Acts 9:1-22

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

    Saul was breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples.  He wanted to lock up and even exterminate believers in Christ.  It was only a short time earlier that Saul had been involved in the stoning death of a Christian deacon named Stephen.  Following that, Saul was inspired to go from house to house and drag off to prison those who were followers of Jesus.  He was so zealous to protect his false religion and so eager to persecute Christians that he even got letters giving him authority to go to far away cities and arrest believers.  His attempts to destroy the church caused the faithful to flee for safety throughout the region.

    In our text Saul was traveling all the way to Damascus in Syria to further his campaign against the Christians.  As he got close to the city, a light from heaven flashed around him.  Falling to the ground, he heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  Saul asked, “Who are you, Lord?”  “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.”  Saul thought he was on God’s side; but he wasn’t.  He thought his was the true religion; but it wasn’t.  He thought he was diligently carrying out God’s work; but in fact he was fighting against God.

    Are we ever at all like Saul?  We need to remember that we can even use religion and spirituality to fight against God.  Saul was a very religious person.  He had great zeal in seeking to live a righteous life.  But the problem was, he was using religion to justify himself and advance himself.  He thought he could make himself acceptable and pleasing to God by his own loyalty and goodness.  

    Do you ever use religion as a way of advancing your own cause, as a means to achieve some self-serving end, showing yourself to be a good person?  In other words, is your spirituality about gaining some benefit for yourself or is it about desiring fellowship with God?  Do you ever find yourself despising people who aren’t living up to your standards?  Do you sometimes get upset because you feel like you deserve a better life from God?  Do you think that the main purpose of religion is to get people to behave properly?  If so, then you’re being like Saul, fighting against God, following a religion of the Law, trying to establish your own goodness.

    The truth is, we could get everyone to take a stand for God and country and pass all sorts of worthwhile laws–and some good might indeed come from that–but we still won’t have addressed the main issue.  There’s only one righteousness that counts before God, and that’s the righteousness of Christ.  Only Jesus’ death and resurrection redeems us.  It’s not our good works but His good works on our behalf that do the job.  After his conversion Saul, whom we now know as Paul, said that he considered all the religious merits of his former way of life that he could brag about as garbage, sewage (skubalon), that he may be found in Christ, “not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.”  Only in Jesus are we put right with God and granted eternal life.

    That’s a dangerous and scandalous message.  People are offended when their spirituality of self-fulfillment is declared worthless.  Such a Gospel of pure grace alone is seen as a message which needs to be suppressed and done away with–whether it’s “righteous” Muslims persecuting and killing Christians in Sudan and Nigeria and elsewhere, or “righteous” progressives in this country mocking Christian teaching and ignoring the cross and storming into churches, or for that matter “righteous” libertarians who insist on the superiority of everyone being free to live the way they want and who hate the church’s call to repentance.  False religion will always turn the focus from Jesus and put it on human wisdom and  qualifications.  Fallen human nature has to lash out at others like St. Paul did in order to justify itself as being right or worthy of God’s favor.  And so the Gospel of Christ will always be a target in this world.

    “Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing.”  Saul had to be knocked to the ground before he could comprehend his lowliness before the Lord.  He had to be blinded before he could perceive that he had no spiritual vision.  So it is with us.  God has to knock us on our butt with His Law to make us see that we are by nature spiritually blind and in darkness.  Saul could not see for three days, even as the Lord was in the grave three days.  Saul needed to die through repentance before he would be reborn in the Lord.  Likewise, we also must repent, dying to ourselves so that the real life of Christ may be ours.

    Now, as of yet, Saul was not converted.  Many think that his conversion took place on the road to Damascus; but it didn’t, at least not entirely.  That was the Lord getting his attention.  The conversion was yet to be completed.  The Lord called a man named Ananias to go to the house in which Saul was staying on Straight Street.  Ananias was understandably hesitant.  After all, only days earlier, any Christian would have been in grave danger in Saul’s presence.  But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go!  This man (Saul) is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel.”  God had special plans for Saul, and so Ananias went.

    Ananias came to Saul, placed his hands on him, and said, “Brother Saul . . .”  That was no insignificant title.  For a “brother” among Christians was someone who was to be considered a fellow inheritor of eternal life; a “brother” was someone who belonged to the community of those saved by Christ.  And so by referring to Saul as a “brother,” Ananias was declaring to him that from this point forward, his sins were forgiven, that he was now reconciled to the Lord.  “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”  Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again.  He got up and was baptized.  Now that Saul had been given the eyes of faith, his physical vision was restored.  He was baptized into Christ.  Here on Straight Street, the crooked way was made straight.  By water and the Spirit, he had become a Christian.  Solely by the mercy of God, he had been converted.

    This story of Saul should be of great comfort to you.  For it shows that even someone like him, who became the great Apostle Paul, was converted the same way you were.  Most of you probably had no miraculous Damascus road experience; but just like Saul you were enlightened by the same gifts of the Spirit.  It was holy absolution and holy baptism that converted Saul and made him a Christian.  So also with you, an ordinary pastor just like Ananias applied the name of God to you with the water.  Your sins, too, are absolved.  You are a child of God, a brother or sister in the faith who possesses eternal life in Christ.  You are no less of a Christian than St. Paul.  For you were made one the same way he was.

    This story also teaches very clearly that it is purely by God’s grace and not any merit or decision of your own that you are saved.  For clearly, Saul didn’t choose to be a Christian; Christ chose him.  He didn’t find the Lord, it was the other way around.  He didn’t give His heart to Jesus.  Jesus created a new heart and a right spirit within him.  It was God’s doing.  Jesus said to His disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”  If that is true for the great St. Paul, then that is certainly true of you.  You are Christians by God’s doing, not your own.  You didn’t find Him; you didn’t even choose to believe in Him.  Rather the Holy Spirit worked in you by the Gospel to bring you to faith in Jesus your Savior.

    St. Paul later wrote: “I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  But by the grace of God, I am what I am.”  And again he wrote, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.  But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display His unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on Him and receive eternal life.” St. Paul, Saul, is an example for you, to assure you of God’s mercy towards you.  If God forgave him who sinned so grievously by harming the very church of God, then certainly He forgives you.  The cross of Christ is bigger than your grievous sins.  Repent and trust in Him; He is merciful towards all who take refuge in Him.

    You’ll recall that when Saul was on the road, Jesus said to him, “Why are you persecuting Me?”  By persecuting Christians, you see, Saul was persecuting Christ Himself; for they are members of His body.  Christ is in heaven; but His body, the church, is still on earth.  So then, if you are in Christ by baptism and faith, you are protected in His body; your eternal salvation is secure.  For the Scriptures reveal that Jesus cannot die again; death has no mastery over Him.  Therefore, the world and the grave have no power over you.  For when they attack you, they’re attacking Christ Himself.  And He cannot be overcome.  He will surely bring you, the members of His body, safely through this troubled world and the jaws of the grave.  Just as He rose again and ascended to heaven, so you will follow where He has gone.  For the body always follows the head.  St. Paul had to go through many sufferings in His life, as must many Christians.  But he reminds us, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us,” the glory that shines from Him who is the light from heaven, Jesus Christ.

    Brothers and sisters of Christ, St. Paul experienced a radical, 180-degree conversion, from persecuting Christ to preaching Christ.  You also have experienced a radical conversion; for you have been changed from the enemies of God to the family of God, from those who are blind and dead to those who are alive and seeing and who confess His saving name.  You are followers of the Way, Jesus Christ, who is the only path to the Father.  God grant, then, that you daily walk the narrow Way of the cross, the way of repentance and faith.  For the end of the journey in Jesus is the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.

    ✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