THE MESSAGE OF ACTS A Commentary by John Stott

Acts 9:1-31. The Conversion of Saul

Now that Stephen and Philip have contributed their pioneer
preparations for the world mission of the church, Luke is ready to tell the story of the two notable conversions which launched it. The first was Saul of Tarsus, who became the apostle to the Gentiles (Rom. 11:13), and the second of Cornelius the centurion, who was the first Gentile to be converted. Saul's conversion belongs to this chapter, and Cornelius' to the next. Saul's experience on the road to Damascus is the most famous conversion in church history. Luke is so impressed with its importance, that he includes the story three times, once in his own narrative and twice in Paul's speeches. He is evidently anxious, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, that we should `have his wonderful conversion in remembrance'.

As we read it, however, a crucial question forms in our minds. Does Luke intend us to regard Saul's conversion as typical of Christian conversion today, or as exceptional? Many people dismiss it as having been altogether unusual, and as constituting no possible norm for conversion today. `I've had no Damascus Road experience,' they say. Certainly some features of it were atypical. On the one hand, there were the dramatic, supernatural events, like the flash of lightning and the voice which addressed him by name. On the other hand, there were the historically unique aspects, like the resurrection appearance of Jesus, which Paul later claimed it was, although the last (9:17, 27 and 1 Cor.15:8), and his commissioning to be an apostle, like the call of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Exekiel to be prophets, and more particularly to be the apostle to the Gentiles (cf. Acts 9:5; 22:14-15; 26:17-18; Rom. 1:1, 5, 13; 11:13; 15:15-18; Gal. 1:15-16; 2:2, 7-8; Eph.3:1-8; Col. 1:24-29). In order to be converted, it is not necessary for us to be struck by divine lightning, or fall to the ground, or hear our name called out in Aramaic, any more than it is necessary to travel to precisely the same place outside Damascus. Nor is it possible for us to be granted a resurrection appearance or a call to an apostleship like Paul's. Nevertheless, it is clear from the rest of the New Testament that other features of Saul's conversion and commissioning are applicable to us today. For we too can (and must) experience a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, surrender to him in penitence and faith, and receive his summons to serve. Provided that we distinguish between the historically peculiar and the universal, between the dramatic outward accompaniments and the essential inward experience, what happened to Saul remains an instructive case study in Christian conversion. Moreover, Christ's display of `unlimited patience' towards him was meant to be an encouraging `example' to others. (1 Tim.1:16). Another kind of assault on the story of Saul's conversion has to be considered, however, namely the attempt to eliminate its supernatural element altogether. In the last century, some commentators speculated that Saul was overcome by sunstroke or by an epileptic seizure. In our generation a partly psychological and partly physiological explanation of his conversion has been proposed, especially by Dr. William Sargent in his book *Battle for the mind*. Subtitled `a physiology of conversion and brainwashing', the book's object is `to show how beliefs...can be forcibly implanted in the human brain, and how people can be switched to arbitrary beliefs altogether opposed to those previously held', while the book's conclusion is `that simple physiological mechanisms of conversion do exist'. Basing his thesis on Pavlov's experiments with dogs and on his own wartime treatment of patients who had broken down under `combat exhaustion', Dr. Sargent conjectured that something similar happened to Saul. After `his acute stage of nervous excitement' came `total collapse, hallucinations and an increase state of suggestibility', made more intense by three days of fasting. In this condition new beliefs, exactly contradictory to those he held before, were implanted in him first by Ananias and then by `the necessary period of indoctrination' by the Christians in Damascus. We have no quarrel with Dr. Sargent's general analysis of the terrible technique of brainwashing, in which the mind is incessantly bombarded with alien ideas until it breaks down and becomes totally docile and suggestible. Nor do we deny that something of this kind happens both through the rhythmic drumming and dancing of primitive religious cults and even through some forms of manipulative. emotional evangelism. Our disagreement is with Dr Sargent's artificial attempt to fit Saul's conversion into this pattern. For the facts do not support his reconstruction. There is no evidence of any `technique' having been used by anybody to `bombard' Saul until he collapsed, unless it be Jesus himself. But that would posit a supernatural explanation, which would undermine Dr. Sargent's thesis. Also, the conversion experiences in the Acts are so varied that they cannot all be explained away in physiological or psychological terms. In complete contrast to the attempts by unbelievers to discredit Saul's conversion, I would like to mention an eighteenth-century letter from Baron George Lyttelton to Gilbert West, which was published under the title *Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of Saint Paul*. He was so convinced of the authenticity of Saul's conversion that he believed it was in itself, aside from other arguments, `a demonstration sufficient to prove Christianity to be a divine revelation'. Drawing attention to Paul's references to his conversion in both his speeches and his letters, he worked out his case in considerable detail.

