Paul Meets Christ

A young man listening to the word in an upper room sat by the window, sank into sleep in the night, and dropped from the third story. He seemed already dead, yet as day broke he was alive again. Saul, meanwhile, on his way to Damascus to seize Christians, fell to the ground before a light and a voice from heaven; he was struck blind, and there he met Jesus.

Only someone with eyes given by God can say that there is life in a person who looks dead. That God should call Saul, who had brought about Stephen’s death, and even see to it that he was healed is beyond human understanding, yet salvation rests wholly in the sovereignty of God. Before Christ, Saul came to count as rubbish the world and the power of the law he had once clung to.

Christians are not to pronounce the people of the world dead; they must leave them in God’s hands and preach the gospel. Like Ananias, they need an obedience that goes when the word says go and stands still when it says stand, even when they do not understand. When, before the knowledge of Christ, they lay down what the world counted as strength, they can live out a faith that runs to the finish, as the apostle Paul did.