Acts 9: Better Call Saul

Remember that guy we met in Acts 7 who was working as the coat check attendant for the people martyring Stephen?  Saul?  Yeah, it wasn't long before this young man was causing more mischief for the Church of Jesus Christ.

When Acts 9 begins, Saul sincerely believes he is on a mission from God to whip up persecution against the followers of Christ.  (Check out John 16:2: "The time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.")  So Saul conspires with the high priest to arrest any Christians he can find in Damascus.

But a funny thing happened on the road to Damascus.  Saul was interrupted by...Jesus Himself!  Jesus took Saul off the road he was on and put him on a new road that would lead to Him.  In short, God saw the fiery disposition of this passionate Jew and decided that He had better call Saul.

There are several hidden gems in Acts 9 that I love:

• When Jesus speaks to Saul, He says, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?  I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."  Yet Saul was persecuting not Jesus but His followers.  Apparently Jesus so strongly identifies with His Church, the "Body of Christ," that He takes an attack upon them as an attack upon Himself.  (How does that make you feel to be a part of His Church?)

• The other Christians were not too sure what to make of this alleged conversion.  When Ananias is called to minister to Saul, he feels compelled to remind God just who this Saul is.  Unsurprisingly, God had not been confused.  Don't you think that was a hard act of obedience for Ananias to make?  Ananias was precisely one of the ones that Saul had been coming to Damascus to arrest!  But if Ananias had not responded faithfully by walking into the lion's den of meeting this Christian-persecutor-in-the-flesh, would we have ever had the apostle who became known as Paul?  When Saul makes it back to Jerusalem, the other disciples avoid him like the plague.  They see Saul coming, and they scatter - and this even after his faithfulness and failed attempts on his life (already!) in Damascus.  Thankfully, Barnabas (like Ananias) saw past Saul's past and offered him a new future.

• It doesn't take Saul long to go from being a persecutor to practitioner of Christianity.  Within three days of being "blinded by the light," Saul meets Ananias and is baptized as a Christian.  Almost immediately Saul begins proclaiming Christ in the synagogues.  At first his message is not nearly as developed and theologically sophisticated as we will find when he has had a couple of decades' refinement.  Instead, it is blunt: "He is the Son of God!"  His powerful arguments lead to him being a marked man.  It takes only 5 verses to go from Saul's baptism to his almost-martyrdom!  And then Saul, who had expected to come riding through the gates of Damascus, triumphantly carrying the orders of the high priest, is secretly lowered down out of the city wall, a literal basket case!