Acts
9
1 “And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of
the Lord, went unto the high priest,” But for and, Authorized
Version; breathing for
breathing out, Authorized
Version; threatening for threatenings, Authorized Version.
Threatening and slaughter. The phrase ἐμπνέων ἀπειλῆς
– emponeon apeilaes –
breathing out threat - is rather a difficult one, and is variously explained. Schleusner
takes the genitives in “threatening and slaughter” as genitives of
the thing desired,
“panting after threatening and slaughter” (compare
Amos 2:7). Meyer explains it
“out of the threatenings and murder [in
his heart] breathing hard at the disciples” —
an expression
indicating passion. Alford, taking nearly the
sense of the Authorized
Version, makes
“threatenings and
slaughter” to be as it were the very material of his
breath, whether breathed out or breathed in. Considering that ἐμπνέων – emponeon -
means “to breathe in,” as distinguished from ἐκπνέω – ekpneo - to breathe out, and
that these two are opposed to each other in Hippocrates, the
Authorized Version
breathing out cannot
be justified; nor is it likely that “Luke the physician”
would forget the distinction. The difficulty is to explain
the genitive case of
“threatenings” and “slaughter.” The high priest; probably the same person
who is so described in ch. 7:1
(where see note). If the year with which
we are now dealing was the year A.D. 35, Caiaphas was high
priest. But
Alford, Lewin, Farrar, and others place Saul’s conversion
in A.D. 37, when
Theophilus, son of Annas or Ananus, was high priest (Chronicles Table in
Alford’s ‘Proleg. to Acts’).
2 “And
desired of him letters to
of this way, whether they were men or
women, he might bring them bound unto
any that were of the Way for any of this way, Authorized Version; whether
men, etc.,
for whether they were men, etc., Authorized Version; to for unto, Authorized
Version.
To
from vs. 10 and 13 that there was already a considerable
number of Christian Jews at
settled there, was a sufficient reason why Saul should ask
for letters to
each of the synagogues at
who might be found amongst them bound to
before the Sanhedrin. There may have been thirty or forty
synagogues at
i.e. holding the
doctrine of Christ. Thus in ch. 18:25-26, the
Christian
faith is spoken of as “the
way of the Lord” and “the way of God.”
In
ch.
19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, was the term by which the faith of Christ
was spoken of chiefly, perhaps, among the Jews. The term
means a
peculiar doctrine or sect. Its application to Christians
apparently lasted only
so long as Christianity was considered to be a modification
or peculiar
form of Judaism, and its frequent use in the Acts is
therefore an evidence of
the early composition of the book.
The Way (v. 2)
This seems to have been the earliest name for what we now
call
Christianity. That it was used as a distinctive appellation
of the Christian
religion may be seen by comparing ch.19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14,
22. A
fuller expression is employed in II Peter 2:2, “By
reason of whom the
way of truth shall be evil
spoken of,” Our Lord had used the term
in a very
significant manner, saying, “I am the way: (John 14:6); and the previous
prophetic figure of the Messianic times — “An
highway shall be there, and
a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness” (Isaiah 35:8) — would be in
the memory of the disciples, and therefore they would be
likely to accept the
term if it was first started by their persecutors. Compare
the name
“Christian,” which
began as a taunt, and became accepted as an honorable
title. In introducing this subject, reference may be made
to the interesting
fact that, from this point, Luke s record becomes almost
entirely an
account of Paul’s labors, probably because round him centered
the
missionary work of the early Church, and he was its
greatest
representative. The kind of religious authority over all
Jews exercised by
the Sanhedrin, and the limitations of its power to
imprisonment and
beating and excommunication, require consideration. Saul
probably went
to
Ø
because in the
scattering the disciples were likely to have found
shelter there; and,
Ø
because many Jews
dwelt there, and especially those Greek Jews,
who were most likely to
become converts to the broad principles
as taught by Stephen’s
party.
It was against this particular party that Saul was
so greatly incensed. Their
teaching most effectually plucked the ground from beneath
mere formal Judaism. Reverting to the term, “the Way,” as descriptive
of the Christian religion, and
filling it with the larger meaning of our later knowledge,
we may notice that it is:
own peculiar way of thinking
about
Ø
God,
Ø
man,
Ø
sin,
Ø
redemption.
Its “way of thinking” is placed
under the guidance of special Divine
revelation. And the
starting-point of its thinking is that God has, “in these
last days, spoken
unto us by His Son.” (Hebrews 1:2)
Probably the exact
reference in this verse is to
that “way of thinking” which Stephen introduced
and taught, because that
appeared to present special points of antagonism to
the doctrine and authority of
the Sanhedrin. There is still a “way of thinking”
characteristic of Christ’s
disciples. With a large liberty there are well
defined lines beyond which the
thinking, being unloyal to Christ, is
unworthy of the Christian name.
admiration for, his trust in,
and his love to, the Lord Jesus Christ. In the
early Church the loyalty and the
love were so strong that the disciples
could endure shame and death for
His sake. And still our “way of feeling”
about Christ should mark us off
from all the world; men should “take
knowledge of us
that we have been with Jesus” (ch. 4:13), that He has
won our very hearts, and that to
us henceforth “to live is Christ.”
(Philippians 1:21) Impress the
important bearing of sustained high
feeling on the power and joy of
the Christian life.
characteristic of Christians,
for the glory of God and the good of men,
attention should be given to
Stephen’s way of working against mere
formalism and ritualism, and in
favor of spiritual religion; and the need for
similar “ways of working” in
each recurring over-civilized period should be
impressed.
Christians were known. The
Christian “way” is a “way of holiness,” not of
mere separateness, but of
consecration; a way of laying all possessions or
attainments on God’s altar, and
a way of using all powers and
opportunities
for God’s service.
3 “And as he journeyed, he came near
shined round
about him a light from heaven:” It came to pass that he drew
nigh unto for he
came near, Authorized Version; shone
for shined, Authorized
Version; out of for from, Authorized Version and Textus Receptus.
4 “And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto
him, Saul,
Saul, why persecutest thou me?”
