Paul’s conversion marks a turning point, not only in his life but in the spread of the Gospel. What was once concealed becomes clear, and what was opposed becomes proclaimed.
In Paul, the long-anticipated Messiah is no longer a matter of expectation, but of revelation. His ministry carries that recognition outward, extending the message beyond its original setting.
This essay considers how Paul’s calling reflects the unveiling of Christ, and how that revelation continues in the life of the Church.
Paul is one of the most remarkable figures of grace in history. His transformation is unique because he knows more about Moses, the Law, and the Prophets than the disciples, and perhaps most of the Pharisees. And yet, despite having a deep knowledge of the Messiah in these scriptures, he hates Jesus and his followers, ironically, based on those very same scriptures.
Paul is a man of the Old Testament Law and becomes a man of the New Testament gospel. His head is full of knowledge of the Messiah before the Messiah ruled his heart. Paul is a legal expert, trained from his youth in Jerusalem under a mentor-Pharisee of the highest reputation. He drags Christians out of their homes and sees them imprisoned and killed. He is the on-scene commander at Stephen’s stoning. Then Jesus reveals himself to Paul.
Once he knows Jesus, he never looks back. He seems to have no earthly regrets. He later says, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). No doubt that, unlike Judas, whose grief leads to death, Paul knows this godly grief but, in his redemption, moves forward in world-changing service to the Lord.
As a Pharisee, he studies the Law and is more than familiar with what it says about the Messiah. The Encyclopaedia Judaica states,
“Pharisaic doctrines have more in common with those of Christianity than is supposed, having prepared the ground for Christianity with such concepts as Messianism, the popularization of monotheism and apocalypticism, and with such beliefs as life after death, the resurrection of the dead, immortality, and angels.”
Just as he reminds Timothy, “how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings” (2 Timothy 3:15), Paul had studied the Torah since his youth, “educated at the feet of Gamaliel” (Acts 22:3).
Yet, as we know from scripture, knowledge isn’t the end goal in our lives. Instead, the goal is the knowledge that leads us to understand the God who is love, enabling us to love him and our neighbor. This is the message of the whole scripture. Paul the Pharisee believes in one God, that this God will send a Savior, that our choices in this life have consequences, and that there is life after death. But in his pride, he focuses all his efforts on obeying and serving God in his own power, only later to “count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8).
Some suggestions have been advanced on why Paul, from a respected family and in an honorable profession, is unusually aggressive against Jesus, becoming “a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” of him (1 Timothy 1:13). No doubt, he is protecting the religious practices of the Pharisees. There was “Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus” (John 19:38), who asked for the body of Jesus, and likely Nicodemus, who provided the burial spices. Still, his zeal for a Messiah makes him defensive when dealing with his followers and who he thinks is a false Messiah. He is looking at a Messiah which the scriptures describe but is blind to the Messiah in front of his own eyes. Like many others, he wants an earthly king, not a humble servant.
When Jesus opened his disciples’ eyes to understand the scriptures, they realized the whole meaning of the prophecies about him. At the two extremes, the disciples know Jesus personally but don’t understand all that scripture says about him; Paul thoroughly understands all that the scriptures say about the Jesus but doesn’t know him personally. When Jesus makes himself known, the change in Paul is rapid and profound. In effect, Paul experiences the equivalent of three years with Jesus compressed into this one event. After just a few days with the disciples, “immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God’” (Acts 9:20). As Job says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5).
Paul has much knowledge–and we are encouraged to have knowledge. We read, “Fools, how long will you hate knowledge?” and “Zeal without knowledge is not good” (Proverbs 1:22, 19:2, HCSB). Yet we also read, “If I have all knowledge, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2). Worse still, if we are “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7), we will struggle to have a close relationship with Jesus. Paul has all the knowledge but needs to have a relationship. Now he has both, making him a powerful witness for Jesus.
