Why is it judged incredible with you, if God does raise the dead?
Parallel translations
- KJV Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?
- BSB Why would any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?
- NKJV Why should it be thought incredible by you that God raises the dead?
- NASB Why is it considered incredible among you people if God raises the dead?
- NLT Why does it seem incredible to any of you that God can raise the dead?
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Paul asks why it should be thought incredible that God raises the dead. He confronts the audience with the reasonableness of resurrection for those who believe in God.
Overview
Paul presses the heart of the matter: if God is the living Creator, raising the dead is no impossibility. The question challenges his hearers, and especially the resurrection-denying Sadducees among the Jews, to reckon with God's power. It points to the resurrection of Jesus, the concrete demonstration that God indeed raises the dead and the ground of Christian hope.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 13
- 1 Cor 15:12–20Now if Christ is preached, that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
- Acts 17:31–32because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.”
- Acts 4:2being upset because they taught the people and proclaimed in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.
- Acts 10:40–42God raised him up the third day, and gave him to be revealed,
- Luke 18:27But he said, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”
- Phil 3:21who will change the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working by which he is able even to subject all things to himself.
- Acts 25:19but had certain questions against him about their own religion, and about one Jesus, who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.
- John 5:28–29Don’t marvel at this, for the hour comes, in which all that are in the tombs will hear his voice,
- Acts 13:30–31But God raised him from the dead,
- Gen 18:14Is anything too hard for Yahweh? At the set time I will return to you, when the season comes round, and Sarah will have a son.”
- Acts 23:6But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Men and brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. Concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead I am being judged!”
- Matt 22:29–32But Jesus answered them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.
- Luke 1:37For nothing spoken by God is impossible.”
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Christ at the center
Acts is the risen Christ continuing his work by the Spirit through the church, as the apostles preach that there is salvation in no other name under heaven.
How Acts 26:8 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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