Acts 9:1–31 · NIVAC

Original Meaning

Saul’s Vehemence (9:1–2)

SAUL’S LATER FRIEND and partner, Luke, uses strong language to express the vehemence with which Saul persecuted Christians (v. 1), but that is something Saul himself did in his own descriptions of his pre-Christian behavior (see 26:11; Gal. 1:13). In these excesses Saul was departing from the attitude of his esteemed teacher Gamaliel and of the Pharisees in general, who were characterized by caution and leniency in the administration of justice.3 But, as Bruce points out, just as “Stephen saw the logic of the situation more clearly than the apostles, Saul saw it more clearly than Gamaliel.” Both Stephen and Saul had realized that the new order and the old were incompatible. Whereas Stephen argued, “The new has come; therefore the old must go,” Saul’s point was, “The old must stay; therefore the new must go.”4 The root of this was his zeal (Phil. 3:6), especially his zeal for the traditions of his fathers (Gal. 1:14). The idea of a crucified Messiah was an impossibility, according to Saul’s thinking. And when Stephen proclaimed that the temple was no longer necessary, all this was too serious to be ignored; it had to be stopped.

The Sadducees were, according to Josephus, more heartless in their judgments than the Pharisees,5 and it may not have been natural for a loyal Pharisee like Paul to go and request letters from the Sadducean high priest (v. 2). This is an indication of the extremes he was willing to go in attempting to stamp out this menace.

Saul left for Damascus to seek out people “who belonged to the Way.” The designation “the Way” (he hodos) was probably applied to the church by the Christians themselves.6 As a designation for the church it appears six times, only in Acts, and probably indicated that they viewed themselves as following the true way in the larger Jewish community.7 Damascus was an old city, with a long history of being controlled by different national powers. Tens of thousands of Jews lived there, and it had several synagogues (cf. Luke’s “synagogues” in v. 2).

Bridging Contexts

CONVERSION. THE ENGLISH word “conversion” comes from the Latin convertere, meaning “to turn around.”38 The equivalent Greek word, epistrophe, appears only once in the New Testament (Acts 15:3), though the NIV translates as “convert” words that literally mean “proselyte,” “neophyte,” and “firstfruits.” Related verbs like “to turn” (epistrepho) and synonyms such as “repentance,” “regeneration,” and being “born again” appear often.39

Paul’s conversion is sometimes described as a typical biblical conversion. But it has many atypical features. It was triggered by a post-resurrection appearance of Christ. It was a sudden turnaround in direction with no evidence that he had been moving toward Christianity (as is the case with most converts). His was a conversion like that of C. S. Lewis, who said, “I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”40 The last thing Saul ever intended to do was to become a Christian. But he was, in his own words, “grasped by Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:12).41 In the features given below, however, his conversion is typical of biblical conversions.

Features typical of biblical conversions. (1) Conversion comes as a result of a divine initiative. Jesus initiated the encounter that resulted in Paul’s conversion (vv. 3–6). Paul had no qualms about admitting that he did nothing to merit salvation. On the contrary, he was, in his words, “the worst of sinners” (1 Tim. 1:16). But, he goes on to say, he was shown mercy so that he might be an example of the unlimited patience of God. Thus, no one can boast of salvation as something he or she has achieved or deserved (Eph. 2:9). Paul explains the process of conversion in a way reminiscent of his own experience when he says, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

(2) There is a personal encounter with Christ (vv. 4–6). We all meet Jesus in different ways; but if we are converted, we have met him and entered into a personal relationship with him. Jesus said that eternal life is to know God and Jesus Christ (John 17:3). D. A. Carson comments on this verse, “Eternal life is not so much everlasting life as personal knowledge of the Everlasting One.”42

(3) Paul surrendered to the Lordship of Christ. While the word kyrios in verse 5 can mean either “Lord” or “sir,” there is no doubt that what we have here is a deep surrender of Saul’s life to Christ. This is evidenced by his total fast for three days, indicating that until he completed the process that began on the road, he was not going to cease from his intense quest for God. Such surrender is indeed the norm for all followers of Jesus. Paul’s later radical calls to discipleship imply nothing short of total surrender to the Lordship of Christ. Roy Clements says he does not “use the phrases ‘decided for Christ’ or ‘committed to Christ,’ though decision and commitment are certainly involved. . . . Conversion is at root not a decision, nor a commitment, but a surrender to the supreme authority of Jesus.”43