Fell upon, for fell to, Authorized Version. Some,
as Lord Lytlelton and Lewin (‘Life of
St. Paul,’ vol. 1. p. 48), from the expressions,
“fell to the ground,” “fell to the earth,” infer that Saul was himself mounted, and
his followers some mounted and some on foot. And Farrar also, far other reasons,
supposes that Saul and his companions rode horses or mules.
The journey,
he says, was nearly a hundred and fifty miles, and the roads
rough, bad, and
steep; and Saul was traveling as the legate or the
high priest. Still it is
strange that no one expression should point distinctly to
the party being on
horseback, which “falling to the earth,” or “ground,”
certainly do not.
While, on the other hand, the phrases, “Arise,” “stood speechless,” “led
him by the hand,”
seem rather to point to his being on foot. Lunge well
compares the double invocation, Saul, Saul! with
those similar ones,
“Abraham, Abraham!” “Samuel, Samuel!” “
“Simon, Simon!”
(Genesis 22:11; I Samuel 3:10; Matthew 23:37; Luke 22:31).
5 “And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am
Jesus
whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the
pricks.”
He for the Lord, Authorized
Version and Textus Receptus. The rest of v. 5 in the
Authorized Version, “It is hard for thee to kick against the
pricks” and the first
part of v. 6, “And he trembling and astonished, said,
Lord, what wilt thou have
me to do? And the
Lord said unto him,” are omitted in
the Received Text. They
have, in fact, no manuscript authority; and
not much patristic authority, or from
versions, and are omitted by all modern editors. They seem
to be taken from the
parallel narratives in ch.
22:8-10; 26:14. The proverb, “It is
hard,” etc., is only
found in ch. 26:14 (where see note).
The One Question of Conversion (vs. 1-5)
With this paragraph the landmark of the history changes.
The conspicuous
figure of Paul is seen, and is not again lost to sight till
a certain Lord’s day
morning dawns on the
lot of various men often awaken thought in those who think
enough,
oftener envy or murmur in those who fail to think
enough. It is a ‘notable
token of the character of such envy that, when excited, it
is almost
invariably in those instances which show differences of
worldly lot or
providential circumstance. But amid all the differences
that might
legitimately surprise,
none can for a moment compare in intrinsic
significance with that which gave, still gives, ever will
give, undying
renown to Saul — that he is, and is set forth as the
type of conversion.
(see I Timothy 1:16)
He stands before us as remarkable in many ways — as
an apostle; as a writer of many Epistles, ever studied,
never wearied of; as a
first missionary to the Gentiles, and most bold preacher of
the gospel; as the
planter and settler of so many primitive Churches far and
wide; and as a man of
such endurance and of so many hairbreadth escapes, that men
would say for the
one he had an iron constitution, for the other he wore a
charmed life. But
he is most known, he is apparently most intended to be
known, by just
what belongs to his conversion. The tale of Saul without
his conversion
(which he repeats within our knowledge twice for himself,
how many times
more we cannot say) would be an instance, and in the intensest form too,
of the play of ‘Hamlet’ without Hamlet. Would that there were
those, and
many of them, who, coveting “the best gifts,” coveted
this unworldly
distinction — the thoroughness, the conspicuousness, the
ever-enduring
practical results of such a conversion! But how unusual is this
ambition!
The prominence given to the conversion of Saul cannot mean
less than this,
that it is a sample. Yet is it not put where it is to stand
there in solitary
unique grandeur, inapproachable, but that it may be
approached, studied,
reproduced. Let us look into it at the moment of its
crisis, the moment
when such unwonted words started to the lips of Saul, “Lord,
what wilt
thou have me to do?”
OF PAST DARKNESS, IGNORANCE, MISTAKE. Conversion reveals to
a man, not only many other very
important things, as time goes on, of
which he had never dreamt, but
it surprisingly persuades him of this to
begin with — that he does not
know something which he thought he did
know perhaps thought he knew
particularly well. What an astonishing thing
to hear Saul asking, of all
other questions, such a one as this, “Who art
thou, Lord?” This is a great point to gain. Saul had thought he did know
this, and knew that Jesus was
not one to be called his “Lord” or “Lord” at
all.
Ø
He
had put his own idea and his own impression on Christ; but not the
right ones, and of the right he was ignorant and
destitute. How many do
this! No
name, perhaps, better known to them than the Name of Jesus, no
nature
less known or more mistaken. It is the darkness which belongs
o
to
nature;
o
to willful
neglect and habit.
Ø The very wrongness of those ideas and
impressions were the measure of
the persistency
with which they were held and the intemperateness with
which they were
expressed. Paul afterwards tells us this “I verily thought
with
myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the Name of Jesus
of
persecution.
But when Saul utters the cry of the text it is because he is just
beginning the escape
— the escape of his life, the escape for his life —
from
that long dark mistake, that native delusion and ignorance. And
afterwards he
does not excuse his wrong “thought,” but condemns himself
with deepest
contrition as “the chief of sinners.” (I Timothy 1:15) Saul was
utterly in
the wrong before his
conversion; and is not every one else utterly
in the wrong
until his conversion? What
a solemn responsibility this one
thing
is in life, to make up the mind how to think, to speak, to act towards
Christ!
AWAKENING OF A NEW AND KEEN DESIRE.
Ø
Past darkness and
mistake (specially in proportion to its moral
blamableness),
not only may incur the deep-settled habit, but they generally
do so. They strangle, till they kill, anything like
a natural healthy desire for
real light, real
knowledge. They seem to be
able to go to the length of
destroying the power for its further use on earth.
Then what a power it
must be that is
needed to speak life, strength, use again into that palsy!
Ø The one unvarying testimony of Scripture
witnesses to one great
silent
Power,
alone able “to create a clean heart, and to renew a right spirit”
within
man. It is that great Power which wakens again
in the deep disused
of human nature
the keen desire to know, the relish of true knowledge, the
thirst for
light and love and the liberty of Christ. As on that day so eventful
Saul journeyed
in hot haste over the hot sands to
raging heart
hottest of all, a new future is opening for him, for a new future
is opening in
him, ere yet the echoes of his brief question die on the air.
