Acts 26:12

Thursday, 28 March 2024

“While thus occupied, as I journeyed to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, Acts 26:12

The Greek more properly reads, “In which also, traveling to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests” (CG).

The words of this verse give additional information to what Paul just said. He noted that he was pursuing believers in Christ, even to the out-cities. He now says, “In which also.”

In other words, he is explaining one time in which he was engaged in going to a city outside of Israel proper. In this case, he was “traveling to Damascus.”

Damascus is north and east of Canaan. By highway from Jerusalem today, it is 197-miles that takes approximately 4 ¾ hours to drive. The account he will speak of is recorded in Acts 9. In this excursion, he went “with authority and commission from the chief priests.”

The word translated as “commission,” epitropé, is found only here in the New Testament. It indicates designated authority, meaning full power to make a decision. What he decided was to be considered final.

Again, though he is giving a narrative of the past, he is also showing quite clearly that the actions of the chief priests were (and thus continue to be) wrong. He had their permission to do what he was doing, even if it was not legally appropriate according to Roman law.

Life application: Legal does not make right. Paul may have been given the legal right by his chief priests to take a certain action, but it does not mean that what he was doing was right by another standard that also existed.

Likewise, just because something is legal, like abortion, it does not mean that it is morally justifiable. But this is the claim of those who support the procedure. However, if you ask the same person if it is ok to have slaves, he will cry out, “Of course not!”

But having slaves was legal in the past. Therefore, according to their standard, having slaves was fully justifiable. From a biblical standpoint, slavery is far more tolerable than abortion, and yet one can see how those who are opposed to biblical morality will turn the world upside down to overthrow God’s better way of conducting the affairs of life.

Be sure to contemplate the moral arguments set before you from a biblical perspective. When you do, you will see that some things you thought were acceptable because some governmental authority said so are actually not acceptable by the greater standard set forth by God.

Lord God, we need to evaluate the world from Your perspective, and then we need to make our moral judgments based on Your perfect standards. But if we don’t know Your word, how can we do this? Help us to want to know Your word more and more. Give us a hunger for it, pursuing its perfect design for our lives all of our days. Amen.