⁹“So then, I thought to myself that I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. ¹⁰And this is just what I did in Jerusalem; not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death I cast my vote against them. ¹¹And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities.”

Paul returns to the pre-conversion part of his testimony. “So then” frames his prior motivation: extreme fanaticism as a strict Pharisee against those who believed what he now believes and embraces. One distinguishing feature of the two primary Jewish sects—the Pharisees and the Sadducees—is that the Pharisees believed in an end-time resurrection while the Sadducees did not. So you would think Paul would have a ready ear among the Pharisees, who were part of the gathered group for his hearing.

But Paul’s passion as a Pharisee, fully zealous for the Law of Moses, had motivated his mission to snuff out the accused minor Jewish “sect of the Nazarenes” in its infancy, before it grew too large to contain. The apostle now describes his former actions as “hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth,” the originator of the new understanding of “the hope.” Commander Lysias has identified Paul as the movement’s current ringleader (Acts 24:5), who is being persecuted by the Jews. But Paul focuses his self-accusations on being a persecutor against none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he now serves.

The details that Paul relates here are corroborated in the original narrative in Acts 9 and also Paul’s testimony in Acts 22. That Luke, the author of the book of Acts, records the story three times conveys the importance of Paul’s conversion story to the preservation of early church history. He is the epitome, the supreme example, of conversion from Judaism to Christianity. God’s (and Paul’s) intent was not to begin a new religion, but to reform Judaism through the corrected understanding of “the hope” that should have been fostered through faith. As the writer of Hebrews stated so clearly:

For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. (Heb. 4:2)

Paul is not ignorant of the Law but is reasoning fully within Jewish Law and the nuances of the contemporary theological debates among the Jews.

Lord, I do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who gives me hope for the future.