SAUL OF TARSUS
Let us ask him the question, "Saul, what think ye of Christ?”
There is no name, he says, which I hate so much. I am just going to Damascus with letters authorizing me to bind everyone who calls on that name, and bring them bound to Jerusalem.
But O, here is another trophy of saving grace! A light from heaven shines round his path, and in that light he learns that he is the chief of sinners, and that Jesus is indeed the Savior. He is converted, turned right round, changed.
People often have a very strange thought about conversion. They can understand that the thief, or the drunkard should give up his past course, and become a reformed man, they see the need for such a change. But that the religious man needs any change is just what they cannot see. Yet Saul of Tarsus was a most religious, upright man, while all the time he was the "chief of sinners.”
And what put Paul to the test is the very same question that puts the reader to the test too, "What think ye of Christ?”
Can you say, "I think of Him as the One who has saved my soul, and washed me from my sins in His own blood"? If not, you need conversion just as much as Saul did.
It has been often said that no one ever yet came to Christ for salvation and regretted it afterward. Let us put this statement to the proof in the case of Saul, now changed to Paul, and let us ask him, just at the close of his life, "Paul, what think ye of Christ?" He says in reply, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung that I may win Christ.”
Yes, but Paul, you have had many sufferings and privations; you have been beaten and stoned almost to death. Yes, he would reply, but I have found Christ such a treasure for my heart, I have experienced His love in such a wonderful way, that it far outweighs and compensates for all.
Here, then, is the issue plain and clear, "What think you of Christ, what is your estimate of Him?" Everything hangs on the answer to this.
On the one side stands present peace, life and salvation, to be had by believing on Him; and an eternity to be spent in all the joys of heaven, with Christ and with the saved of every age and clime.
On the other side stands the solemn issue for the Christ-rejector, more solemn, more awful, than our poor words can adequately describe. For he can find no genuine, lasting peace and joy now; and as for the future, it is to be spent in hell, with the devil and the damned of every age, with those whose company we would shun most of all now, in banishment from God's presence forever.
Reader, let us ask again, "What think you of Christ?”