"Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing [I do]; forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Thus, a man could speak, who was subject to like passions as we are. And not only so—he was “the chief of sinners,” which in his case was not a mere expression of false humility, but the simple truth, for he had been a blasphemer and injurious, persecuting the church of God. Like his namesake of old, he also had been “granted by request," but in a very different sense! The former had been given by Jehovah “in His wrath” to be king over His people, at their obstinate request, because they preferred a government after the manner of the nations to Jehovah's government. But the “Saul” of the New Testament was the fruit of the prayer of the first Christian martyr— “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” —to whose death Saul had consented, and been an active witness of it. The Saul of the Old Testament had been David's persecutor; the Saul of the New Testament had persecuted David's Son and Lord. The former was “little in his own eyes,” when he was anointed king of Israel. But he did not continue in that godly condition of soul, but became high-minded, self-willed and disobedient to God, and hence lost his throne and life. The Saul of the N. Testament, regarded as a prince among his people, was great before men at the beginning of his career. But the great “Saul” was changed into “Paul,” i.e. “small” (“Paulus”). He became “little in his own eyes, but like Christ's humble forerunner, “great before the Lord.”
And what more helpful, beloved, to render us “little in our own eyes,” than keeping them, in the power of the ungrieved Spirit of glory, fixed on Christ, our Head in glory? Paul had been “apprehended” by the Lord of glory, and thus he “followed after,” that he might “apprehend that for which he had been apprehended of Christ.”
One constantly meets with the expression of “Saul's conversion.” Now the meaning of “conversion” is the being turned right about face, so that the face is where the back had been, as in the case of the Thessalonians. Although this was, of course, true of Saul in a Jewish sense, yet the Lord's dealing with him on his way to Damascus had the especial character, that he was “apprehended” by Christ.
When on his way to Damascus, persecuting the church of God, Saul had reached the highest round of the ladder of Jewish perfection. He was in the zenith of his religions fame and influence, carrying with him the letters of the high priest for persecuting the Christians at Damascus. Then and there it was, that a light brighter than the sun at noon, came down from the rejected and glorified Christ, and shone all around, and laid the persecutor flat on his face in the dust. It was a personal question between the glorified Christ and Saul. Thus the person of Jesus is prominent throughout this chapter (Acts 9), as in the preceding chapter it is the person of the Holy Ghost. The greater the halo of Saul's religious renown and attainments had been, the deeper was his fall and the more complete the crash and smash of everything in which he had trusted and gloried.
But whilst the overpowering light from the glorified Christ laid Saul low in the dust, it required a still greater power to turn a Saul into a Paul. It was the Divine power of those words addressed by the glorified Head of the church to its persecutor, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” Those few words shook his soul to its inmost depths; and not his soul only, but also the religions scaffolding on which he had been building and in which he had trusted. What a terrible discovery those few words from the glorified One there above did effect on the smitten down one here below! Why, to be a zealous devoted Israelite was to be at open war with Jehovah, Whom he thought he was serving. A fearful discovery indeed! Not one single moral element of his soul could stand against its all-powerful and overwhelming effect. His soul alike with his body lay prostrate in the dust.
But this was not all. Those whom Saul persecuted were so entirely identified with that glorified One, Whom he had now to own as “Lord,” that to persecute them was the same as to persecute Him—the Head of that wondrous body called out from glory, when its members were assailed on earth. Marvelous mystery, all powerful in its revelation! But to the zealous Jew a still more crushing discovery was impending, which “pricked and cut his heart,” if possible, more deeply still than were the hearts of his co-religionists at Pentecost, in whose persecution he was engaged. At the trembling inquiry of the prostrate persecutor, “Who art Thou, Lord?” the reply comes from glory, “I am Jesus, the Nazaraean, Whom thou persecutest.” The “Nazaraean,” Whose very name was sufficient to elicit from a Jew words and gestures of deepest hatred, was the Lord of glory, David's Son and Lord at the right hand of God!—that name, which Saul had thought it his duty to oppose with all his energy, and which, if possible, he fain would have blotted out from the earth. Jesus, the Nazaraean, “rejected by the builders,” was the Prophet and Messias Whom Moses and the prophets had announced—the same Jehovah, Whom Saul had thought to serve by his persecution. More powerful than the light from glory, which had blinded his natural eyes, was the light from the glorified One, disclosing the truth to his inward eye. That truth, terrible as it was for the moment to Saul, proved to be of immeasurably blessed consequences to himself and to the church of God, which he had persecuted. That discovery was the “coup de grace” for the Judaism in Saul. God, Who now commanded the light to shine out of darkness, had shined in Saul's heart to give the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
But a continuous three days' blindness with fasting was required for Saul, for the deepening and maturing of God's work in him and to enlighten the eyes of his mind. Then, after the scales, as it were, had fallen from his eyes inwardly and outwardly, and he had been baptized by Ananias and been filled with the Holy Ghost, there proceeded from the house of Judas in the “straight” street a new man— “Paul” instead of “Saul;” instead of the merciless persecutor of Christ and His Christians, the fearless preacher of His name and grace and glory, “preaching straightway Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God,” and also “the very Christ.” He was a witness of faith, who, as he once had assisted in shedding the blood of Christians, from henceforth devoted his whole life to their service, ready to be “poured out as a libation on the sacrifice and ministration of their faith,” till at last he also, like Stephen, the martyr and witness of Christ's glory, sealed with his own blood the testimony of his Christian career, so blessed and fruitful for his time and the ages to come.
(To be continued.)