Acts 9:1-19

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 shone 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. ¹⁰ Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” ¹¹ And the Lord said to him, “Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying, ¹² and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” ¹³ But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem. ¹⁴ And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name.” ¹⁵ But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. ¹⁶ For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” ¹⁷ So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” ¹⁸ And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized; ¹⁹ and taking food, he was strengthened.

In a fascinating February 2014 article in Christianity Today entitled, “Road to Damascus Wasn’t Enough: Apostle Paul Questions Nearly Get Christian Deported,” Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra reported that Chang Qiang Zhu, a Chinese Christian seeking asylum in the United States, was initially refused entry by an immigration judge after Zhu could not answer specific questions about Christianity.  Apparently judges have begun asking these specific questions of those seeking asylum for stated reasons of religious persecution in their homeland after discovering that some who want entry into the United States lie about being religious or have been coached on how to sound Christian though they are not.  These specific questions are therefore intended to reveal whether or not the asylum seeker is indeed actually a Christian in need of help.

The article was discussing the legalities of these approaches by the court and reveals that this tactic is being criticized for numerous reasons.  Regardless, the nature of the specific questions asked of Chang Qiang Zhu struck me as fascinating.

A Chinese Christian’s hopes for asylum in America now have new life, after an appellate court overturned a denial from a judge who found that the applicant’s answers to questions about Christianity were “hesitant” and “evasive.”

The case is the latest example of how immigration boards often deny refugees claiming persecution for not knowing enough about their religion—and how courts continue to reverse such rulings.

Chang Qiang Zhu’s behavior began to suffer only after the immigration judge asked him specific questions, such as what form of persecution the Apostle Paul used against Christians and what year Paul converted to Christianity, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled. [Paul is currently the featured subject of the world’s largest Bible class, hosted by Harvard University.][i]

Zhu grew “hesitant” and “evasive” when the judge asked him “what form of persecution the Apostle Paul used against Christians” and “what year Paul converted to Christianity.”  It raises an interesting question:  would you grow hesitant and evasive before the same questions?  (As an aside, the exact year of Paul’s conversion is actually hard to know!)

I have serious questions about the validity of this judge’s approach in these situations, but I will give him this:  somebody professing to be a follower of Christ should indeed have at least some knowledge of the amazing story of Paul’s conversion and former life.  It is an astounding fact that over half of the New Testament was penned by a man who previously sought to destroy the Christian church!  Paul’s conversion remains one of the most “unlikely” in all of human history, and, as such, it is a story of great hope and possibility for all of us.

Paul’s conversion was at the initiative of a sovereign God.

We previously saw how an angel sent Philip to preach to the Ethiopian eunuch.  In so doing, we saw that human beings are the normal instruments of God’s missionary purposes.  He normally uses His church to go and tell.  But here, immediately on the heals of that story – a story, by the way, that has certain interesting parallels to this story – God Himself initially foregoes human instrumentality and approaches Paul directly.  At this point, Paul still goes by the name Saul.

¹ But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest

Note the intense hatred Paul had for the Church!  A.T. Robertson has powerfully described the implications of the Greek wording for “breathing threats and murder.”

Not “breathing out,” but “breathing in” (inhaling) as in Aeschylus and Plato or “breathing on” (from Homer on).  The partitive genitive of apeiles and phonou means that the threatening and slaughter had come to be the very breath that Saul breathed, like a warhorse who sniffed the smell of battle.  He breathed on the remaining disciples the murder that he had already breathed in from the death of the others.  He exhaled what he inhaled…The taste of blood in the death of Stephen was pleasing to young Saul (8:1) and now he reveled in the slaughter of the saints both men and women.[ii]

His hatred had therefore become a part of his very being, and he moved with steps calculated to inflict maximal damage upon the Christian Church.  Ever a man for keeping the letter of the law, he sought proper authority from the religious establishment for his actions.

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 shone around him. ⁴ And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

A sudden burst of light and a confronting voice knock Paul to the ground!  The voice demands to know why Paul is persecuting Him.  St. Augustine saw in these words evidence for the omnipresence of God.

How can we show that he is there and that he is also here?  Let Paul answer for us, who was previously Saul…First of all, the Lord’s own voice from heaven shows this:  “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  Had Paul climbed up to heaven then?  Had Paul even thrown a stone at heaven?  It was Christians he was persecuting, them he was tying up, them he was dragging off to be put to death, them he was everywhere hunting out of their hiding places and never sparing when he found them.  To him the Lord said, “Saul, Saul.”  Where is he crying out from?  Heaven.  So he’s up above.  “Why are you persecuting me?”  So he’s down below.[iii]

Yes, He is above and below!  In addition to omnipresence, there is also here a most telling note about Christ’s amazing solidarity and identification with His Church.  To strike the Church is to strike Christ.  This does not mean that the Church is Christ, but it does mean that Christ so identifies with His Church through His indwelling presence that the Church truly can be called “the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27).

Paul’s response to Jesus is most revealing.

