Saul of Tarsus Meets Jesus of Nazareth

Among the most well-known enemies of the new covenant church in its earliest days was Saul of Tarsus. This zealous man approved of Stephen’s execution, and he went throughout Judea, trying to find Christians so that he could have them jailed and even worse (Acts 7:54–8:3; 9:1). Few people in the days of Saul’s persecuting the church could have imagined that he would become one of Christianity’s greatest advocates. But God performed that great reversal of Saul’s mind, heart, and will to turn him into Paul the Apostle, champion of the faith. This began with his conversion on the road to Damascus, as we see in today’s passage.

Luke tells us in Acts 9:1–2 that Saul, continuing to breathe “threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord,” sought from the Jewish high priest letters that he could take to the synagogue in Damascus so as to arrest any of those “belonging to the Way.” According to the book of Acts, “the Way” was one of the earliest names for the Christian movement (e.g., see 19:9; 24:22), probably because of the Christian confession that Jesus is the way of salvation (John 14:6). Paul was seeking letters of extradition. Even though the Jews were subject to the Roman Empire at the time, Rome gave the high priest a certain degree of authority over the Jews, even granting him the right to have Jews outside Judea extradited to Jerusalem to address religious affairs. Saul’s deep hatred of the church is seen in that he was going outside the boundaries of the Holy Land to find more Jewish believers in Jesus to arrest and even kill. He knew that he would find them in the synagogues, for the earliest Christians still attended prayer services there.

On his way to Damascus, Saul was knocked to the ground by a bright light and the sound of a voice addressing him (Acts 9:3–4). This was Jesus, who called Saul’s name twice, echoing earlier divine calls to other significant figures in the history of salvation (e.g., see Ex. 3:4). Jesus asked Saul why he was persecuting Him (Acts 9:4–5). Since Saul was persecuting the church directly, not the ascended Christ, our Lord’s question indicates that Jesus so closely identifies Himself with His church that to persecute the church is to persecute Christ. Dr. R.C Sproul comments, “Everywhere in the world, from the early church through today, attacks against the people of God are in fact attacks against Jesus.”