When in the
intolerable blaze of that bright light that passed the brilliance
of the noonday
sun he fell to the earth, and when the heavenly voice of the
risen One twice
summoned him, “calling him by his name,” it may well be
that, if there
were anything to waken after too long sleep confessed, it now
should “hear
and live.” And it was so. Some power has reached and
touched the
vital germ within, yet unextinct, and it owns to the
sudden
impulse. There
is no more genuine evidence of God’s mighty Spirit being
savingly
at work than when every hindrance, every excuse, every delay,
falls back, and
you press on simply to ask for Christ. Then human nature’s
want, sin,
misery, are arrived at the door of Heaven’s infinite wealth,
happiness,
willingness. Keen is the force of human appetite and keener the
edge of
passion; keen are our worldly desires and keener our mad wrath;
but
keenest of all and ever conquering is the force of the desire TO KNOW
CHRIST when it is the Spirit of God who puts it
into the heart and kindles its
flame. And does
not this sample-conversion history guide us most closely
to see what are
the Spirit’s real ways with our natures, which need:
o
first
obstructions removed, and
o
thereupon
force and life restored?
The treatment
shall be such as reveals to him who experiences it at one
glance the
world of darkness and error and sin that has been so long within,
but close
upon that tells him of new, strange, and
blessed life astir
within also.
ALARMED SELF TURNING AROUND AND BECOMING REALLY
READY TO EXERCISE A SIMPLE, DEEP TRUST. How many ‘hope”
they are ready “think”
they are ready, have some sort and some amount of
“wish” to be ready, but of whom all the truth is, they are not really ready
to trust Christ! They are not really ready to cast themselves on mercy, nor
to acknowledge that “this
is the work they have to do,” namely, “to believe
on Him whom God
hath sent.” (John 6:29)
They are not yet really ready to
believe that salvation is to be
had by trust and not by any other way; by trust
in Christ, and trust
illimitable. Yet is there no surer, no safer article of all our
faith. And healthy life and fruit are only where
faith is rooted in Christ, and
root to finest tendril and
branch to finest twig do all derive their nourishment
and their sap from him. So
Saul’s question and the sharp, direct method of
it signify then, evidently
enough, both the hopeful and the trustful state into
which he had come, or was ready
immediately “by the grace of God” to
come. Men sometimes ask a
question indifferent to its answer; they
sometimes ask a question for the
sake of the merest information; they
sometimes ask a question for
some critical purpose or to block a question
waiting on themselves; but this
question was none of these. This is like a
question indeed. Angels listen
to it, and listen to its answer too, to ring out
Heaven’s wild “Amen.” Jesus listened, and a soul was saved. Travel, then,
the circle of “the earth and the
world” and “the heavens,” and there is not a
question we could address to any
or all of them which could equal the
momentousness of this, when, at last
turning to Christ, a man asks, “Who
art thou, Lord?” To Jesus Saul had borne himself ever so proudly, as many,
many do now — their will ungiven to Him, their trust flitting
everywhere
else but not
settled on Him, their love and allegiance unyielded
to Him; and
when he, even he, asked,
“Who art thou, Lord?” it meant the coming down
for ever of pride. So the
confession which we have seen to hide here, and
the keen desire we have seen to
bud forth here, led to the utter
renunciation of self-trust, and
to the simplest and most entire trust in
Christ. None can ask this question for you; YOU MUST ASK IT FOR
YOURSELF! None can answer
it but Jesus, and HE WILL ANSWER IT!.
]
The Goads of God (v. 5)
There is probably some truth in the familiar saying “If Stephen
had not
prayed, Paul had not preached.” The influence of the sight
of that
martyrdom, and especially of that magnanimous prayer, may
have had
much to do with converting Saul the persecuting Pharisee
into Paul the
faithful apostle. For what could our Lord have meant by
saying, “It is hard
for thee to kick against the goads,” but that, as it
is a vain, useless, and
hurtful thing for the yoked ox to struggle against that
which is inciting it to
its work, so was it a useless and hurtful thing for Saul to
be rebelling
against those scruples, heart-searchings,
convictions, which were urging
him to enter a new and better path? This may seem
inconsistent with the
language which has just been used (v. 1); but we must
remember that
vehemence is never quite so violent as when it begins to
suspect itself to be
in the wrong; that persecution is never so passionate,
fanaticism never so
fierce, as when it is most impressed with the goodness and innocency of its
victim. Your Legree never strikes
so murderous a blow as when he finds
himself face to face with a Christian hero and feels
himself to be thoroughly
condemned. So Saul never breathed out such threatening and
slaughter as
when the sight of Stephen’s blood-stained body was still
before his eyes,
and the sound of his generous intercession still lingered
in his ear. But he
was beginning to think that, after all, perhaps those
Christians were in the
right and that he was in the wrong, and that he must either
shut his eyes
hard against the light or change his course. By violent
suppression of these
new thoughts, by stifling all scruples with strong hand, by
kicking against
the goads of God, he found himself on the way to
harry the servants of Christ. There the Lord whom he was to
serve so
faithfully met him and told him he was doing a hard thing
in thus struggling
against the Heaven-sent promptings which urged him to take
the true and
right path.
pathetic have come down to us
from ancient times than that lament of the
Roman poet, “I see the better
things and approve; I follow the worse.”
How many have to make the same
sorrowful confession now! Around us
are souls struggling:
Ø
with passion,
Ø
with earthly ambition,
Ø
with pride,
Ø
with disposition to
wait for some favorable future.
These find themselves urged by
the goads of God — conscience, the
sacred Scriptures, human
ministry, the Divine Spirit — to take the better
course, but their lower
instincts and evil habits cause them to strive against
these higher impulses.
Ø It is a miserable thing in a
man’s own experience to be living a life of
vice, or
worldliness, or selfishness, or indecision, when the soul is
conscious of
a Divine voice calling it to higher things — to pursue a path
which is
known and felt to be the wrong one. This is a wretched life to live;
there
is no peace, no spiritual rest, no lasting joy; there is distraction,
discontent,
rebellion. It is hard for a human soul to kick against
the goads
of
God.
