The high priest Ananias was too truly a representative of the people as a whole. They were no better than a whited wall; and they too in due time afterward fell under the smiting of God. The apostle turns to the audience, as we saw, when he perceived that the one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, and cried out in the counsel, Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; touching the hope and resurrection of the dead I am judged. “And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and Sadducees; and the assembly was divided. For Sadducees say that there is no resurrection neither angel nor spirit; but Pharisees confess them both. And there arose a great clamor, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ part stood up and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man; and [what] if a spirit spoke to him, or an angel?” (Acts 23:7-97And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees: and the multitude was divided. 8For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both. 9And there arose a great cry: and the scribes that were of the Pharisees' part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man: but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God. (Acts 23:7‑9).)
We have seen all through the Acts of the Apostles that the Sadducees were as prominent in opposition after the resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Spirit, as the Pharisees had been while the Lord was on earth. There seems a certain fitness in this. The Righteous One was intolerable to the earthly-minded champions of human righteousness, ever found wanting when weighed in God’s balances. When He rose from the dead, the Sadducees were naturally roused to action, more especially as they were at the time in outward power. The high priests successively seem to have been of that party. The resurrection of Jesus was a deathblow to their system, as it is to infidelity at all times. For it is God’s intervention in power whilst the world goes on as it is, the pledge that the risen One will come and judge it; for He it is who is of God ordained Judge of quick and dead.
Resurrection is the sole and final condition of man which answers to the counsels of God, and will manifest His glory.
Paul, therefore, perceiving that if one part of his audience were Sadducees, the other were Pharisees, avails himself of the truth held by the Pharisees, which ought to have lifted all above personalities and prejudices. In all cases grace loves to do so; as flesh finds its wretched pleasure in continual strife and self-seeking. Here too it was of moment to press resurrection as a conditional truth of Christianity—resurrection not merely at the end but before the end comes. Not that the apostle here opens resurrection as specifically from the dead; he is content to speak of that which every God-fearing Jew acknowledged the hope and resurrection of the dead, which was certainly not for judgment of the wicked. Resurrection was not disputed but held from the beginning. Old Testament saints waited for it, not merely Israelites but those who were outside like Job, as may be seen in Job 19, when the Redeemer stands on earth at the latter day. Christ personally becomes, as every believer in Christ knows, the seal of the truth of resurrection, for in His case it is not only the dead man raised but raised from among the dead; and so it will be at His coming.
No Pharisee doubted the resurrection of the dead. Paul was not only a Pharisee but a son of Pharisees, a stronger expression than that which obtains in the received text or the A. V. He belonged to a family of Pharisees, who rejected free-thinking and held to the common faith of God’s people.
The effect was immediate. There arose a dissension between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. No doubt the apostle was not here preaching the gospel nor rendering that testimony to which his heart turned habitually. Christ resorted to no such measures when He was being judged; but it was surely righteous in itself if not according to the height of grace in Christ. But it was the means of no deliverance to Paul; on the contrary his adversaries were divided, but power was on the side of those who felt the blow struck at their infidelity. “For Sadducees say, that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but Pharisees confess them both.” The Sadducees were the skeptics of that day and of the lowest kind; they were blinded by materialism, the poisonous error which is now prevailing everywhere throughout Christendom. How solemn that the worst unbelief of Judaism should now pervade an immense part of the baptized in Christendom! Catholic or Protestant, high church or low, or dissent, makes little difference. The great expansion of experimental science has fed this distemper far beyond the effect of pure or mixed sciences in past days. Even the discoveries which have added so much to personal ease and selfish enjoyment, all tend to help it on. Man in his present life becomes everything: God is excluded, not to say denied, because He is unseen.
The resurrection of the dead, and yet more from the dead, is the grand weapon of faith against prevailing error and in favor of souls in danger of destruction. The God Who raised up Jesus from the dead is sending remission of sins through His name. To Him give all the prophets witness (how much more the gospel?), that everyone who believes on Him shall receive both the forgiveness he needs, and the life in Christ without which there can be no living to God. This alone is the true deliverance from Sadduceeism then, or from that which is akin at the present time.