(Suggested Reading: Chapter 9:1-31)
If in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word should be established, Jerusalem was the place to leave. Stephen leaves it, being cast out of the city for stoning; the Ethiopian eunuch leaves it, finding nothing there, and is saved in the desert. Now Saul of Tarsus leaves it, thinking to return with believers bound for trial and prison. But he does not return. He goes to Damascus, a converted and penitent man.
Saul of Tarsus—the Man and His Background
The question arises, who is this man, and how did he get to Jerusalem in the first place? He refers to himself as “a Jew of Tarsus, a citizen of no mean city” 21:39 and further proclaims himself a Roman citizen 22:25-29. The Lord Himself called him “Saul of Tarsus.” In the Acts he is known by two names Saul, his Jewish name, and Paul, one of his three Roman names, but the only one given us in Scripture.
He grew up in Tarsus, a city whose roots are sunk in the remote past. Josephus, the Jewish historian, interprets the Tarshish of Gen. 10:4 as Tarsus. “The sons of Javan” in the passage just cited were the earliest of the Greek settlers and traders.1 Over the centuries the city was also subject to the Oriental influence, and finally to the Roman.
The city had excellent engineers who took full advantage of its topography and general location. About two miles from the city, which is situated on a level plain, the ground rises gently until the hills merge into the mineral rich Taurus mountains. Out of the Taurus range runs the Cygnus river, which divided the city in two, in Saul’s days, as it flowed on to the open sea. The engineers of Tarsus built a harbor to regulate sea commerce, locating it on a natural lake several miles from the city, so it was safe from pirates. At a later date they made a cut through the mountains known as the Cilician Gates, to open up trade with the countries of the East. Employment was afforded, and wealth created, by the mines in the Taurus mountains, whose metals, in the days of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, were exported abroad see Ezek. 27:12, Jer. 10:9. With a sound industrial and trading base Tarsus and its hill country supported a population of 500,000 people in ancient times. This opulence enabled Tarsus to establish a university, which ranked with Athens and Alexandria as a celebrated seat of learning in the Roman Empire. This then was the city Saul grew up in as a boy.
Here he learned to make tents from the hair of the goats in the surrounding plain. Every Jewish boy was taught a trade as insurance against adversity in later life. From his father, a strict Pharisee, he absorbed his Jewish religious education. Then, still a boy, he departed for Jerusalem and the famous Rabbinical schools. Writing of this later he remarks “my manner of life from my youth which was at the first among my own nation2 know all the Jews, who knew me from the beginning” 26:4. Other than this all is conjecture. Did he shuttle back and forth between Jerusalem and Tarsus? Did he acquire at the University of Tarsus, or somewhere else, that fluent knowledge of Greek he displayed in his speech at Athens and in his epistles that command of Latin befitting a Roman Citizen? Was his family wealthy since Athenodorous had disenfranchised the citizens without property in Tarsus? He had a sister who later married, and several relatives mentioned by name in Romans 16. He served God from his forefathers, so that a tradition of piety was in the family. What we are sure of beyond a doubt is that the end result of a long education at the feet of Gamaliel, the greatest of all the Rabbis3 was that he became a learned Rabbi himself. He “profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in my own nation, being exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers” Gal. 1:14.
This zeal confirmed his tribal connection, for he was of the tribe of Benjamin, of which it was written “Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf” Gen. 49:27.4 He “gave his voice against them” the Jewish believers when his persecuting zeal brought them to trial. This indicated that he had by this time a vote in the judicial proceedings. His persecuting zeal did not commence at Damascus it ended there. For he says “I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the Name of Jesus of Nazareth which thing I also did in Jerusalem, and many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the Chief Priests, and when they were put to death, I voted against them. And I punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme, and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them as far as foreign cities” —26:9-11.
In the eyes of the Chief Priests here was a man who could truly be trusted as the persecutor of the Church. To his other qualities was added the energy of youth, for he is described as “a young man” at Stephen’s death. This expression had a definite meaning to a Jew in Saul’s position. Under thirty years a man was not considered mature enough to enter into divine service. This was based on the scripture “from thirty years old and upward even until fifty years old, all that enter into the host to do the work in the tent of meeting” —Num 4:3. So it was with the commencement of the Lord’s own ministry “and Jesus Himself began to be about thirty years of age” —Luke 3:23. Thus Saul in age and otherwise was ideally fitted to serve the religion of the Jews. Unknown to them, however, he was burdened by the testimony of the Lord’s ministry in Israel, the witness of Stephen, and that calm in the face of death which the believers displayed. If he could not dismiss his internal conflicts he could at least stamp out the outward expression of the trouble by persecuting the believers whose message he hated.