Ø It is a regrettable thing, judged
from outside. Those who look on —
“the
cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews
12:1) see with unspeakable sorrow a
human
heart spending its powers and wasting its life in battling with its
purer
and nobler aspirations. There is no more saddening sight to a
Christ-like
spirit than that of a human heart thus striving with the
influences
which come from heaven to raise and to redeem it.
Ø It is a guilty thing, life man can
continue to do that without storing up
for himself “wrath
against the day of wrath and the righteous
revelation
of God!” (Romans 2:5)
such a man to do — he must yield himself at once to God’s gracious
forces. He must be the “prisoner of the Lord,” that he may become
“the
freedman of Christ.” He must go
on whither his Redeemer is urging him —
on to full self-surrender; on to
sacred and happy service; and so on to the
heavenly kingdom.
The Considerateness of a Love already Infinite
(v. 5)
“It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” [Note: There is ample
evidence that Paul himself narrates these details of his
conversion (ch. 26:14),
and that their proper place is not here. They will,
however, be considered here,
and reference made to this place from ch.
22. 10; 26:14.] Saul, when now he was
called Paul, and after he had been some while in the
service of Christ, himself tells
us what passed in those wonderful moments when Christ and
the Spirit wrestled with
him thrown prostrate to the earth. They are never forgotten
by him, nor will he for a
moment try to hide those details describing Heaven’s remonstrances with
him where they might most infer humiliation to himself. The
humiliation of
Saul at this time has its counterpart in some sort in the condescendingness
of Christ. The risen Lord will still use human language and
human figure,
even to employing a proverb. The proverb needs no
explanation, and the
interpretation of it needs only illustration and enforcement.
And it may be
led up to profitably by inferior applications of it which
none will gainsay.
How, then, will they be able to gainsay that illustration
of it and that
application of it which Jesus
Himself thinks it worth while to utter from
an open window of heaven?
TO US. That lot is a
very complex thing, but it is made up of some very
manifest elements. It is a
combination of the date in time’s long calendar at
which our life is placed, of the
bodily and the mental endowments which
we own, of the circumstances and
surroundings which we inherit, and of
the very dispositions which
belonged to those who went before us — our
parents’ and theirs. None
can give any account of these elements, but
every man has to use them
and to seek to use them to the best advantage.
Some of them no man ever finds
fault with or murmurs because of them, or
most rarely. Very, very few ever
complain that they live now, for instance,
and did not live long ago — that
they live now and not rather a century or
two hence. They see, they feel
that to do this were insanity itself: and they
do not kick against their
lot in this respect. Yet they often do in
other
respects. Well, this is hard — hard as for the bird of plumage
to beat
against the wires of its cage;
nay, harder far than that. It is hard for loss
of
time, for loss of temper, for loss
of strength, for loss of trusting loving
obedience, and because no good
can come of it, no success can be gained
in the vain, Utopian, and worse than
foolish struggle. Let
every man
struggle in his
lot to improve himself, and he will not fail to
improve it
also. But let him never “kick”
against it; for so, if hurt at all, he hurts
himself the more. He “kicks
against the pricks.”
often be painful at present.
There is none, however, more strengthening
and health-giving. Many a heavy
burden becomes lighter if borne manfully.
It always becomes more
irritating in proportion as it is not willingly taken
up and borne. And duty knows how
to take keen revenge. When its
obligations are only partially
and grudgingly discharged, the penalty it
assigns is the misery of utter dissatisfaction; and when they are altogether
neglected, the penalty is a forfeiture
of unknown amount and kind.
is alive and in full life, to
sin against it in both disobeying it and also taking
the offensive, makes its
reproach tenfold. If it be already half dead, it
hastens its destruction for the
present life; and if it be “on the point of
death,” the death-stroke now
falls.
“If
I willfully keep my conscience in darkness and continue
in errors which I might easily know to be such
by a little
thought and searching of God’s
Word, then my conscience
can offer me no excuse for I am
guilty of blindfolding the
guide
which I have chosen and then knowing him to be blindfolded,
I
am guilty of the folly of letting him lead me into rebellion against God.”
PLAINLY GREATER IN DEGREE OR THAT IS
If it be only greater in degree,
the peril lies in the inevitable mercilessness
of the opponent. He holds the vain
struggler in his grip. And if it be a
greater force because it is
superior in kind, then he who struggles,
struggles “against his own
soul,” and drives the deadly disease within.
MAN’S SOUL AND ETERNAL LIFE, CHRIST AND THE SPIRIT,
are on the one side;
and the
man himself, driven in darkness, error, and
recklessness, is on the other.
Ø It is
hard,
intrinsically so, hard on every account and in every bearing of
it, to go against the interest of your own soul. The soul is so inestimably
valuable, the injury so inestimably cruel. Eternal life is so unboundedly to
be desired, the
loss of it so unboundedly to be dreaded and wailed over.
Saul was doing this
very thing, beneath all other guise and disguise, when
his career was
stopped. If he could have had
his way, his way shut him
right
out from “life,
life eternal,” and led him to the straightest path to death.
And all the
while he had been resisting light and evidence, miracles and signs
and mighty
wonders of apostles and of Stephen, which had availed with
others; he was kicking against the highest welfare
and interests of himself.
Convictions are some of our strongest friends, and to kick against them is
to
inflict some of the keenest of pain and most cruel of injury upon self.
Ø It is hard, essentially so, to resist the
hand as kind as it is strong, as
strong as it is
kind, of Jesus. “Strong
to save” is, indeed,
His truest name
and His best-loved
name. But if He is to the last refused in this force, it must
be, alas! He is swift to destroy. It is especially
hard to resist Jesus:
o
Because
He means nothing but kindness.
o
Because
His meaning makes no mistake, incurs no slip nor charge of
good intention
only, and He does nothing but kindness.
o
Because
He first did so much and suffered so much for one only
purpose — that
He might be qualified to show that kindness to the full.
o
Because
His is the initiative always, in proffering that kindness to those
whose
initiative always is the front of hostility to Himself.
o
Because
all His kind meaning and His kind doing are in the train of
perfect
knowledge. He knows all that we shall want to bear us through
and to bear us up
on high, all that we shall want to save us from falling
through and falling
into “the lowest hell.” What folly we often observe
it to be to
stand up against or to neglect knowledge superior to our own!
