord, or in which, without knowing whether he was in the body or out of the body, he found himself rapt up into the heavenly paradise (2 Corinthians 12:2 ff)—but exactly with those appearances of which the Evangelists have reported to us the details, and concerning which Paul clearly supposes and presupposes as generally recognised, that they are now closed, since he says that to him as the last of all (1 Corinthians 15:8) had Christ become visible. And just this appearance of the Risen One with the word addressed to him by that Risen One was the power which brought him, the persecutor of the Christian Church, to faith in Christ.”—Köstlin: Der Glaube und seine Bedeutung, etc., p. 40.
Visions of Heavenly Things.—“Wherefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19). “For, see, saith He, that thou make all things according to the pattern that was shewed thee in the mount” (Hebrews 8:5). These words bring before our minds the work of two of the very greatest men in the world’s history, and they suggest an important analogy of experience, as fitting them for their work. The work of Moses, it is true, might easily be under-estimated. We might think of him as the lawgiver of but one nation; that nation, moreover, being very restricted in its domains, and of comparatively small numbers. We have rather to think of the unique mission of Israel as a people that should ultimately pervade the world with their influence, and of the work of their lawgiver as fitting them to fulfil this mission well. It is impossible, however, to do justice to the work of Moses without taking into consideration, along with it, the work of his great successor, Paul. For it was in the mission of the apostle that the mission of Moses was continued and fulfilled. The Jews were already scattered abroad in many lands; “for Moses from generations of old hath in every city them that preach him” (Acts 15:21). Thus was his law more or less penetrating the nations with its influence. And in that day, when “the fulness of the Gentiles” shall have “come in, and all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:25-26), it shall be more than ever manifest how great is the world’s debt to these two men of God. In either case, the work was extremely difficult. Think of the condition of Israel at the time when Moses was entrusted with his great responsibility. Think, again, of the condition of the Roman world at the time when Paul received his commission. In such work, moreover, there is one element of inspiration, one secret of strength, without which no mere enthusiasm of feeling, or power of devotion, can be effectual—viz., the inspiration and strength of a Divine Ideal.
I. Great ideals are the glory of man.—No other creatures here can have them; only men may receive an inspiration that shall raise them above themselves. This being so, whence comes the ideal? It is not of man himself, obviously, but of God. So Moses could have no inspiring ideal of what Israel might be, and should be one day, an ideal that should possess his imagination and fill his soul with a holy glow of hope, abiding with him day and night, and making him strong to endure and to do, unless the pattern had been shown him in the mount. But there God unveiled to him all the possibilities of that people of Israel, and thenceforth Moses set himself, by God’s help, to make the vision real. In like manner, Paul could not have portrayed for himself the glowing picture of a regenerate Roman world, all bowing in adoration to the Crucified, had not the glory, beyond the brightness of the sun, shone from the heavens, blinding, for a while, the natural vision, but photographing itself indelibly on the soul; so that thenceforth only “one thing” could he do—traverse city and country, land and sea, toil tired but untiringly, and endure infamy and death, if only he might reduce vision to fact, and make his high imaginations actual realities. So all man’s true ideals, of personal life and of service for man’s sake, are of God. They may come to us mediately, indeed; for they shine before us in the lives of noble men, they burn with quenchless fire in the poems of the ages, they lift their fair beauty before our view in the manifold Scriptures of God, and they show themselves as at once ideal and real in the glory of the Only-Begotten, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). But, mediately as these ideals may thus be presented to us, they must take immediate hold of our imagination, and kindle the fervours of our own soul—even as though we ourselves were in the mount, alone with God, or were struck by the sudden glory from the skies. Otherwise their Divine purpose will be unfulfilled, and our life largely unblessed.