A Light From Heaven
The life principle of the new body we will receive at the Lord’s coming is spirit —1 Cor. 15:44, but the life principle of our present Adam bodies is breath—Gen. 2:7. So what Saul was as a natural man expresses itself in “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord.” Polish a man, educate him, refine him ever so much, still the same hatred of God will come out as in Saul’s case. What is inside must come out. Threatenings and slaughter were breathed out by Saul and the Council—Christ shone in Stephen’s face.
As Saul journeyed he came near his destination—Damascus. “And suddenly there shined round about him a light out of heaven. And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul why persecutest thou Me? And he said, who art Thou, Lord? And the Lord said I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise up . . . and it shall be told thee what thou must do” —9:3-5. With the spiritual insight of later years Paul looks back on this incident and links it to the fall of the old creation and God coming into it as light. “And the earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep.” Well might he fall to the earth, taking his place in death and judgment. The Great Light had exposed him for what he really was in spite of all his religious pretension—not only in a state of ruin, but in darkness—the Scriptural term for ignorance of God. Remembering his ruined state before his conversion he writes to the Corinthians later, comparing it to the fall of the creation in Gen. 1:2 but light from God shining forth to begin a new work in his darkened soul . . . “for God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” —2 Cor. 4:6. On the face of the deep was darkness—on the face of Jesus Christ light. God had commanded “let there be light” and a heavenly light now shone into his darkened soul on the road to Damascus. His was a lightning conversion. What takes years, sometimes, with other men, was almost instantaneous with Saul. He had seen “the shining forth” on Stephen’s face—the light he now saw must shine forth from his face. His question is “what wilt Thou have me to do?” Paul’s Ephesian epistle, the highest Christian truth, never reached higher than the note on which he started—the will of God. He describes himself at the opening of that epistle as “an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.” Today we cannot ask the Lord to reveal His will as directly as Paul did, so a good prayer for all of us is “teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art My God” —Ps. 143:10.
The will of the Lord in connection with Saul had already been expressed in the sight and words of a glorified Christ. Therefore, the Lord’s words “rise and go into the city and it shall be told thee what thou must do” should not be viewed as the complete answer to his question. It was direction for the short term, which was needed, not for the larger question of that great ministry for which he was not yet ready. He needed divine instruction in the desert of Arabia before he could be sent forth to represent the Lord as the great apostle of the Gentiles. For the present he was to receive his sight, be filled with the Holy Spirit and be baptized—v. 17, 18. Before the servant had even posed the question the Lord had revealed His will in connection with his entire ministry. This was “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God” —the gospel of a Man in the glory—peculiarly Paul’s gospel, and the doctrine of the one body—that is, that Christ and His members below—believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, are all one body. The members are on the earth—the head of the body, Christ, is in heaven. Note how the Lord conveyed this truth to Saul. He did not say “why persecutest thou My disciples?” No. He said “why persecutest thou Me?” Saul did not immediately grasp the import of these words for he replied, “who art Thou Lord?” Again, he gets the answer “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” There could be no mistaking the meaning of these words. Christ and those who believe in Him are united in one mystical body. In persecuting those believers Saul was persecuting Christ, who suffered when His members suffered.
Saul is trembling and astonished at what he saw; his companions speechless at what they heard. They lead him by the hand, for he is now blind, to the house of Judas in Damascus, located on the street significantly called Straight. “And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink.” How awful must have been his agony of soul as, sightless, he thought of his path up to the time when he realized the Shekinah glory of the God of Israel had shone round about him.
The Enemy of the Lord
Saul of Tarsus united in his person two characters of the enemies of the Lord given to us in type in the Old Testament—Shimei and Saul. We see from the expression “yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord” what these two characters were. Shimei cursed David; Saul threw a javelin at him. Saul of Tarsus did both to the glorified Man he met on the road to Damascus, in threatening and persecuting the believers who were one with Him. Let us now see how these two types find their fulfillment in the life of Saul of Tarsus.
