Acts 23:1-5
(All Scripture is from the New King James Version unless otherwise indicated)
After Paul’s arrest (on false charges of taking non-Jews into the temple), he was taken by the Roman Commander Claudius Lysias to appear before the Jewish Sanhedrin, headed by the high priest. Here is what happened in the first five verses of Acts 23:
Then Paul, looking earnestly at the council, said, “Men
and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before
God until this day.” And the high priest Ananias com-
manded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth.
Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you white-
washed wall! For you sit to judge me according to the
law, and do you command me to be struck contrary to the
law?” And those who stood by said, “Do you revile God’s
high priest?” Then Paul said, “I did not know, breth-
ren, that he was the high priest; for it is written,
“You shall not speak evil of the ruler of your people.”
This Scripture has always caught my attention because Paul did not recognize the high priest Ananias because of his ungodly actions against the accused apostle! Let’s pull some things out of Acts 23:1 through 5:
- Why did the high priest get so angry at what Paul said for his opening statement; “Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.”
✡ The Sanhedrin (composed of the high priest and 70
leading Sadducees and Pharisees) had opposed Jesus
almost from the beginning of His ministry!
➔ ➔ Obviously, Jesus and His followers taught
all three, and the crucified Christ rose
from the dead after three days!
➔ Paul greatly emphasized the resurrection of
the Lord (see I Corinthians 15:20)as well as the resurrection of all human beings –the righteous to eternal life (see I Corin-thians 15:21-23), and the lost to eternal damnation (see Acts 24:14, 15).
- Where in the Jewish law does it prohibit striking a defendant as was done to Paul?
✡ Deuteronomy 25:1, 2 – “If...come unto judgment,...the
judges...shall justify the righteous, and condemn the
wicked. And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy
to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to...be
beaten....” By this Old Testament law...
➔ ...the facts of the case must be heard and
reviewed!
➔ ...the judge (in Paul’s case, the high priest)
must make his decision on those facts!
➔ ...only then can punishment be delivered!
✡ John 7:50, 51 – “Nicodemus (he who came to Jesus by
night (see John 3:1-21), being one of...[the Sande-
drin]), and said to them, ‘Does our law judge a man
before it hears him and knows what he is doing?’”
➔ Nicodemus was a respected member of that high
Jewish court!
➔ Jesus said of him in John 3:10, “Are you the
teacher of Israel, and do not know these things
[concerning being born again – see John 3:3-5]
...? ” “...the teacher...” implies that Nicode-
mus may have been the leading teacher of the
law in Israel!
➔ Nicodemus’ interpretation of the law was that
punishment cannot be administered before the
case is fully heard and a decision is handed
down!
- Was not the high priest distinguishable from the other Sanhedrin members by the very clothes he wore (see Exodus 28:1-29)? But by the New Testament time, many Biblical laws were being ignored or over-ridden by man-made interpretations (see Matthew 23:1-36).
✡ So it is hard to say just what clothing the high
priest Ananias was wearing that day of Paul’s hear-
ing.
✡ According to what Jesus said (see Matthew 23:5;
Mark 12:38; Luke 20:46), other members of the San-
hedrin emphasized their own fine priestly clothing,
and might not have been readily distinguishable
from the high priest!
✡ This judicial hearing against Paul was about 25
years after his conversion. Paul may have never
seen the person of Ananias before! He was appoin-
ed high priest in about 47 AD by Herod of Chalcis,
grandson of Herod the Great. By that time, Paul
was most likely on his first missionary journey
(47-48 AD)!
- Apparently, Paul’s assumption that Ananias was not the high priest was based on the man’s unlawful and ungodly actions!
✡ So he called out the man: “God will strike you,
you whitewashed wall! For you sit to judge me
according to the law, and do you command me to
be struck contrary to the law?” (Acts 23:3).
➔ “...you whitewashed wall!” This may have
been a reference to what Jesus was speaking
about in Matthew 23:27 and 28:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you are like white-
washed tombs which indeed appear
beautiful outwardly, but inside are
full of dead men’s bones and all un-
cleanness. Even so you also outwardly
appear righteous to men, but inside
you are full of hypocrisy and law-
lessness.
➔ In Paul’s thinking, “How can such ungodly be-
havior come from this member of the Jewish
high council?” (Acts 23:4). Never mind from
a high priest!
➔ By the way, the apostle’s statement, “God will
strike you...” was a prophesy of what was to
come for Ananias! (from https://www.gotquestions
.org/Ananias-in-the-Bible.html):
Many of the Jews hated Ananias because
of his ruthlessness and corruption, but
he was protected by Rome even after he
was deposed as high priest. In AD 66,
at the start of the first great Jewish
Revolt, Ananias was assassinated by an
angry mob of anti-Roman revolutionaries.
✡ But when he was called on it by “...those who
stood by...‘Do you revile God’s high priest?”
...Paul clinched it by saying, “I did not know,
brethren, that he was the high priest....” (Acts
23:5).
What can we learn from this incident? The high priest Ananias was acting as a hypocrite – professing by his office to be a man appointed by God and obedient to His Word! Yet his actions betrayed his hypocrisy!
- Hypocrite (as Jesus used the plural of the word seven times in Matthew 23 to describe scribes and Pharisees – Sadducees included by not mentioned) in the Greek is υʽποκριτής (pronounced hoop-ok-ree-tace’). It means, according to Strong’s Greek Dicitonary, “…an actor under an assumed character (stage player), that is, (figuratively) a dissembler (hypocrite)….”
- Are we sometimes hypocrites – wearing the mask of a Christian, but too often not acting like our Master Jesus Christ?
✞ We are, after all, to be “...transformed into the
same image [of Jesus] glory to glory, just as by
the Sprit of the Lord.” (II Corinthians 3:18).
✞ God’s stated purpose for His children is that they
would be “...conformed to the image of His Son, that
He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
(Romans 8:29).
- Take off the mask of hypocrisy! Do not be like Ananias! Be readily identifiable as a follower, a disciple of Jesus Christ! – a Christain!