The Credentials of Grace Text: Acts 22:1-5
Introduction: The Testimony as Battleground
We come now to the Apostle Paul, standing on the steps of the Antonia Fortress, facing a mob that was, just moments before, trying to beat him to death. He has been accused of being a traitor to his people, a defiler of the Temple, and an enemy of the law of Moses. And how does he begin his defense? He does not begin with a legal argument, or a philosophical treatise, or a plea for his life. He begins with his testimony. He tells his story.
In our therapeutic age, a testimony is often seen as a sentimental sharing of one's personal journey, a subjective story about "my truth." But for Paul, and for the entire Christian tradition that follows him, a testimony is nothing of the sort. A testimony is a legal declaration. It is the presentation of evidence. It is a sworn statement about objective facts that have transpired in history, facts that have a claim on every soul. Paul is not sharing his feelings; he is presenting the credentials of his apostleship, and those credentials are not found in his resume, but in the radical, sovereign grace of God that arrested him, overturned him, and commissioned him.
What Paul does here is a masterful work of rhetoric, but it is more than that. It is a profound theological statement about the nature of conversion. He is about to tell a story that is profoundly offensive to every instinct of fallen man. It is a story where the hero is God, the sinner is the recipient of all the action, and the central plot point is a complete reversal of loyalties, not because of human betterment, but because of a divine invasion. Paul is laying out the evidence for why he is who he is and does what he does, and in doing so, he is laying out the evidence for the gospel itself. He is showing that the grace of God does not come to polish good men, but to raise dead men. And he starts by establishing common ground with his accusers, showing them that he was once everything they could have ever wanted him to be.
The Text
"Men, brothers, and fathers, hear my defense which I now offer to you."
And when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew language, they became even quieter; and he said,
"I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but having been brought up in this city, having been instructed at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strictness of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today,
I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering both men and women into prisons,
as also the high priest and all the Council of the elders can testify. From them I also received letters to the brothers, and started off for Damascus in order to bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished.
(Acts 22:1-5 LSB)
Common Ground (vv. 1-3)
Paul begins his defense by establishing his bona fides. He is not an outsider, an innovator, or a Hellenistic dilettante. He is one of them.
"Men, brothers, and fathers, hear my defense which I now offer to you." And when they heard that he was addressing them in the Hebrew language, they became even quieter; and he said, "I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but having been brought up in this city, having been instructed at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strictness of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today..." (Acts 22:1-3)
First, notice his respectful address: "Men, brothers, and fathers." He is not screaming back at the mob. He is appealing to them as his kinsmen, acknowledging the covenant structure of their society. Then, he speaks to them in their own tongue, Aramaic, the language of the home and the heart. This is a strategic and pastoral move. It immediately quiets them down. He is saying, "I have not forgotten where I come from. I am not a traitor."
Then he lays out his resume, and it is impeccable. He is a Jew by birth. He was born in Tarsus, a notable city, but more importantly, he was "brought up in this city," Jerusalem. He is not a diaspora Jew out of touch with the homeland; he is a son of the holy city. And his education was second to none. He was instructed "at the feet of Gamaliel." This was the Harvard of first-century Judaism. Gamaliel was the grandson of the great Hillel and the most respected rabbi of his generation. To say you studied under Gamaliel was to say you were at the absolute pinnacle of rabbinic training, thoroughly versed in the "strictness of the law of our fathers."
And then he delivers the key line that connects him directly to the mob's own motivation: "being zealous for God just as you all are today." He looks at the men who were just trying to murder him and says, "I know exactly why you are doing this. I understand your passion. I used to be you." This is a crucial point. Paul does not attribute their actions to mere ignorance or malice, but to zeal. A zeal for God. But as he will go on to explain, and as he wrote later in his letter to the Romans, it was a "zeal for God, but not according to knowledge" (Rom. 10:2). They were sincere. They were passionate. And they were sincerely and passionately wrong. This is a standing rebuke to our modern assumption that sincerity is the highest virtue. You can be utterly sincere on your way to persecute the Son of God.
The Fruit of Misguided Zeal (v. 4)
Having established that his zeal was identical to theirs, Paul now shows them the fruit that this kind of zeal produces. Where did his top-tier education and his white-hot passion for God lead him?
