Acts 26:29

Acts 26:29. And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost and altogether such as I am, except these bonds. There is a slight difference in the reading of the older MSS. here in the Greek words translated ‘altogether,' but this hardly affects the interpretation of the passage. The prisoner apostle's reply to the king's words, told Agrippa and the rest of that brilliant and strangely assorted company present that day in the judgment hall of Cæsarea, how intense were his convictions, for his earnest passionate desire was that king and governor, Jew and Roman, might share with him in that glorious inheritance which the Master whom he, Paul, served so loyally, had purchased for all who would accept His gentle yoke and light burden. But in Paul's words there is a ring of sorrow: ‘Almost,' which he re-echoes, seemed to him a poor result to have achieved, a barren success indeed. He felt he had awakened in that worldly man some admiration, perhaps a pitying admiration, for himself, some sympathy for his cause; but he did not feel he had won another soldier of Christ.

The exquisite courtesy of the great missionary perhaps is nowhere made more manifest than in the concluding sentence, ‘such as I am, except these bonds.' He would have Agrippa a fellow-citizen with him in the city of God, a brother heir in his glorious hopes, but without the chain, and the sorrow, and the persecution which in his, Paul's case had accompanied his profession of Christianity. ‘Suchashe,' beautifully writes Plumptre, ‘pardoned, at peace with God and man, with a hope stretching beyond the grave, and an actual present participation in the power of the eternal world this is what he was desiring for them. If that could be effected, he would be content to remain in his bonds, and to leave them upon their thrones.'