Before and After-Part 2

“And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?  And he said, Who art Thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I AM Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”  Acts 9:4-5

In yesterday’s blog, we left Saul and his traveling companions on the road to Damascus, Syria, to search for and arrest Christians who had fled Jerusalem because of the persecution of Saul and the other religious leaders who were fearful of losing their positions and power to the Man called Jesus, the One whom they had crucified.  Why the urgency to go after these believers?  They were gone from Jerusalem so why not be satisfied with their absence?  No way could they let this false doctrine spread to other locations.  It had to be stopped.  They likely still thought that Jesus was dead, but they were also aware that His influence among the ordinary people was quite strong and spreading.  You can’t keep a good Man down, especially the Son of God.  As Saul and his companions went along the road, a brilliant white Light shone in front of them and caused them to stop in their tracks.  The account continues:

Saul immediately fell to the ground, and a voice came from the Light and said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”  It is interesting to note that Saul’s name was repeated.  It reminds me of a parent who is unhappy with his or her child’s behavior and says the child’s name twice as the parent shakes his or her head from side to side in utter disappointment with the child’s actions.  From Saul’s response, he knew that he needed to have reverential deference to what appeared to him to be a holy manifestation.  His response also indicated that just maybe he sensed that God was not pleased with his former and current pursuits.

When the voice in the Light asked Saul why he was persecuting Him, I can only imagine what was going through Saul’s mind.  Later, in his new identity as a Christ-follower and apostle, Paul, whose name had been changed by Jesus from Saul, indicated that in this initial encounter with the Lord, Saul actually saw Jesus in the bright Light, but did not know who He was at the time (I Corinthians 9:1; 15:8).  However, Jesus certainly knew who Saul was and what harm he had been doing to the believers in Jerusalem and would continue to do outside of Jerusalem unless he was stopped.  In persecuting those who followed Jesus, Saul was persecuting Jesus Himself.  Matthew 25:31-46 tells us that however we treat others is an indication of our attitude toward Jesus.

Saul, humbled and fearful, asked Jesus, “Who are You, Lord?”  Some commentators believe that Saul was addressing Jesus as “Sir”, but “Lord” as used here is translated from the Greek “kurios” which means God, Lord, or Master.  This indicates that Saul was aware that this Person addressing him was a divine Presence, and that Saul had been completely blinded to the gospel and to Christ by his own hard-heartedness.  He had really believed that the gospel was a false teaching and made it his mission to destroy it.  His eyes were about to be opened, and he would find out that he was the one in the wrong.  Eventually he would admit that his past life of persecuting God’s true followers was nothing more than dung, that is, manure (Philippians 3:8).

Jesus identified Himself as Jesus, the One whom Saul had been persecuting.  Jesus then said, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”  This was a metaphor that Jesus used to describe the futility of attempting to fight against Him and God’s plan of redemption.  The “pricks” were “ox goads”, sharp pieces of metal fastened on the end of a big stick, which were used to prod oxen to move on ahead.  If an ox kicked against the goad, he would only injure himself further.  To avoid pain, the smart thing to do was to co-operate with the one who was responsible for taking care of and managing the oxen.  To fight and rebel against the God of glory, the sovereign Master of the universe, only brings harm and shame to any and all who would attempt such a hopeless and useless endeavor, but this is where Saul found himself.

Let’s examine what this passage doesn’t say.  First, we see no effort on Saul’s part to search for the truth.  It didn’t appear that he wasn’t looking for a Savior to cleanse his sin-filled heart but is it possible that deep down in the recesses of his soul, which contains a God-shaped void in every sinner, that perhaps there was a small stirring by the Holy Spirit readying Saul’s heart to receive for himself the “good news” against which he had been rebelling.  We can speculate that perhaps Saul was beginning to feel some twangs of guilt for what he had been doing.  Secondly, we don’t hear Saul audibly praying what we call “the sinner’s prayer”, an admission of sin against God, a plea for forgiveness, and a promise to honor and serve Christ forever.  What we do hear, though, is an immediate response to Jesus, “Lord, what will You have me to do?”  Saul went from a man who was determined to destroy the gospel to a man who embraced it.  Saul had no idea to what spiritual heights and depths his desire to obey would take him.

I suppose Saul/Paul is one of the greatest examples of a “before and after” picture of an encounter with Jesus Christ.  He became probably the greatest evangelist and church planter of all time.  His zeal for persecuting the church became a great zeal for building it up and spreading the gospel.  With God, nothing is impossible.