“9:1 But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against
the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters
to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way,
men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3 Now as he went on his
way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around
him. 4 And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul,
why are you persecuting me?” 5 And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said,
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But rise and enter the city, and you
will be told what you are to do.” 7 The men who were traveling with him stood
speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. 8 Saul rose from the ground,
and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand
and brought him into Damascus. 9 And for three days he was without sight, and
neither ate nor drank.” (Acts 9:1-9 (ESV)
We return to Saul on the road to Damascus. It has become a
by word in Christianity for conversion. Saul had gained letters from the high
priest to bring any who belonged to “the Way” bound to Jerusalem for trial in
the persecutions. It always amazes me just how much power and prestige the high
priest must have had within the eyes of the Roman government to be able to
issue such a letter. Damascus was close enough to Jerusalem that it was part of
Israel in the days of David and Solomon. However, Damascus was considered part
of Syria by the time Paul gets around to it. Though it was also considered to
be one of the cities of the Decapolis a region that Jesus himself visited. The
Roman authorities would had to have lifted an eyebrow or two wondering what
business the high priest had in Damascus. Yet, the high priest issued the
letter and presumably expected this was something he could get away with.
Here you see what was at stake in this whole controversy for
the high priest, power and prestige. But for Saul it was his whole world view.
Everything he knew about life was being challenged by the Way. All he had tried
to earn with his good life was for nothing if Jesus had risen from the dead.
This would mean that Paul would have to give up his own righteousness, and
consider it to be as rubbish, skubola even. And that is a bitter pill to
swallow. It isn’t that our own righteousness counts for nothing in this world.
Here we live by the rules of society and society honors and rewards us for
that, for the most part. And there is something to be said for all of that. But
we want it to count for more. Paul wanted the life he had lived to count for
more. And when it doesn’t, when we realize that either it is forgiveness or
nothing, well then we have opportunity to see just how depraved our hearts
really are. We start looking at others and thinking but they did all of this,
they did drugs, they were promiscuous whore mongers, they went to wild parties,
they were drunkards, they were you fill in the blank, and they get the same
reward the same forgiveness the same righteousness before God as me, and we are
upset. But a person has to ask himself why? Was it because you were tempted to
be a druggy, a whoremonger or prostitute, a drunkard, was it because you really
wanted to go to all those wild parties yourself? Are you seriously jealous of
their sin? And the truth is, yes. Yes we really are. We think it is not fair
that they should have gotten away with these things and received the same
forgiveness as us who tried so hard to abstain from those things. It’s just a
little messed up. If you took inventory of your sin you would see that you have
more than plenty of your own, you don’t need to be jealous of others for
theirs. You just haven’t lived a life that would qualify as righteous before
God, as even your begrudging of their forgiveness shows. Jesus, the model of
righteousness to which none of us lives up to shows his true righteousness in
that he loves his neighbors, shows. Jesus, the model of righteousness to which
none of us lives up to shows his true righteousness in that he loves his
neighbors, you, I, the prostitutes, the whoremongers, the druggies and
drunkards, the murderers and the self-righteous to afraid to enjoy life even a
little less they be found to have sinned in the eyes of man. He loves them all
as he loves himself and so he dies for all to give them forgiveness. But it
makes the moralist masticate his pride. And Paul was a moralist as no moralist
can be. His forgiveness will change him so much so that two thousand years
later people are still as scandalized by what he wrote in his letters as he was
by the cross, the death and resurrection of Christ. To this day when people
take Paul seriously, they are called anti-nomians, just as he was called.
But now on the road he meets the man he persecutes. It is an
insight into the body of Christ, and how real it is. When we are persecuted for
our faith we are persecuted together. When someone insults us for our faith, it
is not us but Christ, it is Jesus who is insulted, it is our creator and
redeemer they blaspheme. And so we pray, we pray that even they would be
converted as was Paul, we begrudge them not their sin, but for their sake’s we
pray they would know the forgiveness of Christ’s cross and have their sin
wrested from them.
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