I Am Jesus, Whom You Are Persecuting [Romans 1]

This passage deals with how Saul, while persecuting Christians, met the risen Jesus face to face on the road to Damascus and was converted, becoming Paul. He was a man of power armed with the Law, but through the light and the voice from heaven he realized that the one he had been persecuting was the living God. Because of this, he gave up all the privileges and status he had boasted of until then, and chose a life given completely to the gospel.

The sermon stresses the humble attitude of Paul, who counted the world's power and honor as rubbish and served Christ as his master. He used his Jewish identity and his Roman citizenship as tools for spreading the gospel, and welcomed as brothers the believers he had once treated as enemies, devoting himself to them. And in the way Barnabas trusted him and introduced him to the church, it shows how God used an evil man to spread the gospel.

Through Paul's conversion and the life that followed, we come to realize that we must put spiritual fullness ahead of the world's values. When we think about why God gives grace fairly to all people, and how we should repay the grace of salvation we received with our lives, we find ourselves asking whether we are truly living as servants of Christ.