And Paul earnestly beholding the council
Fastening his eyes upon them, looking wistly and intently at
them, and thereby discovering a modest cheerfulness, and a
becoming boldness, confidence, and intrepidity, as being not
conscious of any guilt, and well assured of the goodness of his
cause:
said, men and brethren;
see ( Acts 22:1
) .
I have lived in all good conscience before God until this
day;
not only from the time of his conversion, but throughout the
whole of his life; for though, strictly speaking, there is no
good conscience but what is awakened by the Spirit of God, and is
unprincipled by his grace, and is purged from sin by the blood of
Christ; in which sense he could only have a good conscience,
since he believed in Christ; yet whereas in his state of
unregeneracy, and even while he was a blasphemer, and persecutor,
he did not act contrary to the dictates of his conscience, but
according to them, in which his view was to the glory of God, and
the honour of his law; he therefore says he lived before God, or
unto God, in all good conscience, though an erroneous and
mistaken one; he thought he ought to do what he did; and what he
did, he did with a zeal for God though it was not according to
knowledge: besides, the apostle has here respect to his outward
moral conversation, which, before and after conversion, was very
strict, and even blameless, at least unblemished before men;
nobody could charge him with any notorious crime, though he did
not live without sin in the sight of the omniscient God.