Filled with rage, a man with a mission, determined to make them pay, he stormed down the long dusty road.
The road headed toward Damascas.
He’d already put one man to death, and fully intended to see many more. The words were already formed in his mind, the demand for letters, giving him authority: “That if any belonging to the Way be found I can bring them bound to Jerusalem.”
You know the story, yes? A blinding light flashed down from heaven, the voice of Jesus Christ speaking to Saul by name, then a specific commission to go and preach the gospel to the Gentiles. Saul turned to Paul and immediately began preaching Jesus the Messiah everywhere he went.
That’s conversion.
We often hear: “I’m just searching for God,” or “I found God.” But true conversion is always that God found us. Jesus seeks and saves. Our part is to receive the free gift of grace. That is what it means to believe the gospel.
Paul was not looking for Jesus, Paul was going the opposite direction of grace and yet grace found him and turned his life around.
Jesus is the hero of the story.
Sometimes it’s easy to read of Paul’s conversion and think that perhaps he’s an isolated case. I’ve never had a blinding light strike me down from heaven, and never heard Jesus audibly speak my name. But this past week, in our Galatians study, we took the time to write out afresh our testimony, how Christ saved us, and how He’s changed us since that point. You know what I discovered, as my eyes filled with tears and my heart filled with gratitude?
Paul’s not so unique after all.
It’s true that I prayed to receive Christ when I was five. Precious. And while yes I believe I was regenerate and saved at that time, it wasn’t until the summer between high school and college that God radically delivered my heart, my affections, and knocked me down with a blinding light of grace and spoke my name from heaven, so to speak. Since that August of 1998 I have never been the same.
He changed my name.
And you know what’s so amazing? I wasn’t seeking God. At all. I had tucked God in my back pocket and was content to live a self-centered, pleasure-pursuing, outwardly-righteous life. I was well on my way to becoming the god of my own life, and I do now shudder to think of where that would have taken me.
Paul was on his way to a ruinous life. And so was I.
But God. (de theos)
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ … for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph 2:4-9)
But God came after me. I was going the opposite direction and He arrested my life into His service. You know what’s even cooler than Paul and I sharing this story?
Jeff, Paul and I sharing this story. Jeff’s story is the same. He literally ditched the guy who was supposed to talk to Jeff about God. Jeff ran away from God, was not seeking Him, and yet God through this campus missionary sought after him, came to Jeff’s house, came to his room, sat down and told Jeff the glorious good news of the gospel.
By grace you have been saved.
When we were going the opposite direction, Christ intervened and saved our lives. Doesn’t that give you glorious hope as you pray for your unsaved loved ones?
Whether they are searching or not, Christ can arrest a soul and change a life.
He did it for Paul. For Jeff. For me. You too?
{Celebrate this grace today … Thanks for reading.}