NOTES for Act 26:8

The apostle Paul asks this question of King Agrippa, a half-believer like most people now living on earth. Such people think that God apparently exists, but their ideas about what He is like, what relations with Him can be, and what this means for human life are sometimes very far from true piety.

How precisely Paul formulates his rhetorical question to one such person, a question that does not require an immediate answer but forces reflection. He does not question God's existence, nor does he prove it. Moreover, he does not ask King Agrippa's opinion about God's omnipotence; otherwise he would have asked: "Do you consider it impossible..." No, for God everything is without doubt possible. But one can safely regard it as incredible that God would do something that contradicts His design, His will. If death was created by God, if that is His design for the fate of humanity, then the resurrection of the dead is completely incredible. But Scripture asserts that death is the consequence of the fall (Gen. 3), and through the prophets (Paul's question to Agrippa in v. 27 is not accidental) God reveals that He does not desire human death: "As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the sinner, but that the sinner turn from his way and live" (Ezek. 33:11). And for God it is entirely normal to repair what we have distorted; therefore the resurrection of the dead cannot in any way be considered incredible.