But oh! but
what extent and what kind of superior knowledge is this?
“No eye
but His might ever bear
To gaze all down that drear abyss,
Because
none ever saw so clear
The shore beyond of endless bliss!”
“The giddy
waves so restless hurled,
The vexed
pulse of this feverish world,
He views
and counts with steady sight,
Used to
behold the Infinite!”
o
Because
Him refused, Him lost, there is no other can plead our cause
in our
last extremity, there is no other Savior! When such a one
speaks,
touches, urges, then the sinner who resists Him is one who
has no
mercy, no mercy at all on himself, “body or soul.”
Ø It is hard, most ruinously so, to resent
the persuading address of the
Spirit.
Hardening as it is to neglect the lessons of reason, the persuasions
of the affection
of others, the call of duty, the dictates of conscience, and
the Word and
work and impassioned invitation of Jesus, this is the worst of
all — to
resist and reject the Spirit. For He is the life itself. Light and Life
are His twofold
name. All round creation light will be attended ere long
with symptoms
of life; and nowhere round the whole sweep of creation
does consent to
dwell with perfect darkness. They seem almost
synonymous,
perhaps, but as they are not the same in nature, so neither
can they be
counted the same in grace. And still, therefore, this twofold
name speaks
something of the quality and prerogative of the Spirit. He
brings Christ
Himself and His truth and His cross to the sinner’s heart,
and if He is
refused, then finally all is refused. Hence the awful trembling
emphasis which
Scripture lays on the pleading exhortation that we slight not,
grieve
not (Ephesians 4:30),
quench not, the Spirit (I Thessalonians 5:25).
And hard indeed
it must be counted to” kick against Him.”
o
He
is so silent a Friend.
o
He
is so gentle a Friend,
o
He
is so close a Friend.
o
He
is so sensitive a Friend.
o
He
is so condescending a Friend — in Him it is that God dwells
in the
humble and contrite sinner’s heart.
o
He
is so cheerful and gladdening and sanctifying a Friend.
o
He
more than halves our griefs — He dries them up. He more than
doubles
our joy — He multiplies it a million-fold, till it is already
“full
of glory.” His
sympathy is perfect.
o
He
is our indispensable Friend, if we are to be loosed from sin,
to be
created anew, to take hold of Jesus, and to find salvation.
Against
the united, loving, determined, and predetermined force of Jesus
and the
Spirit, ‘twas hard indeed for Saul to strive. Love and power, amazing
grace! —
have hold upon him nor mean to relax their gracious grasp. If he
struggles,
he but prolongs his own fierce inner conflict, multiples his own
subsequent
pangs of memory and conscience. So
Saul and every converted
man are in a hand from which no power shall ever pluck them. (John 10:28-29)
6 “And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou
have
me to do? And the
Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city,
and it shall be
told thee what thou must do.” Rise, and enter into the city
for Arise, and go, etc., Authorized Version.
The Act of Capitulation (v. 6)
The moment had come for Saul. His conversion is a fact
accomplished. He
speaks to it by speaking its reliable evidences. Short,
undoubtedly sharp,
and as it now appears decisive, had the conflict within
been, but it is now
over. And the fight over finds out the two results — the
soldier
unwounded and the victory won. The moment had come also for
Jesus.
What preparations His had been! What work He had
accomplished! What
“sufferings” He had endured! What shame He had borne! And
His mighty
power and mightier love have now triumphed. He too has His
victory, has
taken, and without blood, His captive, and has bound that
captive to Him, a
willing captive for ever and ever. That moment of double
victory — of
Jesus over the human heart, and of a man’s better over his
worse self by
the grace of the Spirit — two victories, yet but one, is
described by one of
the best of our sacred hymn-writers, and could scarcely be
better set forth:
“‘Tis done! the great transaction’s done!
I am my Lord’s and He is mine!
He called me and I followed on,
Glad to confess the voice Divine.”
The question on Saul’s lip (in the text) speaks, we say,
the sure moment of
his conversion. Much may prepare the way for that moment —
thought
and feeling, honest doubt and dishonest, fear and shame and
strife,
convictions stifled, purposes dishonored, resolutions
broken, and
perversest kicking against the pricks. But these are but the always
mournful, often shameful, last show of sword-play of the
wicked one, who
knows no pity for the subject he is so soon to lose, and
when he must leave
his old abode would then most discredit it. And therefore
in this question,
may we not find in simplest, clearest outline, the
suggestions of what are
the real facts involved in conversion? They are:
will mean the surrender of:
Ø
Self-guidance.
Ø
Much more of self-will, the determination
that self shall rule and shape
all.
Ø
The works of self.
Ø
The loved ends that
have only self or self supremely in view.
Ø
Must of all, the last
remnant of an idea that self can
procure its own
salvation. For here is a man who possibly less leaned on fellow-
creature than any other man
who ever lived. But let him come to
know Jesus, and his first
question thereupon is the childlike,
leaning, humble question, “Lord,
what wilt thou have me to do?”
ALLEGIANCE TO THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. The converted is not all
at sea. That is what he once
was, but not what he is now. He has not to
seek and calculate between
different and competing matters. That was once
large part of his deep-seated
unease and dissatisfaction, when “other lords
many had dominion over him.” But
now he knows to whom his undivided
allegiance belongs. That
undivided allegiance takes him to Jesus Christ as:
Ø Unrivaled and undisputed Teacher. He sees, knows, feels, that Jesus has
won this place
all His own — the one grand Revealer of the deepest things
of the Spirit
in man and of the state of man and of the future for man. And
all other
knowledge he feels to be necessarily subordinate to this.
Ø Perfect Example. No sculptured
model so perfect for example as the
delineated
character, the written life of Jesus, the impress that is made on
the attentive
observer of His work and word and manner. Here is the
sculptor seen,
indeed, and his sculpture worth the studying. And Christ’s
true convert
will be this kind of true student of Him also. He will well know
the place at
His feet, and his own right attitude as he sits there watching.
Ø Master and Lord. He will
feel that his strength and devotion belong to
him. “What has he done for me and what for
him shall I not do?”