"I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering both men and women into prisons..." (Acts 22:4 LSB)
His zeal did not lead him to a deeper love for his neighbor. It did not lead him to a humble pursuit of righteousness. It led him to become a hunter of men. His passion for the traditions of the fathers culminated in a bloody persecution of the followers of Jesus. He is saying to the crowd, "You think you are defending God by trying to kill me? I thought the same thing when I was rounding up Christians to have them killed."
Notice the name he uses for the Christian faith: "this Way." This was one of the earliest designations for the church. It is a profoundly biblical concept. Jesus is "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Christianity is not a set of abstract doctrines, a religious hobby, or a self-help program. It is a path to be walked, a road that leads somewhere. It is an entire way of life, oriented around the person and work of Jesus Christ. And Paul's zeal for his own self-generated righteousness led him to hate this Way. Why? Because the Way is the way of grace, not works. The Way declares that righteousness is a gift, not an achievement. The Way proclaims that God saves sinners, not that men make themselves presentable to God. This is an offense to the proud heart, and so the proud heart will always seek to stamp it out.
Paul's persecution was not a half-hearted affair. He pursued them "to the death." He bound both men and women, showing no partiality in his fury, and had them thrown into prisons. This is the logical end of all religion based on human effort and zeal. Because it cannot produce true righteousness, it must manufacture a false righteousness by destroying those who possess the real thing. When you cannot attain the righteousness that comes from God, you will inevitably seek to establish your own by tearing down your neighbor.
Official Sanction (v. 5)
Finally, Paul makes it clear that his former life was not some rogue operation. He was not a lone fanatic. He was an authorized agent of the highest religious authorities in the land.
"...as also the high priest and all the Council of the elders can testify. From them I also received letters to the brothers, and started off for Damascus in order to bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished." (Acts 22:5 LSB)
He calls witnesses. He says, in effect, "Don't take my word for it. Go ask the high priest. Go ask the Sanhedrin. They will tell you. I was their man." He had official letters, a commission from the ruling council, to carry his persecution into foreign cities. He was the establishment's attack dog.
This is the capstone of his opening argument. He has shown them that he was not just a Jew, but an exemplary Jew. He was not just zealous, but a zealot. He was not just a persecutor, but the chief persecutor, with the full backing of the very men they all respected. He has built the case for Saul of Tarsus, the perfect Pharisee. And why has he done this? He has done it to set the stage for the glorious, sovereign demolition of that entire identity. He has meticulously constructed the man that he was, so that he can show them that only an act of God could have made him the man that he is.
The irony is thick. The very letters that authorized him to bind the followers of the Way became the prelude to his own binding by the Lord of the Way. He went to Damascus as an agent of the high priest, but he would be met on that road by a high priest of a different order, one after the order of Melchizedek. He was going to put an end to the Way, but he was about to discover that he was on the wrong way entirely.
Grace Demolishes Resumes
In these first five verses, Paul is not just giving an autobiographical sketch. He is preaching the gospel by way of antithesis. He is showing us the zenith of human religious achievement, and he is telling us that it is a dead end. All his credentials, all his education, all his zeal, all his official sanctions, what did it get him? It made him the chief of sinners. It put him on a road to Damascus with murder in his heart.
This is where every man is apart from Christ. We are all building our own resumes, polishing our own credentials, stoking the fires of our own zeal. We think that if we can just be good enough, or sincere enough, or passionate enough, we can make ourselves right with God. But Paul's testimony shows us the utter bankruptcy of that project. The law, in the hands of a sinful man, does not produce righteousness; it produces a persecutor. Zeal, without the knowledge of Christ, does not produce holiness; it produces arrogance and violence.
The story of Paul's life before Christ is the story of every man's life before Christ. We are all zealous for our own glory, and we are all persecuting the Way of Jesus in our hearts, even if we do not do so with chains and prisons. We reject His authority, we suppress His truth, and we seek to establish our own kingdom in His world.
And so, the only hope for men like Saul, and the only hope for men like us, is not that we would try harder, but that we would be stopped in our tracks. The only hope is that the light of heaven would knock us off our high horse, that the voice of the risen Christ would call us by name, and that the grace of God would demolish our resumes and give us a new one, written not with our own achievements, but with the blood of the Son.