ACTS REFLECTION- Week 2

“and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.” - Acts7:58

“And Saul approved of their killing him.” - Acts 8:1

“But Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison.” - Acts 8:3

“Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if  he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.”- Acts 9:1-2

I wonder if in these first four instances of seeing Paul in his previous life as Saul, we have witnessed the radicalisation of a young man? Perhaps that’s my youth worker mindset, but the escalation is drastic as we read these verses side by side.

Saul begins as one on the sidelines, witnessing the stoning of Stephen. Then, in a clever separation by those who put together the Bible as we have it, we begin chapter 8 with a continuation sentence that returns to that young man Saul – he approved of what he saw. He approved of the murder of a disciple, to which he was a witness.

And so, as we are told a ‘severe persecution’ begins, Saul becomes more involved, ‘dragging off’ believers to prison.

Then, following some encouraging stories about Philip, we return to Saul, again at the beginning of the chapter (a helpful literary tool, returning to our main character at the top of the chapter!), we now hear that Saul is ‘breathing threats and murder against the disciples’.

Never let it be said that poetic language is confined to the Psalms – how powerful is that?! There isn’t any real literal sense in that sentence, but it conjures such profound imagination about Saul’s attitude and behaviours. This was a vicious and cruel man now.

Jumping ahead slightly in the Acts narrative, in Acts 26, Paul describes himself like this:

Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities. - Acts 26:11 (NIV)

Obsessed. If we heard someone describing themselves as being ‘obsessed with persecuting’ a group of people today, they would be considered an extremist, or terrorist.

It reads as though, in that story of the stoning of Stephen, we see the moment where Saul is convinced to commit himself to this cause in the most drastic way.

The picture painted of Saul in the book of Acts serves a few functions.

First, it is interspersed between the accounts of the disciples sharing the Good News, which encourages readers to continue sharing the faith, even in the context of severe persecution. The stories of Philip in Acts 8 are made all the more compelling by the fact that they are bookended by the persecution and arrests of believers.

Second, it highlights the potential for incredible personal transformation by the power of God. The impression of Saul that we’re given is that he is about as strongly opposed to the disciples of Jesus as it’s possible to be, and that he is filled with hate and anger. His encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, then, is particularly striking. The author is communicating that even someone like Saul can be completely made new (typified in the renaming from Saul to Paul) by the power of Jesus.

This serves as a reminder of both the limitless reach of God’s grace and, also, challenges us again to follow the teaching of Jesus to ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’

If Saul can be transformed into one of the great apostles of the early church, someone passionate about telling others about God, why wouldn’t you pray for your own enemies or persecutors that they might undergo the same transformation?

Acts gives us the details of the immediacy of Saul’s change of heart:

For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” All who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem among those who invoked this name? And has he not come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?” Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah. – Acts 9:19-22

Saul’s extremist position makes clear the possibility for drastic change in someone’s life.

One of the purposes of the book of Acts is to be an encouragement to the early church and the first Christians.

If we can read this today and feel the provocation to be more intentional in our faith, imagine how it must have felt receiving this message in the context of the early church and the widespread persecution of believers.

One other, and slightly alternative, function served by this introduction of Paul is that it gives us an insight into his personality and ways of thinking. Saul was, by his own admission, unusually devoted to the Jewish practices and traditions (Galatians 1:14). His nature appears to be one of being drawn to extreme devotion and atypically high commitment. When Saul or Paul go in on something, they go big.

This aspect of Paul’s being, when considered like that, can be seen across his writing. His letters, and those written in his name, are full of what seems to be very strict or harsh language and instruction. Across church and theological history, it tends to be that if someone wishes to make a point which is harsh or strict, they use Paul’s theology as a foundation. Critics of the more conservative parts of the church would say that it is based perhaps more on Paul’s teachings than Jesus’!

Paul is someone that feels things strongly. So, in the story of Acts and in his own writings, it is no surprise that he rubs people up the wrong way and has disputes with people.

Perhaps you know people who are a bit like Saul/Paul?

More often than not, we might read Paul as the hero of the post-Gospel New Testament. But it helpful to remember that he was just a man who was far from perfect – and this introduction in Acts spells that out clearly.

As we continue through Acts, of which Paul becomes the central figure, we should remember these things about Paul to give some context to his thinking, message and his actions.

Just maybe, we’ll begin to see the legendary Apostle Paul in a new way.