As an introduction to our studies we would recommend that we read from Acts 9:1-30.
Here is the conversion, (turning around, for such conversion means) in its most graphic form, of the man who perhaps next to Christ himself, has left upon the world an indelible impression of Christianity.
The crux and turning point in his life is perhaps expressed in the words of verses 15 and 16, in the instructions given by God to Ananias. The one who had wrought havoc to the Church was to be now the sufferer, and he who had been the persecutor, was to be persecuted, even unto death for the faith he once tried to destroy. It is good that we take notice that verses 18 reminds us that when his eyes were opened then he arose and was baptized. So it is ever thus, and those whose eyes have been opened and the scales removed, answering the promptings of a yearning heart, have sought to be baptised into the only name under heaven given among men wherein they can find salvation. How foolish it would be not to.
There is a very important truth revealed in the choosing of Saul (for such his name was then). One which on the surface may appear to be a paradox if not a downright contradiction. Here was one who was a violent enemy of the followers of Jesus, who had hailed men and women to prison and persecuted even to the death the followers of “The Way” as the truth was called in those days.
Yea, from the evidence it appears that he was one of the Sanhedrin Council that had condemned Stephen to death, and who stood with the clothes of the men who stoned Stephen at his feet while he no doubt calmly looked down into the stoning pit with satisfaction at the death of the blasphemer. Yet God had said, he was a chosen vessel to bear his name before the Gentiles, and was to suffer the most incredible hardships which we would do well to read as the apostle himself tells us of them in 2 Corinthians 11 :22-38.
It has been truthfully said that God never chooses a Pharaoh to do the work of a Moses. Then how do we reconcile this in the case of Paul ? God raised Pharaoh up for a purpose, he said so himself, and in this respect he was a vessel chosen by God. Romans 9:17.
We must understand what the circumstances are that causes God to raise one vessel to honour, and another to dishonour. Paul tells us that what he had done in the persecuting of the Church, and the death of Stephen was done in ignorance, and through misplaced zeal in the law of his fathers. The times of this ignorance God winked at, and it is a supreme example of the truth of David’s words,
“Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity.”
And it is only so because as the first verse of this 32 Psalm tells us,
“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”
The transgression is forgiven for Christ’s sake, and the sin is covered and washed away in the answer of an honest heart as it goes down into the waters of baptism. It was so with Paul, and it is no less so with us. Let us appreciate the great mercy of a heavenly
Father who has done that for us too. God who can, and does read the heart, He alone could see in Paul the right vessel directed in the right way who would be faithful unto death, and at the end of his life, could say through the spirit of God ;
“I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness that fadeth not away, etc. The understanding of the paradox, and the realisation of the apparent contradiction comes from realising that God alone could see the end from the beginning, and “whom he hath foreknown, him he hath predestined.”
There is a true predestination, and it is only understood in the light of this truth based on the foreknowledge of God, to the extent that Revelations tell us of of names written in the book of life,
“from the foundation of the world.”
“Are they Hebrews,”
the Apostle said in writing to the Corinthians,
“So am I.”
With these words let us go back to the starting point of this remarkable life that has been an inspiration to men and women of all ages. Probably around the year one of the Christian era, (of this we can not be sure) to a family in the Roman province of Cilicia, in the city of Tarsus, the capital of the province, there was born a boy. Nothing startling about that, boys are born every day of the year; and there appeared nothing different about this boy . . other than perhaps he was not as large and as robust as a lot of boys are. His father was a Pharisee, of the tribe of Benjamin, and evidently of some standing in the city, being a Roman citizen which was a great honour, and in the case of some, purchased with a great price. But in the case of this child it was so from his birth.
An important fact which played a part of some prominence in his life later on to his advantage, and which, strangely enough, decided the method of his death. It was quite natural that the happy parents, being of the tribe of Benjamin, would give this their son the name of Israel’s first king, Saul. However, in the Greek community in which his early years were spent it was natural that the boys of the city should call him by the name of Paul.
When he was appointed by God as the apostle to the Gentiles it was quite appropriate that this name was preferred, and no longer was he known as Saul, but Paul. To his early training we would like to call attention as one of the great lessons from Paul’s life, that we may benefit from it—in this age when early training, and its intrinsic value has been neglected to the point of being lost entirely. The proverb has said,
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Prov. 22:6.
Let Paul himself tell us of the rigid training he received from a father of Israel who neglected not to do his duty to his child as God had commanded in the days of Moses. Read Acts 26:4-5. Philippians 3:5-6.
This should not be passed over lightly, nor are we to think that being brought up a Pharisee resulted in one becoming a hypocrite, nor a whited sepulchre as Christ accused many Pharisees in His day.
As a matter of fact, it is quite interesting to know that the word “Pharisee” means nothing more nor less than “separated,” or “set apart,” identically the same as the word “saint.” That is in its basic meaning, and I am quite sure that none of us would use as a synonym for ‘saint, ‘hypocrite.’ It is quite true that many of the Pharisees accepted the teaching of Jesus and became faithful followers. In the case of Paul himself a Pharisee, of the Pharisees, we could not by any means call him a hypocrite. Misguided he might have been before his conversion, but he was certainly anything but a hypocrite.
It meant training day by day, the repeating of the commandments until they became if not engraven upon the fleshly tablets of the heart, certainly they were written by constant repetition as “frontlets between the eyes.” When we consider the later life of the apostle, the full value of such training is demonstrated particularly in the mighty epistles which he wrote, of which a good example is the one to the Hebrews. How from the law and testimony contending in the synagogues he showed without contradiction from any, that Jesus was the Christ.
Daniel The Prophet – (Part 3)