Imagine a pastor beginning a sermon by asking us if we longed to see Jesus, if we would be glad if we did see him, if we would want him to give us a sign, and if we would like to ask him questions. We would enthusiastically say “Yes.” But what if the pastor then reads this scripture for the sermon: “When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had long desired to see him, because he had heard about him, and he was hoping to see some sign done by him. So, he questioned him at some length” (Luke 23:8-9)? After hearing that, we are left to wonder: what is the difference between Herod and us?
A difference with eternal consequences exists between looking at Jesus, as Herod does, and looking to Jesus, as God desires. In one instance, we look at him out of curiosity, to be part of a kindred group, or to be entertained. Or even to persecute his followers, as Paul does. After we see what his lordship requires of us, we may even, as the pig herdsmen did, “beg Jesus to depart from their region” (Mark 5:17). But in the other instance, we look to him for hope, forgiveness, and salvation, “our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he has mercy upon us” (Psalms 123:2). Using our knowledge of Jesus to serve ourselves differs from using it to abandon ourselves to serve Jesus.
The woman who touches Jesus’ robe in the middle of a crowd is a familiar story. After she touches his robe and is healed, Jesus says, “‘Who touched my garments?’ And his disciples say to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” (Mark 5:29-31). It is easy to imagine someone from the crowd going home that evening and telling his family of the commotion Jesus created in town, the press of the crowd, the fact that he had actually brushed up against Jesus (!), and the unusual exchange between Jesus and a ritually unclean woman. Then he casually asks, “So, how was your day?” He is excited about seeing Jesus and eager to tell his family all about him, but he has not been changed in any way by him. Life goes on. So many touch his robe, yet only one feels Jesus’ touch in return. She is the one forever changed because she looked to Jesus for mercy.
Paul is excited about a Messiah he sees in scripture, so much so that he persecutes those he thinks are blaspheming this Messiah, confessing, “in raging fury against them I persecuted them” (Acts 26:11). But when he hears, I am Jesus while on the road to Damascus, Paul goes from looking at Jesus as his enemy to looking to Jesus as his Lord. In obedience, he goes to Damascus and waits until Ananias arrives, wherein he says the Lord” has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 9:17)
Paul doesn’t need the explanation of the Torah as the disciples do, for he already has all that knowledge. Instead, he needed to know Jesus personally. Once his strength returned after his conversion, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, he “confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ” (Acts 9:22). This confounding and proving comes from the same scriptures he had previously used against Jesus.
Regret is debilitating, especially for the Christian. Those who are all-in with the ways of this world may seem to have fewer regrets since “they have no pangs, they are not in trouble, they are always at ease” (Psalms 73:4-12). They may not suffer under a burden of guilt because they don’t recognize the burden of sin. Or worse, they suffer guilt with no path to relief. Those who love Jesus and aspire to love their neighbor as he did sometimes regret not doing better or being “perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) because we don’t fully comprehend the grace given to us through Jesus Christ.
Paul could have been crippled by regret for what he had done to Jesus’ followers and Jesus himself, but he isn’t. Instead, the Lordship of Jesus makes him “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17), and he lives his life “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13). Over the course of three years, right up until his ascension, Jesus tells the disciples what the Old Testament says about himself. But Paul’s revelation of this connection happens in an instant when he realizes that Jesus is the Messiah he had been peering at all his life.
So, too, finding Jesus in the Old Testament is encouraged and encouraging. If we investigate the heavenly things of which Hebrews speaks, to seek the face of Jesus there because we want, as St. Richard of Chichester (1197–1253) describes, to “see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly,” we will not be disappointed. “If you seek him, he will be found by you,” and “he rewards those who seek him” (2 Chronicles 15:2 and Hebrews 11:6). One of the most significant rewards is the gift of the Holy Spirit in us and in the church. Paul’s Holy Spirit-inspired writings pointed the way forward for the church and continues to this day.
This essay is part of Shadows of Christ: Twelve Essays.
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