The second chapter of 1 Kings, verses 35-46 gives us a picture of Solomon on the throne, but Shimei, the man who had cursed his father David, still alive. This exactly corresponds to the Lord’s position when Saul of Tarsus was the persecutor of the Church. Stephen saw Him in the glory. Of this Paul later writes “but now we see not yet all things put under Him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor” Heb. 2:8-9. This interim position of the Lord Jesus Christ—on the throne, crowned with glory and honor, but all things not put under Him, answered to His exalted glory when He encountered Saul of Tarsus going to Damascus. But it is not until Shimei is slain that the kingdom is established in the hand of Solomon—1 Ki. 2:46. Prophetically this is future, when God will deal with rebellious Israel. For the present we will relate it to Saul of Tarsus for “Thy commandment is exceeding broad” —Ps. 119:96.
Shimei is summoned to appear before the King. There he is charged “build yourself an house in Jerusalem and dwell there and do not go out from there to any place. For it shall be, that on the day you go out . . . you shall surely die” —v. 36:37. Now Saul, unknown to himself, was building “an house in Jerusalem.” He thought it was God’s house because he had ignored the Lord’s words “your house is left unto you desolate.” The Ethiopian eunuch had gone up to it and was returning empty, but in grace God met his needs in the desert. Yes, it was well for the Ethiopian eunuch to leave Jerusalem and to spread the glad tidings in his own country. But it was not well for Saul of Tarsus, the real Shimei, to leave Jerusalem to stop the preaching of the glad tidings. God wanted Judaism confined— “build yourself an house in Jerusalem and dwell there, and go not out from there” —but He wanted Christianity to spread. But stop! Saul of Tarsus will resist the Divine will. Like Shimei he leaves Jerusalem and for the same purpose! Two of Shimei’s servants, seeking their freedom, run away to another king. Shimei was content to stay in Jerusalem as Saul was, until his servants obtained their freedom. The Jew was under the bondage of the law until Christianity freed him. The early Christians fled to another King. But Saul of Tarsus, like Shimei, would not hear of that. Both of them went out of Jerusalem to bring back their servants. Damascus was not the only expedition Saul made for this purpose. How well did the words of Solomon to Shimei fit his case “thou knowest all the wickedness of which thy heart is conscious” —1 Ki. 2:44. On the road to Damascus he had been exposed as an enemy of the Lord, and as he wrote later “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” —Heb. 10:31. This is exemplified in the treatment of the beast and false prophet, the last of God’s enemies— “these both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone” —Rev. 19:20. What spared Saul from such a fate then, seeing he was the first great enemy of the glorified Christ? It was the prayer of Stephen “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” uttered in the presence of Saul of Tarsus.
Because of Stephen’s prayer the Lord now treats him as David treated “the household of Saul” —the very one whose name he bears. David says “Is there not any of the house of Saul that I may show the kindness of God to him?” —2 Sam. 9:3. Mephibosheth is found, one of Saul’s grandsons, who was living in LO-Debar—the place of no pasture. He was lame on both his feet because his nurse took him up at five years old in great haste so that he fell, and became lame—2 Sam. 4:4. So with Saul, nursed in the Jewish system, fleeing from the true David, yet summoned into his presence, not like Shimei before Solomon to be killed, but to be blest— “And David said unto him ‘Fear not . . . thou shalt eat bread at my table continually’” —2 Sam. 9:7. This completes the typical teaching concerning Saul of Tarsus—an enemy of the Lord brought before the Lord for blessing, to eat bread continually at the King’s table.
While Saul’s mind was saturated with the Holy Scriptures to an infinitely greater degree than the reader’s or the writer’s it is doubtful if thoughts such as these entered it during his three-day vigil. But deep repentance, the terrible realization that he was an enemy of the Lord, surely did. “Why persecutest thou Me?” must have echoed and reechoed through his mind, as blind, and without food or drink, he waited on the Lord. At the end of the exercise we find him praying. To whom was he praying, you ask? Ah! not to the Father, I think. It is doubtful that he knew Him yet. His ministry starts where Stephen’s ends. Where did Stephen’s ministry end? By praying to Jesus— “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Stephen cried “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” Does anyone ever pray to the Lord Jesus without being heard? Oh no. Saul’s sin was not charged to him because of Stephen’s prayer. Saul is now on his knees praying. We are not told what he prayed about, but Jesus heard him. He will ready one of His humble servants for the task of laying on his hands that Saul may receive his sight. An apostle could not do this for the character of Saul’s ministry must be established at the beginning—that is that he is not to receive from the other apostles, but from the Lord Himself. And in this act, he receives from the Lord, working through a member of His body—Ananias. This quiet, humble, unobtrusive man of God has been marked out to visit Saul of Tarsus.