Since Saul was neither `an impostor, who said what he knew to be false, with an intent to deceive', nor `an enthusiast, who by the force of an over-heated imagination imposed on himself', nor `deceived by the fraud of others', therefore `what he declared to have been the cause of his conversion. and to have happened in consequence of it, did all happen, and therefore the Christian religion is a divine revelation'. So then, accepting the fact that Saul's conversion did take place on account of an intervention by Jesus Christ, and accepting the need to distinguish between its essential and its exceptional features, we are now in a position to examine its cause and its effects. We shall look successively at Saul himself in his pre-conversion state, at Saul and Jesus in their encounter on the road, at Saul and Ananias who welcomed him into the church in Damascus, and at Saul and Barnabas, who introduced him to the apostles in Jerusalem.

Acts 9: 1-2 - Saul himself: his pre-conversion state in Jerusalem

If we ask what caused Saul's conversion, only one answer is possible. What stands out from the narrative is the sovereign grace of God through Jesus Christ. Saul did not `decide for Christ', as we might say. On the contrary, he was persecuting
Christ. It was rather Christ who decided for him and intervened in his life. The evidence for this is indisputable. Consider first Saul's state of mind at the time. Luke has already mentioned him three times, and each time as a bitter opponent of Christ and his church. He tells us at Stephen's martyrdom `the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul' (7:58), that `Saul was there, giving approval to his death' (8:1), and that then `Saul began to destroy the church' (8:3), making a house-to-house search for Christians, dragging men and women off to prison. Now Luke resumes Saul's story by saying that he *was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples* (9:1). He had not changed since Stephen's death; he was *still* in the same mental condition of hatred and hostility. Worse than that. Saul had hoped to contain the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, in order to destroy them there (8:3). But some had escaped his net and fled to Damascus, where several synagogues served a large Jewish colony. Determined to pursue these fugitive disciples to foreign cities, Saul hatched a plot for their liquidation and persuaded the high priest to sanction it (9:1b-2). This self appointed inquisitor then left Jerusalem, armed with written authority to the Damascus synagogues that, *if he found any there who belonged to the Way* (a very interesting early description of Jesus' followers, which we will consider later), *whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem* (2). In modern idiom, the high priest issued him with an extradition order.

Some of the language Luke uses to describe Saul in his pre-conversion state seems deliberately to portray him as `a wild and ferocious beast'. The verb *lymainomai*, whose only New Testament occurrence is in 8:3 of Saul's `destroying' the church,
is used in Psalm 80:13 (LXX) of wild boars devastating a vineyard; and it especially refers to `the ravaging of a body by a wild beast'. A little later the Damascus Christians depicted him as having `caused havoc in Jerusalem' (21), where the verb *portheo* (as in Gal. 1:13, 23), which C.S.C. Williams translates `mauled'. Continuing the same picture, J.A.Alexander suggested that Saul's `breathing out murderous threats' (1) was `an allusion to the panting or snorting of wild beasts', while later God's grace is seen, according to Calvin, `not only in such a cruel wolf being
turned into a sheep, but also in his assuming the character of a shepherd'.
This then, was the man (more wild animal than human being) who in a few days' time would be a converted and baptized Christian. But he was in no mood to consider the claims of Christ. His heart was filled with hatred and his mind was poisoned by
prejudice. In his own language later, a `raging fury' obsessed him (26:11, RSV). If we had met him as he left Jerusalem and ( with the benefit of hindsight) had told him that before he reached Damascus he would have become a believer, he would have ridiculed the idea. Yet this was the case. He had left out of his calculations the sovereign grace of God.

Acts 9:3-9. Saul and Jesus: his conversion on the Damascus Road.

