For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus. 20 And
immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of
God.” 21 And all who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who
made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come
here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?” 22 But
Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in
Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ. (Acts 9:20-22 (ESV)
“He is the Son of God.” So Luke summarizes the proclamation
of Paul at this time. He had come to persecute the Christians, followers of “the
Way”, and instead had joined them. He proclaimed that Jesus is the Son of God
and proving that Jesus is the Christ.
Here is an aside on the ESV translation of this passage.
Estin, means is, third person present indicative. The Greek New Testament I
have before me has Estin in both “He “Is” the Son of God,” and “Jesus “was/is”
the Christ.” I really can’t say why they translated it “was” in the second
half, perhaps they are using some obscure variant, or a slip of the mind. It’s
easy to do that, to think of Christ in the past tense as if he were dead. But
just as he is the Son of God who is eternal and present, so he is the Christ.
He is still the Christ. He is still the Messiah. He is still that one for whom
all of Israel waited, the one who would be anointed to be king of Israel, who
would establish the eternal kingdom. And he has done this. The Church is his
kingdom, and it is eternal. He has never given up the title Christ. And this is
what Paul proved to the Jews in Damascus to their consternation.
Of course this word can be translated a few different ways
too. But here I think they did well to
translate it prove. Prove is a funny word. It’s most often and properly used in
math and logic, geometry has proofs. Other scientific disciplines opt for
probability. Some things have a higher probability than others, but it is hard
to say that anything is proven to be true. Of course for the way this works is
that once something has been shown to have a certain height of probability most
people take it for granted that it is proved.
But it is a funny thing today when it comes to faith. Today people
believe you can’t believe something that has been proved. Faith somehow
requires it not to be demonstrated or proved. That if you can give a rational
explanation or demonstration of it you know longer have faith. Apologetics is
therefore marginalized as unchristian and counter productive. Well tell that to
Paul and Peter for that matter. Neither of them thought that giving a rationalization
for the faith detracted from a person’s ability to believe, or somehow
compromised the work of the Holy Spirit. But it was precisely in and through a
rational and reasonable presentation of the Gospel that Jesus is the Christ
that the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of man and calls them by the gospel as
Luther hammers home in the third article of the creed. It isn’t something that
we can do by our own reason or strength, but that doesn’t negate the Holy Spirit
using our reason or appealing to our reason as he sets forth the faith as Paul
does here in Damascus.
Paul though, has a particular advantage with his audience
that we don’t always have today. He is arguing with people who take two things
for granted that are not always taken for granted today. One that there is a God,
and two that there would be a Christ. Today it is sometimes necessary to first
prove that there is a God. And even when you do this you will find people who
refuse to believe. Just the way it is. Proving doesn’t actually make anyone
believe. Somehow one must inspire a person to first want to believe. People won’t
believe what they don’t want to. And it is about that simple. We as humans are
emotionally invested both in what we do believe and what we don’t believe, and
this is true even if you have good reason for what you believe.
Paul though didn’t have to argue that. All he had to do is show
that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies these people already believed would be
fulfilled. This in itself is a pretty amazing demonstration for the
rationalization of the faith and presentation of the gospel being true. And
most of it will fall into place by just showing the historical reliability of
the resurrection accounts, that given the evidence at hand it makes more sense
to believe Jesus rose from the dead then it does to not believe that he rose
from the dead. But if he rose from the dead the most rational explanation is
that he is the Son of God, and he is the Christ.
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