Ø One alone Savior. Whatever
his trust or hope for his own future life and
for his soul
may once have been, he finds all now in “Jesus only.” And if
he were
conscious of, careful for none at all before, now how earnestly he
clings to
Jesus, because of this — “Savior” His dearest name, “mighty to
save” His dearest attraction! Oh, with what
passionate adoration of
gratitude and
of love did Paul sing, and
since him unnumbered millions of
others
have sung it, “My
dear Redeemer and my Lord”! Thus Saul, in his
first
allegiance to Jesus, calls him “Lord,” and asks Him nothing else
but as
to what are His
instructions: “What wilt thou have me
to do?”
heart, changed thoughts, changed
feeling, a changed air and light. But it
means nothing if it do
not mean also a genuinely, practically changed
career. No sublime enjoyment, no
rich experience, no flight of sanctified
imagination, no foretaste in
saintly, heavenly communing with unseen
realities, of “the joys” that
are to come, shall satisfy Jesus, nor can satisfy
Scriptures conception and
representation of the convert of Christ. His life
must be “Christ;” and he
must await death to know his full “gain.” His life
must be a witness to Christ,
albeit it be first strong witness against his old
past self, and ever a quiet
rebuke of those who live not after the same rule.
The amazement and the solemn
dread of those minutes of blindness and
strongest excitement, when Saul
lay on the earth, and was already
summoned as it were to the bar
of his Maker, did not prevent him, as a true
convert and as type of a true
convert, asking for his practical work. “Lord,
what wilt thou
have me to do?” In our ignorance,
perhaps we should, a
priori, have thought a more reasonable question, a more modest
question,
a more reverent question, might
have been, “Lord, where wilt thou have
me to go” — go hide myself?
“Where wilt thou have me go,” that I may
shed bitter tears and do penance
for the past. “Where wilt thou have me
go,” that I may pass through the fires of some purgatory, and
be proved by
some solemn ordeal? But no, the question cannot be mistaken,
misreported, or
altered. It is, “What wilt thou have me to do?
And Jesus
tells him, and does not say
now, “This is the work of God, that you believe
on me.” He tells him, and it
proves very shortly, how really he had “to do,”
to “spend and be spent,” “to
labor more abundantly than they all,” and to
prove his conversion by his changed life and its fruits. For
vain,
unspeakably vain, the profession
of a changed heart and the hopes of Christ
and of heaven, without the proof
that lies in the changed life.
The Power of a Revelation (v. 6)
There are solemn seasons in the life of every man, e.g.
birthdays, times of
sickness, first leaving home. Of all such days, perhaps the
most solemn, the
one with the wider consequences, is the time of our
conversion. It is not
usual for the Scriptures to give us — what we find in
modern biographies
— detailed accounts of the precise experiences of such
times; e.g. of
we only know that “the
Lord opened her heart,” (ch. 16:14) and of the jailor
at
(ibid. v.
30) We may, therefore, ask why so full
an account is given us of the
experience of Saul of Tarsus? The answer is found in his
subsequent prominence
as a Christian missionary, and in the necessity for
assuring the fact that so bitter
a persecutor and so zealous a Pharisee was really changed
into a disciple.
Some have further suggested that he was intended, in the
Divine
providence, to take the place from which Judas by
transgression fell, and
that it must be publicly known how he had received his
direct commission
from the risen Lord, if he was to be recognized as one of
the apostolic
band. The conversion of
men is, in mode, as varied as are their minds,
characters, and circumstances. Yet there are some essential
things which
may be well studied in connection with this narrative of the conversion of
Saul of
REVELATION. Every true
conversion is effected by a revelation of God
to the soul. It need not be a visible
revelation, such as was suitable to other
times. It must be an awakening of the soul to
the apprehension of Divine
things, and a
direct dealing of God with the awakened
soul. This cardinal
truth must never be lost sight
of in our active use of Christian means and
agencies. The unregenerate man does not know God; he cannot
apprehend
the holiness, the claim,
or the love of God. These must be unfolded to him
by revelation. As illustrations
of what is meant by "conversion by revelation,”
see the vision of God to Jacob
at
we have to inquire — How was
Saul of Tarsus prepared? In answer the
following things must be
carefully treated:
Ø
His education and
early associations as a Jew and as a Pharisee. This
involved considerable knowledge
of Scripture, and a theory of the
possibility of Divine communications
with the individual.
Ø
His naturally
impulsive and impetuous disposition, which led him to
undertake things in an intense
way, but left him exposed to the peril of
sudden change of opinion and
conduct, and to the danger of giving up an
enterprise as suddenly as he had
begun it. This disposition prepared him
to be influenced by the sudden
surprise on the
Ø
The ideas about Jesus
Christ which he gained from the party at
proposition: “The impostor Jesus
is not risen from the dead.” If it
could be proved or shown that He
was, then the whole doctrine
concerning Him held by Pharisee
and Sadducee fell down about them,
as a house built on the sand in
a day of storms. And so God overrules men’s lives now to prepare them for His
revelations may be illustrated
by the ways in which:
o
the satiety of
pleasure,
o
the pollutions of
vice,
o
prolonged skepticism,
o
failure of efforts,
o
serious illness,
o
the naturally
inquiring mind, or
o
sudden bereavements,
are overruled to become
Divine preparations for our "days of grace.”
To his Jewish notions the light
from heaven would seem to be manifestly
Divine, and his first thought would
be that God was honoring him with a
commission to exterminate the
Nazarenes. It must have come to him with
startling and painful surprise
that the voice speaking from heaven to him
should be the voice of Jesus of
down in a moment. Jesus was not
an impostor; He was accepted of God.
Jesus was not dead; He spoke out
of heaven. In Saul’s response there is:
Ø Conviction. If Jesus is
after all the Messiah, then what have I been doing?
Nothing less
than fighting against the God I thought I was serving. There
was no need for
him to search his life and try to find every particular sin;
for he felt the
sin of unbelief.
And unbelief is sin against every attribute of
God,
against His:
o
justice,
o
holiness,
o
wisdom,
o
love.