The Three Visions
Three visions are given us in connection with Saul’s conversion, which have a common teaching; one vision for Peter in the next chapter with four mentions, but a common teaching. The seven mentions, grouped in the familiar four and three,5 give us a perfect insight into the mind of God here. Saul’s first vision is of a glorified Christ. His second vision is of Ananias coming in. What a beautiful vision. It is the emphasizing of the truth of the first vision “why persecutest thou Me?” for Christ and Ananias are one. But the vision doesn’t stop there. Still blind, he sees Ananias putting his hand on him that he may see. So! Christ, Ananias and Saul are to be joined together in one body. Hard as this would be for Saul to see, it would be still harder for Ananias, in view of Saul’s record.
Ananias and Saul are brought together through a third vision. In the Acts there are several visions, but those who have them are connected either with Peter or Paul. Thus Ananias and Paul each have a vision in the ninth chapter; Cornelius and Peter in the tenth chapter. The visions of Ananias and Cornelius both precede those of Paul and Peter, although distinctly linked to them. A vision is given to help you see something which you don’t understand naturally. The purpose of these visions is to link men, who are separated from each other for various reasons—thought, feeling, distance, religious prejudice. Thus Ananias remonstrates with the Lord about seeing Saul of Tarsus, even though a beautiful nearness and intimacy are displayed in his words. In a practical sense Saul needed a vision for he was three days without sight. Peter even said, “not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” He was too full of Jewish prejudice to turn his second key to the kingdom of the heavens without a vision. God gave these visions to His servants to remove their mental blocks.
Ananias obeyed the vision, entered the house and put his hands on him and said “brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared to you in the way as you came, has sent me, that you might receive your sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales, and he received sight, and rose, and was baptized.” This is the first mention of a brother in the Lord in the Acts.6 It was what was to constitute Paul’s ministry—not alone as we so often find Peter, but linked with his brethren. His was to be the ministry of the Church—the collective thing—hence “brother Saul.” And what grace on Ananias’ part to call the ravager of the brethren a brother in the Lord—one of them. He well earned the name. This man who ravined like a wolf later writes of himself “but we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherishes her children” —1 Thess. 2:7.
Next Ananias tells Saul that he knew about the Lord appearing to him although the record of the vision does not disclose this. Similarly, Ananias does not tell him in the record that he was a chosen vessel unto the Lord, “to bear My Name before the Gentiles, and Kings and the children of Israel.” A chosen vessel he surely was as we have seen in the story of his educational and cultural background, absolutely essential in view of those before whom he would stand in testimony. Some have facetiously remarked that the Acts should be termed ‘the Acts of the Apostle’ (meaning Paul) rather than the Acts of the Apostles. Now it is true that there are more than twice as many references to Paul as to Peter in the Acts and the book is predominantly full of Paul’s doings. But God has assembled the Acts with perfect symmetry between the two apostles. He is careful to assert His impartiality. Peter’s doings are less than Paul’s because the Jews judged themselves unworthy of eternal life forcing God to turn to the Gentiles. Peter is the Apostle to the Jews, Paul to the Gentiles, and God loves all men be they Jew or Gentile.
Does the reader wonder why the Lord deprived Saul of his sight only to restore it? Could it not be that God allows a man to be plunged into darkness when his ways are against Him— “who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness?” —Prov 2:13. But “His eyes are upon the ways of men, and He seeth all his goings” —Job 34:21. Notice how differently the gospel affected the Ethiopian eunuch—he went on his way rejoicing. Not so Paul. He fully recognizes the enormity of his crimes for he describes himself later as “the chief of sinners.” The ploughing of his conscience is a divine work—the furrows are deep indeed—three days without sight, food or drink. But the Lord now returns with restoring mercy after the three-day period. Ananias not only restores Saul’s sight, but by the laying on of his hands causes Saul to be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is most remarkable since none could give the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands except the Apostles. The explanation is that Ananias received a direct commission from the Lord Himself to do so—v. 12. Peter and Paul are the only men named by name as “filled with the Holy Spirit” —Peter in 4:8 Paul here.7
Saul is baptized. This act cuts him off from Israel. It is a public thing. He is now publicly identified with a dead and risen Christ, cut off from his old associations and brought into the circle of Christian blessing particularly the Lord’s Supper. Baptism marks change of state. It is an admission that the life he had in Adam has ended in death and judgment—our position on immersion—and that all life is in the Son of God—our position on being taken out of the water. It is an acknowledgment of a condition and a change of position.
