Acts 9 in The Message and TNIV Translations
We were introduced to a man named Saul at the execution of Stephen in Chapter 7. As I read that, I thought of Tyler Durden...you know, from Fight Club. Tyler was young and mean, but he was also the badest of the bads. Yeah, he fought, but most of the time Tyler was watching others, encouraging them, standing over them like some sort of guru.
I thought about that because I knew the rest of the story. I knew who Saul was and what he did to the early Jesus-followers. In today's chapter, we read that he was on a rampage. Apparently, the stoning of Stephen set him on a spree. He wreaking havoc on anyone and everyone who named the name of Jesus. It's easy to jump on the guy, but realize that he was a Jew's Jew, an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God's law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting Christians; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God's law book" (Philippians 3:5-6). If you were this committed to your faith in Jesus, and someone came around claiming that he was not who he said and that they had another Messiah, you would want to stop the spread of that as well. This new movement was a threat to everything Saul had built his life upon. He had to stop it.
I love the way Jesus gets right up in the face of Saul. Jesus identifies himself as the one who Saul is persecuting (sounds a lot like "whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me"). Paul is literally blinded by his encounter with Jesus and went into to Damascus for three days - eating and drinking nothing. He then spends a few days learning from a man named Ananias and learns what it means to be a Jesus-follower - and gets consumed by the Holy Spirit. Then heads out to be the largest proponent of the Jesus-Life the
Now that's a testimony! Sometimes I wish I had a good, juicy testimony.
Note: It's common thought that Jesus changed Saul's name to Paul, like he changed Simon's name to Peter. This is not what the text tells us, though. We aren't sure when or why, but in chapter 13, Luke refers to Saul as the one called Paul. Saul is a Hebrew name and Paul is the non-Hebrew Gentile equivalent. Paul may have changed his name to reflect his change of life and/or to assist him in reaching the non-Jewish people. We are simply left to infer.