II. It has been already partly assumed, but must now be more strongly emphasised, that the great ideals which are intended to ennoble find transfigure human life are not ideals of mere happiness, as though we were to be only dreamers dreaming of our own joy, although there shall be a supreme happiness as the inevitable result of making our life according to the pattern shown us in the mount, and of obeying the heavenly vision. But such happiness comes only when it is not sought for its own sake, its delicate bloom being spoiled, and its very essence perishing, if we snatch at it greedily. The ideal, so far as it pertains to ourselves, is an ideal of character, a revelation to ourselves of what, by the grace of God, it is possible we may become. And just in so far as it is a revelation of possibilities of character, it is a command to us that we do our utmost to make the possible an accomplished fact, saying to us ever, with a more august and sacred behest than that of more words, “Thou shalt!” Thus the true ideal of man’s life is the law of life. But human character, at its best, is possible only through service, loving and loyal service rendered to man, for man’s own sake and for God’s. For even character may be made too exclusively an end in itself, as an achievement of our own, and as meaning the ennoblement merely of our personal manhood; in which case its nobleness is tarnished, being vitiated by the selfishness of our motive and aim. Our own character cannot have true worth save in so far as it is in true relation to the characters of others, and to the one perfect character of God. And such relation implies service—the service of loyal love.
III. The ideals of life are necessarily progressive, partly on account of the material which has to be fashioned by them, and partly through their own nature.—The material will not always allow of the ideal being at first so perfect as it shall be afterwards. The pattern of what Israel was to become, as a people, did not show all the possibilities of ultimate good; nor did the heavenly vision, perhaps, reveal immediately to the apostle all that was in God’s heart for the world. Enough, if, for the present, the ideal can accomplish its present work. King Alfred’s ideal of what England might be made, as a nation, was perhaps not such as may be cherished by the successors of his spirit, discerning the needs and the possibilities of our country in the light of later history. In like manner, the ideal of our personal life will not be so full, perhaps not so imperious, in the immaturer days of life; it will rather be according to our needs and our capabilities. The ideal grows in significance as the material which is to be fashioned by it becomes more susceptible more responsive. But in its own nature the ideal is necessarily growing and progressive. It grows with all our growth; but it grows likewise because it is intrinsically infinite, and must always make larger demands on our faith and loyalty the more fully we yield to the demands already made. Let us learn, however, the solemn truth that, just as surely as our ideals will grow and live, if we believe in them and live by them, so surely will they dwindle and die, if we are untrue to their Divine claims and promises. Yes; the pattern may lose its beauty, the vision may fade; the inspirations of life may die away.—T. F. Lockyer, B. A.
Acts 26:20. Works Worthy of Repentance.—Are works—
I. Springing from a spirit of repentance.
II. Attesting the sincerity of repentance.
III. Accomplishing the purpose of repentance.
IV. Disclosing the beauty of repentance.
Acts 26:21. Men Whom the World Sometimes Seeks to Murder.
I. Those who would lead it into higher truths.—Too often verified in other spheres than that of religion. Prophets and preachers with new ideas have commonly had a poor reception from the world.
II. Those who decline to be partners in its wickedness.—When a man enters upon the path of holiness, all who walk in sinful ways interpret his behaviour as a silent protest against, and rebuke of, their ungodliness and dislike, if they do not hate and persecute him accordingly (1 Peter 4:4).
III. Those who have conferred upon it most good.—The world has never been kind to its philanthropists and social benefactors, but for the most part has killed them, if not by open assassination by cold and cruel neglect (see Ecclesiastes 9:15).
Acts 26:22. Paul a Model Witness of Gospel Truth.
I. Through whom does he witness?—Through the Lord, whose strength is perfected in his weakness.
II. Before whom does he witness?—Small and great, the people and the Gentiles—i.e., all who have ears to hear.
III. Of whom does he witness?—Of Christ, promised, manifested, crucified, raised, preached.—Gerok.
Acts 26:22-23. The Glory of the Gospel of the Grace of God.—This consists in the following facts, that the Gospel is—
I. Designed for all.—
1. All ranks and conditions of men. Small and great—i.e., high and low, rich and poor, young and old.
2. All times and climes on earth. For pre-Christian ages, since it was substantially contained in the Hebrew prophets and in Moses; for the Christian centuries, since it was meant to be published among the Gentiles.
II. Adapted to all.—Proclaiming as it does—
1. An atonement for sin, which all need. This involved in the idea of a suffering Messiah (Isaiah 53:5-6; Isaiah 53:10).
2. A resurrection from the grave, which all desire. This guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:20).
III. Offered to all.—This a necessary consequence of the public proclamation of the gospel, both to the people (the Jews) and the Gentiles, since it is inconceivable that men should be called upon to accept, and punished for refusing, what was not really offered to them. Compare Mark 16:15; Romans 1:16; Romans 3:22.
IV. Bestowed on all.—All who believe without distinction become partakers of its light and life.