Acts 22:1-5

Paul thought that by persecuting those who believed in the salvation of Jesus Christ he was preserving and promoting the morals of the Jewish traditions. He thought he was upholding the teachings of God’s chosen people. He thought he was doing the moral thing. He was wrong, dead wrong. We know not what we do.

Let us not make the same mistake calling evil good and good evil.

Paul was well known among the nation’s elite.

Paul explained to the crowd that he understood why they were beating him and wanted him dead. They were zealous for God. Paul was not blaming them for what they had done to him. He pointed out that in his former zeal he would have done the same thing. Paul showed compassion even to his attackers; we should model that same type of compassion for all people who have not yet placed their faith in Jesus. NKJ Bible.

Acts 22:1–5 (NKJV)

22 “Brethren and fathers, hear my defense before you now.” ² And when they heard that he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, they kept all the more silent.

Then he said: ³ “I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the strictness of our fathers’ law, and was zealous toward God as you all are today. ⁴ I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women, ⁵ as also the high priest bears me witness, and all the council of the elders, from whom I also received letters to the brethren, and went to Damascus to bring in chains even those who were there to Jerusalem to be punished.

Romans 10:2 (NKJV)

² For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.