(4) We see the important place of the body of Christ in the conversion process. While Paul was eager to show that the gospel he received had not been taught to him by any human but was given by the Lord himself (Gal. 1), others in the body of Christ played an important role in his conversion and early Christian life. Through baptism he was incorporated to this body (Acts 9:18). Then he “spent several days with the disciples in Damascus” (v. 19). The thing that stands out in our passage is the role of the two encouragers, Ananias and Barnabas. Probably the first words Saul heard from a Christian after his conversion were, “Brother Saul” (v. 17). Stott says, “It must have been music to his ears.” The archenemy of the church was welcomed as a brother; the dreaded fanatic was received as a member of the family.44 Lloyd Ogilvie muses, “Imagine laying your hands on someone who you know had been on his way to arrest you!”45 There you see the love of the encourager reaching out to a new believer in spite of his past.

Barnabas shows two other traits of an encourager in the body. He takes the risk of introducing the ex-adversary to the inner circle of the church leaders (v. 27a). If Saul was indeed a spy, this would have been the opportunity he was waiting for. But Barnabas acts on his trust of Saul and takes this risk. Moreover, he tells these believers the story of Saul—of his conversion and his witness (v. 27b). He represents the junior man before the senior people. All new believers would benefit greatly from such encouragement.

(5) Though Saul’s conversion is individual, it is not individualistic. Gaventa points out that he “is not converted in order to savor the experience but in order to witness.”46 Thus, along with his conversion came a commission to witness. Though we may not receive a specific commissioning to apostleship as Paul did, all Christians are called to be witnesses for Christ. Once we come to him, we become his ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:20) and have the responsibility and high privilege of representing him on earth and communicating his message to the world.

Suffering and discipleship. At the start of his pilgrimage, Saul is informed that he will suffer for the name of Christ (v. 16). This became a standard aspect of discipleship teaching in the early church, for Jesus’ basic call to discipleship was to a cross (e.g., Matt. 10:38; 16:24). While Saul encountered more sufferings than many other obedient Christians, we must remember that suffering for Christ is a normal part of Christianity and it should come into standard introductions to Christianity for new believers.47

The significance of the Damascus experience. Paul’s conversion has been viewed by the church as a unique event. An eighteenth-century English statesman, George Lyttleton, expressed the immense importance of the Damascus Road experience when he wrote, “The conversion and apostleship of St. Paul alone, duly considered, was of itself a demonstration sufficient to prove Christianity to be a divine revelation.”48 Why is this so?

In the New Testament the apostles had a special place as revelatory spokesmen. The Old Testament prophets spoke through direct inspiration so that they could say, “This is what the LORD says.” This phenomenon stopped four hundred years before the birth of Christ, and the Jews had a complete canon of the Hebrew Bible. With the coming of Christ this level of verbally inspired revelation became a reality again. Jesus said, “The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work” (John 14:10b). His promise that the Holy Spirit “will teach you all things” (14:26) and will “guide you into all truth” (16:13) was fulfilled in the teaching of the apostles. Because they had seen the risen Christ and had been commissioned by him, they were in a unique position. They led the church after Jesus’ ascension and before the New Testament canonical books were accepted as authoritative. They were revelatory spokesmen, just like the Old Testament prophets.

Paul was eager to show that he did not depend on human instruments to receive his basic message (Gal. 1) since, as an apostle, he also was a revelatory spokesman. Note his claim for verbal inspiration in 1 Corinthians 2:6–13, which climaxes with these words: “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.”

This is why Paul could claim absolute authority for his teachings. He said, “If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed” (2 Thess. 3:14). Again, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” (Gal. 1:8). He separated his personal opinions from the teaching of the Lord when speaking about the complex subject of marriage (1 Cor. 7:10, 22). Daniel Fuller says, “The absolute authority that Paul ascribed to his teaching should not be charged off as the rantings of an eccentric egotist but should be taken as a sober recognition of the fact that in all his teaching, none other than Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is speaking.”49

Paul’s extreme zeal for the traditions of the fathers (Gal. 1:14) took him to Damascus to arrest followers of a religion that contradicted these traditions. On the way he had an encounter with Jesus and received a commission that took him on a completely opposite path. He became the apostle to the Gentiles. As an apostle he knew he was the bearer of verbally inspired truth. We today can read his letters, which form more than a quarter of the New Testament and give to them the authority we would accord to the words of Christ himself.