The second piece of evidence that Saul's conversion was due to God's grace alone is Luke's narrative of what happened. We will draw from all three accounts in Acts, although in a later chapter we will compare and contrast them. Saul and his escort (we are not told who they were) had nearly completed their journey of about 150 miles. It would have taken them approximately a week. When they approached Damascus, a beautiful oasis surrounded by desert, at about noon (22:6), suddenly it happened: *a light from heaven flashed around him* (3), brighter than the midday sun (26:13). It was such an overwhelming experience that it both blinded him (8-9) and knocked him over. *He fell to the ground* (4), `prostrate at the feet of his conqueror'. Then *a voice* addressed him personally and directly (in Aramaic, 26:14): `*Saul, Saul* [Luke preserves the original Aramaic *Saoul*], *why do you persecute me?*' And, in answer to Saul's enquiry about the speaker's identity, the voice continued: `*I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting*' (5). At once Saul must have grasped, from the extraordinary way in which Jesus identified with his followers,so that to persecute them was to persecute him, that Jesus was alive and his claims were true. So he promptly obeyed the order *get up and go into the city* (6), where further instructions would be given him. Meanwhile, *the men travelling with Saul stood there speechless*, for *they heard the sound*, but they *did not see anyone* (7), nor did they understand the invisible speaker's words (22:9). Nevertheless, *they led him by the hand into Damascus* (8). He who had expected to enter Damascus in the fullness of his pride and prowess, as a self-confident opponent of Christ, was actually led into it, humbled and blinded, a captive of the very Christ he had opposed. There could be no misunderstanding what had happened. The risen Lord had appeared to Saul. It was not a subjective vision or dream; it was an objective appearance of the resurrected and now-glorified Jesus Christ (Acts 9:17, 27; cf.22:14-15; 26:16; 1 Cor.9:1; 15:18). The light he saw was the glory of Christ, and the voice he heard was the voice of Christ. Christ had interrupted his headlong career of persecution and had turned him round to face in the opposite direction.

The third piece of evidence which attributes Saul's conversion to God's grace is the apostle's own later references to the event.He never mentioned his conversion without making this clear. `It pleased God', he wrote, `to reveal his Son to me' (Gal. 1:15-16). God took the initiative according to his own will and pleasure. And this truth Paul went on to illustrate by at least three dramatic images. First, Christ `took hold of' him (Phil.3:12), or `seized' him, the verb *katalambano* perhaps even suggesting that Christ `arrested' him before he had a chance to arrest any Christians in Damascus. Secondly, he likened his inward illumination to the creative command, `Let there be light' (Gn. 1:3) or `Let light shine out of darkness' (2 Cor. 4:6). And thirdly, he wrote of God's mercy `overflowing' towards him, like a river in spate, flooding his heart with faith and love (1 Tim. 1:14). Thus God's grace arrested him, shone into his heart and swept over him like a flood. This variety of images reminds me of another series of metaphors, which C.S.Lewis uses in the last chapters of his autobiography. Sensing God's relentless pursuit of him, he likens him to `the great Angler' playing his fish, to a cat chasing a mouse, to a pack of hounds closing in on a fox, and finally to the divine chess player manoeuvring him into the most disadvantageous position until in the end he concedes `checkmate'.

To ascribe Saul's conversion to God's initiative can easily be misunderstood, however, and needs to be qualified in two ways, namely that the sovereign grace which captured Saul was neither sudden (in the sense that there had been no previous preparation) nor compulsive (in the sense that he needed to make no response).

First, Saul's conversion was not at all the `sudden conversion' it is often said to have been. To be sure, the final intervention of Christ was sudden: `Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him' (3), and a voice addressed him. But this was by no means the first time Jesus Christ had spoken to him. According to Paul's own later narrative, Jesus said to him: `It is hard for you to kick against the goads' (26:14). By this proverb (which seems to have been fairly common in Greek and Latin literature) Jesus liken Saul to a lively and recalcitrant young bullock, and himself to a farmer using goads to break him in. The implication is that Jesus was pursuing Saul, prodding and pricking him, which it was `hard' (painful, even futile) for him to resist. What were these goads, with which Jesus had been pricking him, and against which Saul had been kicking? We are not specifically told what they were, but the New Testament gives us a number of hints. One goad was surely his doubts. With his conscious mind he repudiated Jesus as an impostor, who had been rejected by his own people and died on a cross under the curse of God. But subconsciously he could not get Jesus out of his mind. Had he ever seem him, met him? `There are those who categorically...deny the possibility', writes Donald Coggan, but `I cannot be among their number.' Why not? Because it is ` more than likely that they were contemporaries pretty close in age to one another'. It is therefore probable that they both visited Jerusalem and the temple at the same time, in which case `is it not possible, indeed highly likely, that the young teacher from Galilee and the younger Pharisee form Tarsus would have looked into one another's eyes, and that Saul would have heard Jesus teach? Even if they did not meet, Saul will have heard reports of Jesus' teaching and miracles, character and claims, together with the persistent rumour from many witnesses that he had been raised from the dead and seen.

Next: Acts 9:3-9. Saul and Jesus: his conversion on the Damascus Road (cont'd).