⁵ And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

How astonishing it is to see this Pharisee of the Pharisees, this law keeper, this scholar of the scriptures, this undeniably brilliant man, this religious professional who was so jealous for the name of God respond with, “Who are you, Lord?” when he found Himself in the very presence of God!  Here is a testimony to the self-deluding power of self-righteousness:  in the very presence of God, Paul does not recognize Him.  How often is it that those who think of themselves as close to God are actually very far from Him?  What a bitter and cautionary irony this is!

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.

What one must be initially struck by in this encounter is the sovereign initiative of God in coming to Paul.  Simply put, God did it!  In point of fact, God always does it, but here we see His divine prerogative unveiled in a single act of startling, loving confrontation.

See here the pursuing, loving, jealous God who desires for all men to be saved!  See here the heart of God who sees a champion where everybody else sees a rogue!  See here the strong hand of God that is able to soften the hardest of hearts and drive the proudest man to His knees!  This is the God that is pursuing you!

Francis Thompson understood this well when he penned his beautiful poem, “The Hound of Heaven.”  Consider the opening and closing stanzas of that amazing poem.

I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’
Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
‘And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught’ (He said),
‘And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited—
Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.’

The Hound of Heaven pursues us!  He pursued Paul and caught Him on the Damascus road.

Paul’s conversion challenged not only Paul’s understanding of God’s grace, but the church’s as well.

But such a conversion is not without its challenges.  It challenged Paul but it also challenged the Church.

¹⁰ Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” And he said, “Here I am, Lord.” ¹¹ And the Lord said to him, “Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying, ¹² and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” ¹³ But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem. ¹⁴ And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on your name.” ¹⁵ But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. ¹⁶ For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

The Lord approached Paul directly on the road to Damascus, but He now sends a member of the Church to Paul.  He sends a man named Ananias, a believer, to reach out to Paul and to be the means through which Paul would receive the Holy Spirit and recover his sight.  Not surprisingly, Ananias is hesitant when God calls.  Why?  Because Paul was not only a man with blood on his hands, he was a man with the blood of Ananias’ friends on his hands.

From a human perspective, what God asks here is most audacious.  It is one thing for Him to ask us to present the gospel to a stranger, but quite another when He asks us to present it to somebody who has just recently been attempting to kill us.

But here is the amazing thing about God’s grace:  what seems audacious to us is normal for Him.  In fact, the very definition of grace embraces those who do not deserve it!  Undoubtedly Paul’s mind was reeling at this point in his journey, but so too was the Church’s.  The Church was now having to consider the amazing lengths to which God’s grace would go.  It was now having to consider just what it meant for Christ to lay down His life on the cross.  Grace truly was now being seen for the scandalous and amazing thing it is!

Perhaps you have witnessed this as well:  the shock of realizing that that person you considered too far from God to ever be reached really was not too far after all!  Here is the truth about grace:  it can reach anybody anywhere!  It is limitless and boundless and cannot be contained!

The challenge for Ananias is the challenge for us all:  to calibrate our conception of grace to God’s.  This is not always an easy thing to do, but it must be done if we are truly to be His people.

The conversion of the lost presents the Church with a holy inconvenience that helps conform us into the image of Christ.

There are two crucial responses in this text:  Paul’s response to the Lord and Ananias’ response to the Lord.  Paul’s response was vital to the course of his life and life-to-come.  Ananias’ response was crucial to the church’s willingness to embrace the breadth of God’s grace.  In short, how Ananias responded would either distance him from the heart of God in Christ or further conform him to the image of Christ and would either set a good example for the Church or a prohibitive one that would undermine the Church’s missionary task.

¹⁷ So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” ¹⁸ And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized; ¹⁹ and taking food, he was strengthened.

Ananias’ response showed that he was willing to embrace the image of Christ no matter how inconvenient.  The action verbs in verse 17 are filled with theological significance.

• “So Ananias departed and entered the house”
• “And laying his hands on him.”
• “he said, ‘Brother Saul…’”

Ananias moves from hesitation, fear, and suspicion to a full embrace of Paul as his brother.  In embracing Paul, Ananias was really embracing Christ, for Paul was the ultimate evidence of the radical nature of the love and mercy of Jesus.

In going to Paul, Ananias was reflecting the fact that Christ had already gone to Paul.  In laying hands of forgiveness on Paul, Ananias was reflecting the fact that Christ Himself had already laid forgiving hands on Paul.   And in calling Paul “brother,” Ananias was reflecting the fact that Christ had already proclaimed Paul part of the family of God.

The conversion of Paul was crucial not only because is signaled a cataclysmic change in one man, but also because it signaled the maturation of the body of Christ.  The Church would now be open not only to Samaritans and, soon, Gentiles as well, but also to notorious sinners, people otherwise considered to be beyond hope.

And here is the great good news of the story of Paul’s conversion:  nobody is beyond hope.

Whatever Damascus road you are on, whatever rebellion you might be involved in or headed toward, there is mercy to be found if you will but turn to Christ.  He is still in the business of taking us off the road of our own destruction and placing us in