Contemporary Significance

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF divine initiative in salvation. In our study of Acts 4:12 we noted that our inability to do anything for our salvation should cause us to be humble; no genuine Christian has any reason for arrogance. When someone asked Mahatma Gandhi what he thought about E. Stanley Jones, Gandhi replied, “He’s a good man, but he’s too proud of his religion.” When Jones was told about this, he said that Gandhi was right according to his own convictions. To Gandhi salvation was the result of hard work. Earning salvation was as difficult as trying to empty an ocean of water with one’s hands. According to such a scheme, anyone who says that he or she is assured of salvation will be justly called arrogant.

But according to the Christian scheme, salvation is a gift of God; we do not deserve it and it is freely given to us by God, who takes the initiative by seeking us and bringing us to himself. In other words, we have no grounds for feeling superior to anyone. This truth we must demonstrate in an age when Christian belief about full assurance of salvation is considered arrogant by pluralists, who see the pursuit of salvation as something generated from within.

Another significant inference from the fact that God takes the initiative to save the least likely people, such as Saul the persecutor, is that we cannot pronounce anyone hopeless as far as conversion is concerned. As we face irreligious people or the followers of New Age thinking or any other religion, we may think that they are impossible to bring to Christ. As Paul said in 1 Timothy 1:16, the fact that the worst of sinners could be converted is a sign that the least likely people can be saved. Such realities should encourage us to dream about, pray for, and work toward the conversion of resistant people and enemies of the gospel.

Leading people to personal encounter with Christ. Our task as witnesses is to lead people to Jesus so that they will encounter him as their Savior and Lord. We may discuss religion, argue for the truth of it, and seek to persuade people about its relevance and power. But the end that we aim at is to introduce people to Jesus. This is why it is advisable to help those who are ready to accept the Christian way to pray a prayer of seeking salvation. We may have them repeat words after us. However we do it, our aim is to lead them in this encounter with Christ to talk personally to him.

We must never take it for granted that all to whom we minister have a personal relationship with God. My mother led me to such an encounter when I was a religious fourteen-year-old, who was already knowledgeable of the Scriptures and active in church. When I was in seminary, a fellow student who had been nurtured in an evangelical background testified in class that he had encountered Christ for the first time a few days before. The Emmanuel Methodist Church in Madras, India, was finding it difficult to maintain its property because it had a small congregation. They were preparing to sell some of the property when someone suggested to the pastor, an American missionary, to have some revival meetings in the church. He invited a Baptist preacher, very different to him in theology and outlook, to preach at these meetings. On the first night when that preacher invited those who wanted to be born again to come forward, the first one to go up was the pastor of the church! He met Christ personally, and his ministry was so transformed that the church became and still is, a few decades after his retirement, one of the great centers of Christian witness in India.

The importance of surrender. Christians have debated whether presenting the Lordship of Christ is an essential part of the gospel presentation. Some are afraid it will take away from the primacy of grace to say that for salvation one must submit to the Lordship of Christ. This pitfall will be avoided if we realize that everything we do, even exercising saving faith, is done because of God’s initiative and enabling. Not to present the need for total surrender to Christ is to present a gospel without a key aspect of Christianity. Those who respond to a gospel that did not present the necessity of surrender may feel as if they have been tricked into accepting a gospel without having been shown “the fine print” about what a Christian commitment implies.

The place of encouragers today. We can imagine Saul’s despair, loneliness, and disappointment when other Christians rejected him. He later expounded deeply about the “in Christ” existence, according to which earthly barriers are broken because we are one body in Christ. Yet the members of that body did not trust him. How many bright new Christians face such loneliness and disappointment! It can lead to despair and bitterness. But God often provides a way of healing in the form of an encourager. Would that there were more Ananiases and Barnabases in our churches!

The risk Barnabas took was immense. Was Saul a spy? His fiery enthusiasm and outspoken boldness would have provoked negative reactions in some of the more sober elders. Who is this young upstart, who goes to extremes in everything he does? He must be an unbalanced individual, for once he was violently opposing Christianity and now he is vigorously defending it. Yet Barnabas stuck his neck out to support Saul. He was willing to take that risk. When we glorify risk-taking today, most often we do so about our personal exploits. Here is another type of risk-taking: accepting new people and pushing them forward. This is Christian risk-taking. Because Christianity is a religion of love, some of our greatest exploits are ventures of love. Taking the risk of believing people is one such venture.

