Saul on the Road to Damascus

“As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?'” – Acts 9:3-4 (NIV)

Saul of Tarsus was the most dangerous enemy the early church had. He was not a casual critic or a passive opponent. He was breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples, had the authority to arrest believers in foreign cities, and had presided with approval over the stoning of Stephen. If you had been a member of the early church in Jerusalem, Saul’s name would have been the name that made you afraid. He was brilliant, zealous, well-connected, theologically sophisticated, and absolutely convinced that he was serving God by destroying the movement Jesus had started.

He was also, apparently, exactly the kind of person the risen Christ wanted to speak to personally on a public road in the middle of the day. The light from heaven that flashed around Saul was not subtle. His companions saw the light and fell to the ground. They heard a sound but did not understand the words. Saul heard a voice that said his name twice, the intimate, urgent repetition that appears across scripture at moments of profound divine encounter. And then a question that reframed his entire understanding of what he had been doing: why do you persecute me?

The use of the first person is crucial. Jesus did not say why do you persecute my followers. He said why do you persecute me. The identification between Christ and His people is so complete, so intimate, that every act of violence against the church is experienced by Jesus as an act of violence against Himself. This is not merely metaphor. It is the theology of the body of Christ taken to its logical conclusion: when you touch any member of the body, you touch the head.

Saul arrived in Damascus blind, fasting, and praying, a complete inversion of the confident, powerful persecutor who had set out from Jerusalem. A disciple named Ananias, who had every natural reason to be terrified of Saul’s reputation, received a specific instruction from the Lord to go to Saul, lay his hands on him, and restore his sight. Ananias’s obedience in the face of his own fear is a small miracle within the larger miracle, the picture of a Spirit-empowered believer choosing obedience over self-protection.

Something fell from Saul’s eyes like scales. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. He was baptised. And within days he was preaching in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God, to the astonishment of everyone who heard him. The man who had been destroying the church was now building it. The Spirit specialises in the impossible conversion, the person whose opposition is most fierce, whose history with the community is most destructive, whose transformation would be most undeniably miraculous. Nobody writes off a Saul faster than the community he has been persecuting. God writes off nobody.

Today, bring before God the name of the person in your life whose conversion seems most impossible. The one whose history, whose opposition, or whose lifestyle makes the gospel feel like the least likely outcome for their story. Saul was that person to the early church. Pray with the specific faith that the same Spirit who stopped Saul on the road to Damascus is not constrained by your assessment of probability.

Prayer

Father, you stopped Saul of Tarsus on a road and turned the church’s greatest enemy into its greatest advocate. I bring you the name of the person whose conversion seems impossible to me. Do what only you can do. And give me the courage of Ananias, to go to them in obedience even when my fear says the risk is too high. In Jesus’ name, amen.