Observe that
this conviction of sin was felt by one who was outwardly
moral. And the
true conviction is not the finding of some dark, polluting
deeds in our
life; it is the feeling of:
o
the
pollution,
o
the
godlessness,
o
the
self-seeking of our evil hearts.
Ø Penitence. Men may be
convicted, and go no further. Penitence involves:
o
the
sense of sin as committed against God, — illustrated by sentences
of David,
Peter to Ananias, and Prodigal Son;
o
sorrow
for sin and earnest purpose to forsake it;
o
submission, as in this incident the proud Pharisee
becomes as simple as
a child;
o
surrender, a special act of yielding will and
heart and life to Christ.
What, then, is
essential to a true conversion to God?
o
Not
any particular form of experience,
o
not
any precise time, but
o
the
sense of sin and
o
a
full surrender to Christ.
The difference
between common faith and saving faith is mainly this —
saving faith is
faith with a sense of need and personal application.
·
THE EVIDENCES THAT SAUL HAD RECEIVED A DIVINE
REVELATION.
Ø
Changed inward
life: “Behold, he prayeth!”
Ø
Changed outward
conduct. Compare Saul keeping the
clothes of them
that slew Stephen, and
preaching at
sought to destroy.
Has God been preparing you by
his providential orderings to receive His revelation. Maybe that revelation
comes through this message. If so, what
will your response
to it be?
7 “And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless,
hearing a
voice, but seeing
no man.” That journeyed for which journeyed, Authorized
Version; the voice for a voice, Authorized Version; beholding for seeing,
Authorized Version. Speechless;
ἐννεοί (or rather ἐνεοί - eneoi – speechless;
dumb; dumbfounded)
is found nowhere else in the New Testament, but is
not
uncommon in the Septuagint
(e.g. Isaiah 56:10) and in classical Greek. Here it
means speechless
from terror, struck dumb. The description here given by
Luke seems to be contradictory in two particulars to Paul’s
own account in
chapters 22:9 and
26:14.
“stood speechless;” but in ch.
26:14 they were “all fallen to the
earth.” Here
they “hear the voice,” but in ch. 22:9 they “heard
not the voice of Him that spake.”
It is obvious, however, that in such descriptions all depends upon the particular
moment of the transaction described which happens to be uppermost in the mind
of the speaker or writer
at the time, and the particular purpose in relation to which
he is giving the
description. Thus at one moment the spectators might be
standing dumfounded, and at the next they might be
prostrate on the
ground, or vice versa. Either description of their
attitude would be a true
one, though not true with regard to the same moment. Again,
if the
purpose of the speaker was to affirm that the whole company
were
conscious of both the vision and the sound of a voice
speaking, but that
only Saul saw the Divine Speaker, the description “hearing
the voice, but
beholding no man”
would be the natural one. Whereas, if the purpose was
to express that Saul alone heard the words spoken to him by
the Lord, the
description of his companions, “They saw indeed the light… but
they heard
not the voice of him that spake
to me,” would be equally natural.
8 “And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were
opened, he
saw no man: but
they led him by the hand, and brought him into
Nothing for no man,
Authorized Version and Textus Receptus;
and for but,
Authorized Version. Nothing
(οὐδὲ - oude – no man for οὐδένα [nothing]).
So the best manuscripts and editions The idea is, not like that in Matthew 17:8
that when he opened his eyes the person seen in vision had disappeared, but
simply that his eyesight was gone, “for the glory
of that light,” and he could see
nothing, but had to be led like a blind man (see ch.
22:11).
9 “And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat
nor drink.”
Did neither for neither did, Authorized
Version. The same reason, we may
venture to think, which caused the interposition of three
days’ blindness
between Saul’s conversion and his baptism, led Saul himself
to pass those
days in a voluntary self-abasement. His sin:
had
been very great. These three days of blindness and of fasting were therefore
a fitting preparation for the grace of forgiveness about to be so freely and fully
given to him (I Timothy 1:12-16). What
thoughts must have passed
through Saul’s mind during those three days! Before passing
on, it may be
well to observe that it is to this appearance to him of
Jesus Christ that
Paul undoubtedly refers when he says (I Corinthians 9:1), “Have
not I
seen Jesus Christ?”
and again (Ibid. ch.15:8), “Last
of all, He was
seen of me also,”
where he puts this appearance of Jesus to himself on a
par with those to Peter and James and the other apostles,
which made them
competent witnesses of the resurrection of Christ. And so
in v. 17 of this
chapter Ananias says, “The Lord Jesus which was seen by thee”
(ὁ ὀφθείς
σοι –
ho
ophtheis soi – the
one being seen to you); and Barnabas (v.
27), when he
brought Saul to the apostles, related “how he had seen the Lord in the
way.”
And in ch. 22:14 Ananias says, “God hath appointed thee to see the Righteous
One.” Moreover
the description in v. 7 of Saul’s fellow-travelers, that they
“saw no man,” implies, by contrast, that Saul did. The reticence of both
Paul
and Luke as to what he saw, and what was the appearance of
the Lord Jesus,
seems to arise from profound reverence and awe, such as
Paul speaks
of in II Corinthians 12:4. It may be also worth remarking
how this
appearance of Christ was deferred till he was quite close
to
according to one tradition only a quarter of a mile from
the gates, but
according to Porter, whom Farrar and Lewin follow, at a
distance of about
ten miles, at a village called Caueab.
So the intervention of the angel by
which Isaac’s life was spared was not till Abraham had the
knife in his hand
to slay his son; and Peter’s prison doors were opened not
till the very night
before he was to have been brought forth to death. Faith and patience are
thus strengthened, and
God’s intervention is more marked.
Saul on His Way to
monster. It resembles the idea
of the fearful dragon-monster, which
breathes forth smoke and flame,
and threatens to devour the sun and moon
and stars. Saul is inspired
by a murderous feeling against the disciples of
Christ. He himself afterwards recognized that to persecute them was
to
persecute Him (I Timothy 1:13). Zeal
for God without knowledge is
another of his own descriptions
of his state of mind (Romans 10:2). It
leads directly to the devilish
love of destruction (John 8:44). We can
distinguish pure from carnal
zeal only by the effects: the one impels us to
build up, the other to destroy;
the one to save men’s lives, the other to
slay, and making a solitude to
call it peace. But there are deep problems in
the life of mind. Never is a man
madly irritated against an opinion, violent
against a cause or a person, but
it is a symptom of a struggle within.