Barnabas also encouraged Saul by telling the apostles Saul’s story. In order to be able to do this, he had first listened to that story. Often leaders are so interested in telling their own story that they have no time to listen to those of others. By telling the apostles Saul’s story, Barnabas acted as a public relations man for the junior person. Normally public relations work is done for leaders by the juniors, but here that order is reversed. Paul often did the same sort of things in his letters. He gives, for example, glowing tributes of younger, lesser-known people, such as Titus and Timothy (e.g., 2 Cor. 8:16–24; Phil. 2:19–24).

Avoiding the trap of individualistic conversion. Given the great blessings that come from conversion, it is possible to place so much emphasis on these that converts forget that they are people under a commission. For Saul conversion and commission went together. We must teach converts about Christian service and get them active the moment they come to Christ.

The conversion of the great Indian evangelist Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889–1929) was remarkably similar to that of Saul. He too was a young man who vehemently opposed Christianity until he had a vision of Christ that transformed his life. When his family members, who were Sikhs, realized that the conversion he professed was not a passing fancy, they poisoned him and sent him away from home. He landed at the doorstep of the home of a pastor, desperately ill. The doctor who saw him gave up hope that he would recover. “But as he lay, there came to him the profound belief that God had not called him out of darkness to die without witnessing to his faith in Christ, so he began to pray with all his remaining powers.”50 He recovered and launched out on a life of witness. Donning the garb of an Indian holy man, he traveled the length and breadth of India barefoot, preaching the gospel. This earned him the name “the apostle of the bleeding feet,” for his feet, unprotected from the hostile elements, sometimes bled. His realization as he lay dying was that he was “saved to tell others” the gospel.

God’s redemptive acts and the pluralist attitude. The notion of the absolute authority of Paul’s writings goes against the grain of the contemporary mood. Modern-day pluralists hold, like the Hindus held for centuries, that truth is subjective. They place little stock in historical events like the commissioning of Paul. To them ideas are important, not events. Events may illustrate ideas, but they do not win salvation and endow a person with authority.

As we look at Scripture, we see that God’s approach to salvation is through events. Theologians speak of “salvation history” and of “the God who acts.” The Bible teaches that God acts decisively through key redemptive events, such as the Exodus, the giving of the law, the Conquest, the incarnation and life of Christ, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, Pentecost, the conversion/call of Paul, and the second coming of Christ. We must seriously reflect on these basic dealings of God with humankind if we are to be biblical in this pluralistic age. We must see that Christianity is based on objective historical events.

Original Meaning

The Last Post-Resurrection Appearance (9:3–9)

AS SAUL APPROACHES Damascus, he hears a voice and sees a bright light. The double vocative, “Saul, Saul” (v. 4), is reminiscent of the way God’s voice was heard often in the Old Testament.8 The light Saul sees (v. 3) must have been strong, for it is around noon when he encounters it (22:6; 26:13). It would have reminded him of the Shekinah glory of God in the Old Testament. This accounts for Saul’s question, “Who are you, Lord?” (v. 5). Kyrios can mean both “Lord” and “sir,” but considering the circumstances of the light from heaven and the calling of his name, Saul must have realized that he was in the presence of the Lord God.

The voice from heaven asks a simple question: “Why do you persecute me?” (v. 4). In response to Saul’s question about who is speaking to him, the voice replies, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” In other words, while Saul was hitting the church, Jesus has actually been feeling the pain! Paul later expounds in depth about the church as the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12; Eph. 3–5).

The use of the human, earthly name “Jesus”9 (v. 5) “rather than a divine title would have put everything into focus for Saul,” says Harrison. “Jesus of Nazareth was alive. His disciples had been right after all in proclaiming his resurrection from the dead.”10 The evidence was too compelling to reject any longer. Saul had been coming to Damascus “to arrest all who call on your name” (cf. v. 14). In the Old Testament “calling on the name” is a standard description of prayer to God. He had heard Stephen call on the “Lord Jesus” as he was dying (7:59). All this was blasphemy to Saul, and it had to be stopped! Now as he is on his way to do just that, he is jolted into the realization that Jesus is indeed alive.

