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OPEN BOOK – HINTS FROM THE SPIRIT OF HOLINESS: SAUL THE BELIEVER

BRUCE C WEARNE looks at the “immediate impact” Saul (who became Paul) had on the early church following his dramatic conversion…

After this (Saul) spent some time with the disciples at Damascus. And straight away, he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, “(Yes indeed,) He is the Son of God.” And all who heard him (say so) were so amazed, and said, “Is not this the fellow who made such havoc in Jerusalem among those who have called on this name? And has he not recently come here for this very purpose, to arrest them and take them back to [stand before] the chief priests?” But as time went on, he was beginning to strongly confuse the Jews in Damascus by bringing together an explanation that Jesus is indeed the Christ. – (Acts 9:19-22/transliteration by Bruce C Wearne)

St Paul. PICTURE: David Adams


IN A NUTSHELL

Saul’s impact is immediate once he is converted.

Saul was a Jew. The disciples in Damascus were Jews. Those who heard and were amazed were Jews. Why then does Luke write, “By proving Jesus was the Christ, Saul confounded the Jews of Damascus”? Why not “some Jews”?

What is Luke saying here? It is an important question. We need to address it. If we can answer it aright then we might have a better grasp of why, to this day, there is an ongoing unease between Christians and Jews. This has been around for 2,000 years. Luke tells us about the tensions that arose between Jews who did believe Jesus to be Christ, the Jewish Messiah, and those who did not.

With the coming of the Christ, and the baptism of God’s Holy Spirit, the promises God had made long ago to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were fulfilled. The law and the prophets were now interpreted in a new way; they are the preparation for the coming of the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world, just as John the Baptist had taught. That was also what the apostles, the former Galilean students of Jesus the Rabbi, believed and taught. That was also what their Rabbi had taught them about the promised Son of Man, God’s Prince, Saviour of the world.

But in receiving this teaching, these first disciples found themselves on the brink of perpetual fighting with and amongst themselves. If He is the promised Saviour, Son of Man and Son of God, how far does His Sonship extend and to whom and, further, what is our place in His régime?

In Luke’s account “the Jews” come to designate those who did not embrace Jesus as “the Christ”, preferring to wait for another. They remain Jews. This is also why Luke’s account of Philip in Samaria is so very important for how we understand what it means to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth now and to confess Him as Lord and Christ. Just as Jesus had refused the request of James and John to condemn the Samaritans for their custom of not giving hospitality to those travelling up to Jerusalem, even when that meant rejecting hospitality to God’s own Son, so now we have to refuse to stop loving those who do not accept that the Messiah has come. Our response now is simply to obey Jesus’ command and to love.

That means we are to love those who, for whatever reason, want to be our enemies. To ignore this and allow enemies to determine our response to them is to capitulate to our own weakness, to avoid facing up to the fact that we are born into societies and cultures which inherit all kinds of enmity. But. by participating in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, through our faith in Jesus Christ, we are called to overcome that enmity and to be agents of reconciliation with love to all our neighbours, whoever they may be. It is also the path that Saul was now on, after Jesus had stopped him so dramatically from carrying out his murderous mission. Saul the Pharisee was becoming Paul the convert.

In our reading of these early chapters of Acts (1-10) we should not too quickly assume that the believers would always, or almost always, be a tiny minority. It was sometimes very difficult for Jewish believers to know how to deal with the zealots and also with those requiring circumcision. The path ahead would become clearer only later, after much difficulty and spiritual wrestling (for example, in Acts 21). Indeed a signature of the future joint ministry of Paul and Barnabas would be that entrance into God’s Kingdom is only possible with great pressure and tension and they came to experience that in their relationship with each other (see Acts 14:21-23 and 15:36-41).

Got a verse or a short passage you’d like us to look at? Just send an email to [email protected].

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