The Conversion of Saul

“And he said, Who art thou, Lord?”

Acts ix. 5.

^TpHE conversion of Saul is one of the turning points in human history, for it brought to the service of Christ the man who, under God, has most powerfully affected human life and thought during the last two thousand years. In the providence of God it was reserved to this Jew of Tarsus to act a part in the secondary work of redemption, greater not only than that of any other man, but than that of all other men, for it was given to him to receive, at first hand from God, and to communicate to the world, those amazing revelations which are embodied in his fourteen Epistles.

Acts iv,
29-31.

An epoch-making
man.

Eph. iii.
i-ii.

Gal. i. II,
12.

I Cor. xi.

I Cor. ii.
10-13.

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Distinctive
revelations
through
Paul.

Matt. xvi.
1 8.

John xvi.

I Cor. XV.
1-3.

John xii.
24.

Luke xxii.
20.

Matt. xxvi.
28.

Apart from the writings of Paul we should know nothing of the origin, relationships, distinctive calling, service and destiny of the Church of God.

Of these things Christ said nothing. He simply announced that He would build His Church, leaving all to be revealed after His departure. These were among the “many things” which He had to say to His disciples, but which they could not then bear.

Moreover, to Paul chiefly, were committed those further revelations which explain and apply the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Of the meaning of that work our Lord gave profound and foundational intimations. His death should be like a corn of wheat, falling into the ground and imparting its life to countless corns of wheat.

His sacrifice was to establish “the new covenant in my blood,’* and was to be “shed for many for anb 0tiytx Snterpretationg the remission of sins.” But He left it for the mighty ministry of the Spirit, through Paul, to develop these generic intimations into the great doctrines of justification, reconciliation and redemption. Christ planted the acorn in the great teachings of the Gospels, the tree is the Epistles.

And just here lies the essential folly of the so-called ‘* back to Christ “movement — the attempt to construct a sufficient organic and creedal Christianity out of the words of our Lord alone, ignoring the apostolic revelations. It is a movement in the face of His own express declaration that in departing from the world He was leaving an incomplete revelation. “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.”

The conversion of Saul has also a great typical interest. Saul, an

John xvi.
12, 13.

Saul*s conversion
typical.

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Phil. iii. 5.

Ezek. XX.
34, 38.

Zech. xiii.
1-6.

Rom. xi.
25-27.

Saul con*
victed.

Acts vii,
54-60.

Acts ix. 5.

Hebrew of the Hebrews,” was converted by the personal ministry of the ascended and glorified Christ. He will shine, as a star, in no crown of mortal evangelist. His conversion was wrought by the Lord in glory. In this Paul is a type, for the future conversion of Israel will be the alone work of the glorified Christ at His second coming.

We may well believe that from the moment of Stephen’s martyrdom, when Saul saw and consented to the death, by stoning, of a young man with the face of an angel, a face over which God had spread the covering whiteness of the Shekinah; saw the cruel stones crush the life out of that holy body, and thought that so the truth of God was being maintained, and God glorified; the whole being of Saul was shaken by profound questionings. The very violence of his conduct proves this. He was “kicking anb (0tf)er Snterpretations? against the goads” of an awakened conscience.

What Stephen saw that day was the ‘* glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,” and the vision was more glorious and comforting than the stones were painful, so that the death of the first martyr was, perhaps, the happiest death that ever ended a human life. The compensations of heaven infinitely outweigh any possible suffering into which the path of duty may lead the child of God. Whatever the deprivation, whatever the loss, whatever the pain of that path, one moment of heaven more than compensates for all.

Apart, however, from these great historical and typical considerations, the two questions of the stricken man on the Damascus road: “Who art thou. Lord?” and “What wilt thou have me to do?” are the keynote of the whole

Acts vii.
56.

Rom. viii.
I7» 18.

2 Cor. iv.
17, 18.

The keynote of
Paul’s life.

Acts ix.
5. 6.

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Phil. iii.

2 Tim. i.

I Cor. xiii.

1 Cor. xi.
23.

Acts xi.
4» 5.

Acts xxiii.
II.

2 Cor. xii.
1-4.

life and service of the great apostle to the Gentiles, for the two consuming passions of Paul were to know Christ and to obey Him. *’ That I may know him “he writes to the Philippians, as of his supreme desire, and this well on toward the close of his great ministry. He could, indeed, say, ‘* I know whom I have believed,” but it was that knowledge ‘* in part,” “as through a glass darkly,” which could never satisfy the burning love of his heart.

He had been repeatedly in personal conference with the Lord, had been caught up to heaven and heard unspeakable things, and this was but as fuel to the flame of Paul’s longing to know his Lord. And with the passion to know, was an equal passion to obey, and this is the two-fold secret of PauPs unparalleled service, and the key to all noblest discipleship.