Saul’s conversion has been given physical and psychological explanations that seek to downplay the idea that a revelation of Jesus caused this huge turnaround. Some say that it was caused by something like “the extraordinary enhancement of illumination experienced by epileptics.” Bruce dismisses this view by showing that this is more revolutionary and long term than can be explained by such a phenomenon. It was “a total conversion . . . of will, intellect, and emotion which dictated the abiding purpose and direction of his subsequent life and activity.”11

Others claim that Saul was a person in turmoil. The radiant testimony of Stephen had left him deeply troubled, and the way he overcame this was by being fanatical about his opposition to Christianity. Psychologist Carl Jung thought that Paul’s fanaticism is typical of “individuals who are compensating secret doubts.”12 Some decades ago scholars under the influence of the psychoanalytic movement read Romans 7 into the Acts accounts and claimed that Saul was troubled by his inability to keep the law fully, and that his persecution of the church was an expression of his intense inner conflict.13 But, as G. E. Ladd points out, in Paul’s own testimony he “paints no background of distress, despair or wavering in his Jewish convictions.”14 Paul felt that he was faultless in terms of legalistic righteousness (Phil. 3:6b), that he persecuted the church out of zeal (3:6a), and that he was acting in ignorance and unbelief (1 Tim. 1:13).

We will later show that Christ’s statement, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (26:14), does not refer to Paul’s battling his conscience. Rather, Saul was spiritually blinded by wrong convictions until a greater light caused him to become spiritually enlightened, though physically blinded. The evidence is suddenly now too overwhelming. He has to accept “the Way.” “The change that occurred that day was initiated not from within but from without.”15

This passage records the last of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. Paul calls this a “vision” in 26:19, but it is more than a typical vision, for his companions also see the light (22:9) and hear the sound (9:7). In his list of post-resurrection appearances Paul says, “and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born” (1 Cor. 15:8). The words “as to one abnormally born” literally translates “as if to the miscarriage.” It can mean, therefore, that Paul is saying “as to one born too early.” Actually he was the last to be “born,” but he may be emphasizing that he did not have the usual gestation period of being with Jesus for three years. In that sense this was a premature birth.16 But by placing it alongside the other post-resurrection appearances, Paul says that it was as objective an appearance as those recorded in the Gospels. Bruce says, “If Paul uses the same language of his own experience as of the experience of Peter and the others, it is to suggest not that their experience was as ‘visionary’ as his but that his was as objective as theirs.”17

The words “rise and enter” (lit. trans. of anastethi kai eiselthe, v. 6) “reflects once more the language of the Septuagint, where anistemi frequently introduces divine commissions (e.g., Gen. 21:18; 31:13; 1 Kings 17:9; Jon. 1:2).”18 That a commission is included here is implied by the words “you will be told what you must do” (v. 6; cf. also v. 15). In 26:16–18 Paul reports that he received a commission as part of his encounter with Christ, and in 22:15 that it was communicated by Ananias. This is typical of Luke’s style of introducing a concept and developing it later.19

Paul later describes his having seen the risen Christ as part of his qualification for apostleship (1 Cor. 9:1), along with his receiving a specific commission from Christ; both these elements are met through the Damascus experience. Paul describes elsewhere what he received in Damascus: “Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith” (Rom. 1:5). James the Lord’s brother also seems to have qualified for apostleship through a similar encounter with Christ (see 1 Cor. 15:7; Gal. 1:19).

An influential study by K. Stendahl claims that Paul’s Damascus experience was a call to be a missionary to the Gentiles, not a conversion.20 Since then there has been a shift in emphasis from looking at this event as a commission rather than a conversion. Indeed, the accounts in Acts emphasize the call because of Luke’s purpose in describing the Gentile mission. But in Paul’s letters when he describes this experience, he emphasizes not the call but the contrast between his former life in Judaism and his present life in Christ (Gal. 1:13–17; Phil. 3:4–9). Paul’s radical break with Judaism and change in life in Acts can be explained only in terms of conversion. We conclude that while the emphasis in Acts is on the call, it also includes a conversion.21

In Damascus the blinded Saul follows the most intense type of fast, spending three days without eating or drinking (v. 9). People engaged in such fasts only if they were repenting or seeking God’s face. Both are involved here (cf. v. 11, where Ananias is told Paul is praying).