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Context No. 490 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 26:1-8: in context

1Agrippa said to Paul, “You may speak for yourself.” Then Paul stretched out his hand, and made his defense. 2“I think myself happy, King Agrippa, that I am to make my defense before you today concerning all the things that I am accused by the Jews, 3especially because you are expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews. Therefore I beg you to hear me patiently. 4“Indeed, all the Jews know my way of life from my youth up, which was from the beginning among my own nation and at Jerusalem; 5having known me from the first, if they are willing to testify, that after the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee. 6Now I stand here to be judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers, 7which our twelve tribes, earnestly serving night and day, hope to attain. Concerning this hope I am accused by the Jews, King Agrippa! 8Why is it judged incredible with you if God does raise the dead?

Paul stands in chains before King Agrippa, invited to make his defense, and the way he frames what is happening to him is remarkable. He does not present himself as a victim of injustice, though he is one. He begins by saying he counts himself fortunate to be able to make this defense before a king who understands Jewish customs, and then he names what his trial is really about. I stand here to be judged, he says, for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers, the hope our twelve tribes have earnestly served God night and day to attain. Concerning this hope I am accused. He is, in his own words, on trial for hope.

That reframe changes everything about how his imprisonment reads. From the outside it looks like a legal disaster: a man wrongly accused, dragged through hearings, held prisoner for years. Paul looks at the same situation and sees that what is actually on trial here is the hope of the resurrection, the promise that God raises the dead, and he is glad to stand up and testify to it. His chains are not merely a misfortune to be endured; they are a platform for the one hope he lives by. And he presses the point straight at his judges with a question that still cuts: why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? If there is a God at all, why should this be the unbelievable part?

Both of those things examine me. First, when hardship falls on me, do I see only the misfortune, or can I, like Paul, find that the trouble has become a place to bear witness to the hope I claim to live by? And second, that blunt question deserves an honest answer: is the resurrection a hope I have actually staked my life on, the way Paul staked his, or one I have quietly filed away as too incredible to build a life around? What would change if I lived as a person genuinely on trial for hope?

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