In the earlier part of this book we had the history of the apostle’s conversion in its historical order, bearing profoundly upon the progress of the gospel, and the revelation of Christian truth. Here we have it as a part of his defense before the people of Israel. It has therefore a specific object, marked by the use of the Hebrew language, which accounts for its other peculiarities. Discrepancy there is really none, any more than in other parts of scripture; the appearance is due solely to the difference of design, which here is most obvious, as it undeniably is later in the book. In Acts 26 we have a short account modified by the fact that it was addressed to the king, Herod Agrippa the younger, as well as to the Roman governor. Whatever peculiarities have been observed, they are due to the same cause. The same principle in fact applies to the treatment of every object among men of intelligence. Scripture only adopts the same rule, but in a perfection to which men are unequal. Our place as believers is to learn by that which offends incredulity against all reason. “Brethren and fathers, hear ye the defense that I now make unto you (and when they heard that he spake to them in the Hebrew language, they were the more quiet, and he saith), I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, and brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to strictness of the law of the fathers, being zealous for God even as all ye are today. And I persecuted this way unto death, binding and delivering unto prisons both men and women, as also the high priest beareth me witness, and all the elderhood, from whom also I received letters from the brethren for Damascus to bring those also that were there, bound to Jerusalem that they might be punished” (Acts 22:1-5).
There was a providential training in the apostle’s case as in others, but strikingly manifest in him who was a Jew, not a Gentile proselyte. He was born in Tarsus, a renowned center of letters and philosophy at that day. But he was brought up in Jerusalem, at the feet of the most celebrated Rabbi of his day. Yet if Gamaliel was learned and strict as an orthodox Pharisee, we have already had remarkable proof, quite apart from the apostle, of his singular moderation; when the Sadducees began to persecute the faith. It is not often erudite men are equally known for prudence, still less for the wisdom which brought in God, not formally, but with conscience; and God used it completely to turn away the council from their unbelieving and sanguinary thoughts. It was at his feet that he was brought up who was to be the Holy Spirit’s witness to the grace of God in our Lord Jesus as no other man was since the world began.
His early training in Jerusalem would have conveyed no such presentiment to mortal eyes: he was instructed according to the strictness of the law of the fathers. If the Pharisees of Jerusalem were zealous beyond all others, he was yet more so; but in truth when faith came, he could all the better realize the complete change from law to grace. Those who never pierced below the surface of the one fail to appreciate the other; they are apt to mingle the two—the great bane of Christianity, whence law is no more law, and grace is no more grace. Law is the demand of human righteousness. Grace has now revealed God’s righteousness, and this only is what the apostle designates the righteousness which is of faith; for Christ is the end of the law to righteousness for every one that believeth. It is not a question of man’s effort, still less of his performance. He is not called to ascend to heaven, any more than to descend into the abyss. It was Christ Who came down, even as Christ risen from the dead is gone up, and we become God’s righteousness in Him. Salvation is wholly of Christ; it is what God loves to do—cannot but do consistently with His character in virtue of the work of Christ. The word therefore is nigh thee in thy mouth, and in thy heart, not the word that man prepares for God, but the word which God sends to be preached. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Thus has God indeed dealt, and can afford to deal, with sinners. It is His grace, but it is also His righteousness.
Now the more deeply Saul of Tarsus studied the law, and entered into its righteous inexorable claims on man, the more he felt himself awakened to the impossibility of salvation ender law. It was weak through the flesh, and must be bondage; bitter hopelessness could only result when conscience became enlightened. For salvation is altogether a question for God, Who, sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. Thus only could there be salvation. The law was able to do nothing but condemn the sinner. The gospel proclaims sin condemned, root and fruit, and the believer saved, and set free to walk, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. It was exactly therefore such a zealot of law, who, when his eyes were opened by grace, could see and appreciate to the full, the deliverance of the gospel. The same principle applies even now, though there is no doubt an incalculable distance between the apostle and other saints howsoever blest, in our day or any other. Still the men who most enjoy and are best fitted to set forth the gospel, are often those who were deeply attached, in the days of their ignorance, to law and ordinances, which necessarily gender bondage, where there is the exercised conscience.
And this must have told powerfully upon the Jews who weighed the apostle’s address. The apostle had never been a careless light-hearted Israelite; as his training was most strict, so his personal zeal was thorough. Indeed he had given the fullest proof, for he persecuted this way unto death. None like Saul of Tarsus, who was so active in binding and delivering into prisons both men and women. He was just a sample in the highest degree of those that have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Who could speak therefore like him for personal experience to men ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own? So much the more did he now subject himself to the righteousness of God.
Nor could the high priest himself ignore the fact, but rather bear witness, and all the elderhood too; for he reminds them that he also received letters to the brethren, that is, the Jews elsewhere, and journeyed to Damascus to bring also those that were there to Jerusalem in bonds, in order to be punished. He who was to go out to all the world with the gospel, could not rest in his legal zeal within the bounds of Jerusalem or Judaea.