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“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
He said, “Who are you, sir?”
We can see that before his conversion Saul was in some sense acting in good faith, doing the best he knew how to do in line with the formation that he had received.
At the feet of Gamaliel I was educated strictly in our ancestral law
and was zealous for God, just as all of you are today.
He studied at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the most important rabbis of the time. He zealously opposed anyone whom he perceived to be supporting and spreading an apparently contrary doctrine about a false messiah, delivering them to prison, even persecuting "this Way to death". Even Gamaliel, for his part, seemed to show much more restraint in how he thought it appropriate to respond to these early Christians.
So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God! (see Acts 5:38-39).
Saul seemed to have too much zeal to sit still and wait. If this new teaching was opposed to God's law and revelation he himself would be first in line to shut it down. Was he faultlessly naïve, invincibly ignorant before Jesus revealed himself on the road to Damascus? From one point of view it seemed like his vendetta against Christians was simply the logical conclusion of zealous obedience to the law. Perhaps he saw himself in the same vein as Elijah when he opposed the prophets of Baal.
If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless (see Philippians 3:4-6).
What we discover hidden at the bottom of Saul's confidence is that it was probably not entirely blameless. It was grounded "in the flesh" and therefore his zeal was able to be misdirected and appropriated against Christians. Perhaps he too readily believed what was said of them by others. Perhaps his desire to himself be the one to heroically oppose these Christians was actually the desire of his own flesh to be in control; a subtle mix of vanity and lust for power. None of this, we should state, was likely to have been obvious to him or to those who saw him. He had so thoroughly invested his identity in being a Jewish persecutor of Christians that he could hardly imagine a different story for his life. In the subtle way that Saul's life was hijacked by his flesh we discover why an encounter with Jesus was so necessary for him in order to put everything into a new context.
And he said to me,
‘I am Jesus the Nazorean whom you are persecuting.’
With this revelation of Jesus everything changed because the lies Saul had opposed turned out to be true. The messiah whom he thought to be dead was actually alive. The Christians whom he persecuted were not heretics, but members of the Body of Christ, such that in persecuting any one of them Saul had been persecuting Jesus himself. Everything changed with this revelation of Jesus as though a light switch had been flipped.
Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came,
that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
Immediately things like scales fell from his eyes
What he could never have achieved on his own through zeal originating in his flesh was given to him by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And he was no less zealous after the fact. If anything, finding the true purpose for zeal made him go to even greater lengths for that which he then realized to be the truth.
We may not have had such a dramatic experience of the reality of the risen Christ as Saul did on the road to Damascus. But it is still the same gift of grace by which Christ revealed himself to us. Without this grace we too would be meandering in the misdirected desires of our flesh. What this means for those who do not yet know Christ is that it cannot finally come down to one knock out apologetic argument, although such things are helpful to remove obstacles. Conversion (and for us, deeper conversion) can only come from an encounter with the risen Christ, whether in the form of a dramatic apparition or in the whisper of a still small voice. So for ourselves and the world we pray that this encounter would be given and deepened. The more it is given and deepened the more we will walk as the body of Christ, manifesting the healing power of the glorious one who is united to us as our head.
These signs will accompany those who believe:
in my name they will drive out demons,
they will speak new languages.
They will pick up serpents with their hands,
and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them.
They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.
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