Confession of Christ and Preparation for Future Ministry
In John 9 the Jews expelled the blind man from the synagogue for confessing that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. It is beautiful to see God’s answer to that—He sends a man who was once blind into the synagogue to replace him and preach the same message. Paul’s vast knowledge of the Scriptures, dormant until harnessed by light from God, now confounds the Jews at Damascus. He proves that Jesus really is the Christ.
At this point there is a break in the story of Saul’s life which is not disclosed in our chapter. The connection is in the epistle to the Galatians— “but when it pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me . . . immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. Neither went I up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went to Arabia and returned again to Damascus.” Now we pick up the thread of our narrative in the Acts again. His testimony at Damascus is refused and the Jews get ready to kill him, “after many days were fulfilled.” “Many days” in this passage means a period of three years8 which agrees with the Apostle’s own account of the duration of his stay in Arabia. In the Epistle to the Galatians Paul writes “then after three years9 I went up to Jerusalem” —Gal. 1:17. His leaving Damascus to go up to Jerusalem was a humbling experience, for the brethren let him down the city wall in a basket. This may be a figure of the still deeper humiliation he was soon to feel from the brethren where he was going for they did not forget his past. Be that as it may, what a real humiliation for a man who had been in the full favor of the Sanhedrin only a few years ago. The method of his deliverance, too, is in contrast with Peter’s. Peter is let out of jail by an angel. That is Jewish—7:53—and that kind of deliverance was quite in keeping for the Apostle to the Jews. Paul is the man of faith who walks by faith and not by sight. So his brethren are used to rescue him. He flees to Jerusalem but there his doctrine of the unity of all believers is put to the supreme test. The disciples are afraid of him. Imagine too, his plight at mixing in the society of people whose relatives and friends he had caused to be put to death. Poor Saul! Here is a situation more humbling than being lowered in a basket. It seems he is an outcast in both the world and the church. But Barnabas intervenes, bringing him to the Apostles. His received doctrine of the unity of the body is proved true in practice. God knows who is true and who is false. He goes in and out with the Apostles but does not receive teaching from them. He is “Paul, an Apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead” —Gal. 1:1. No doubt he familiarized them with his meditations in Arabia where his rich mind, stored with the Holy Scriptures, now understood for the first time the types and foreshadowings of Christ locked in them. Then he turns the tables on the Hellenists. They had disputed with Stephen—now he disputes with them. The result is the same though, they go about to slay him. The brethren discover the plot and bring him down to Caesarea, the seat of Roman rule, and from there to Tarsus, his native city. Here he may live in a free city under the protection of his Roman citizenship.
A Summary of Saul’s Journey
In the many details of Saul’s conversion, the reader may have missed the broad view—that what we have been considering is the Great Journey of Saul of Tarsus, as the Lord terms him in the vision. His journey started at Tarsus and ended at Tarsus, so the wheel came full circle. That is why the record of his conversion starts with the statement “and as he journeyed.” But what a journey! It took him from Tarsus to Jerusalem for his theological education. Then from Jerusalem to the road to Damascus for the beginning of his divine education, then to the solitude of the Arabian desert for its completion. Then back to Damascus, where he tasted death from his first entrance there without sight, food or drink for three days—to his departure, when the Jews consulted to kill him. Then like Eliezer of Damascus who sought a bride for the risen man, he preaches Christ as Son of God.10 Then on to Jerusalem to contend for the truth in the very place Stephen laid down his life—and finally back to his home city state—Tarsus. The Roman Empire was tolerant to Christianity for about a generation, at which time conversions became so numerous as to challenge the state sponsored religion. Then the climate changed. Now, however, Saul is free to witness for Christ in familiar surroundings—family, friends, neighbours. The Lord willed it that way. “And when he comes home he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them rejoice with me” —Luke 15:6. He is thought to have dwelt eight years at Tarsus until Barnabas summoned him to Antioch.11
As for the Jews no fresh persecutor seems to have been raised up to replace Saul. The story of his conversion is rounded out by this beautiful verse “then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified, and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, were multiplied.”
Saul too had rest. It might be thought that this great journey which we have just described was but the first of many, since we are all aware of his missionary travels. But Scripture does not use words carelessly. Saul is never again described as journeying after he met Christ on the road to Damascus. That was the end of his journeying for there he found rest for his soul.