The
man is really at war
with himself. A conviction is
reluctantly forcing its way
upon him; he feels the goads of
conscience, and vents his resentment upon
objects outside of himself.
accompaniments of the
revelation. They are:
Ø
Outward. A light out of heaven like lightning plays around the
persecutor. He falls to the
earth like a thunder-struck man. In this position
the impressions of the ear come
in to enhance those of the eye. A voice is
heard calling him by name: “Saul,
Saul, why dost thou persecute me?”
Ø
Inward. Saul has no difficulty in putting these things together and
drawing the true inference from
them. “Who art thou, Lord?” betrays his
suspicion, perhaps his certainty,
that the voice is that of the crucified One,
against whose might he has been
striving. And the voice returns, “I am
Jesus whom thou persecutest.” Then
follows the direction to go into
the inward revelation are so
closely interwoven, it is difficult to separate
the one from the other, and
unnecessary to do so. But the point to fix
attention upon is this — that
revelation is always in the soul. How the new
truth comes to us is not of so
much importance as what permanent deposit
it leaves behind it. “It
pleased God to reveal His Son in me,” (Galatians
1:16) The true mystery and wonder lie in the soul;
all else is superficial
and subsidiary compared with
that. By what passes within we may
interpret what passes without,
but not vice versa. This scene is far
more impressive and sheds a
clear light on the conflicts of our own
being, if we see in it a man cast
down by the sudden splendor and
terror of a conviction against
which he had long been struggling.
It is said that we never
understand a truth until we have striven
against it. He whom we have
battled against as a deadly foe becomes
our lifelong master when we are
once fairly defeated at his hands.
Ø Here was a personal appearance of Jesus. Jesus lives! This is the
thought which
comforts his friends, and strikes terror into his foes. “I am
he
that is, and was, and is to come.”
“I am the living one!”
(Revelation
1:4, 18). Never
was this revelation of the living Christ forgotten by Saul.
It afterwards
became a main subject of his preaching, as it was the core
of his creed. The
living Christ is, indeed, the expression to us of the
living and
loving personality of God, of the will to save and to redeem
evermore.
Ø It was an appearance of Jesus in glory. The splendor and terror which
surround Him
bespeak His sovereign might. “Why dost thou persecute
me?” It is vain as well as wrong to contend
against One to whose
holiness and
majesty the conscience bears its unerring witness. Saul
seemed to think
that he was wrestling against flesh and blood when he
harried those
defenseless Christians; and that by weapons of flesh and
blood
Christianity might be overcome. But behold the majestic figure
of One who
comes with clouds. To offer Him the show
of violence is
the extreme of
irreverence and of folly. Never was this lesson forgotten.
Our sins
against our fellow-Christians are sins against Christ. We insult
the
love that suffered for us, and the majesty that rules and judges us.
Ø Yet it was a revelation of the glorified humanity of Jesus. Saul saw Him
and heard Him
speak (v. 17; ch. 26:15). The Redeemer glorifies the
human
form and nature
which He wore on earth. Here lay a seed of Paul’s
teaching on the
spiritual body which glorified saints are to wear. Earth and
heaven, the
seen and the unseen world, are for ever joined and reconciled
in the body in
which He lived, suffered, rose, and reigns.
Ø
It was a revelation of exquisite Divine
love and grace.
o
Towards
the persecuted. Their
sorrows are the sorrows of Jesus. He
makes their
sufferings His own (Matthew 25:45). His exaltation and
glory do not
lift Him out of their reach. He reigns to throw the aegis
(shield) of His
providence and protection over the defenseless flock
of His little
ones. He is the Head, and all the members are in vital
union with Him,
and receive from the fullness of His life.
o
Towards
the persecutor. Sin
in its extreme of violence and rebellion is
here
overthrown, and the weapons struck from the hands of the rebel —
not by the
tyrant’s force, but by the gentleness of Divine love. “Where
sin
had abounded, grace did much more abound” (Romans 5:20).
Tis
hard to kick against such goads. Condemnation hardens the
rebel in his opposition; gentleness melts his heart and converts him
into an ally
and a friend. “O Galilean, thou hast conquered!”
The
conversion of
Saul is a type of the whole spirit and method of the
gospel. Unlike
the kingdoms of this world, which rest on force and
must repel
violence by violence, it rests on the negation of force,
the eternal
affirmation of love. It is strong in its weakness,
and
converts foes
into friends by gaining the victory over the
intelligence
and the conscience.
The Sign from Heaven (vs. 1-9)
There was a need at that time for someone to take the
gospel forth to challenge the
whole world. The hour
was there; but where was the man? Peculiar qualifications
were necessary — intellect; culture; burning zeal; personal
experience of the power
of Christ. The
challenge was met when Saul, on the road to
Christians was struck down by a supernatural blow from
heaven. Jesus did not fight
with carnal weapons but smote Saul’s heart and consciene with a voice and
“light
out of heaven.”
The manner of Saul’s conversion was a preparation of his
soul for the part he
was to take in the Church’s work. It was greatly
independent of human
agency (cf. Augustine; Luther). It was a miracle which to
him became the
moral basis of all other miracles. It enabled him to say, “I
have seen the
Lord Christ;” and
gave him at once an apostolic position.
The overwhelming nature of the evidence and the deep
spiritual work of
those few days prepared such a mind as Paul’s for grappling
with the
mysteries of faith. The eyes were shut that they might be
opened the more
clearly to spiritual realities. It was especially necessary
that Saul should
begin his new life feeling that Jesus was able to do all
things, that He was
revealing His Divine kingdom in the earth.
There was a wonderful change wrought by the Spirit on Saul:
the persecutor
turned into the foremost apostle. He was a gift to the Church and to the world.
Think of what Paul has been to those who came after him.
Ø
There is a gate of
grace close by the gate of sin. Paul was going to
Ø
The new world may be
entered blindfold, yet if we do what the Lord
tells us to do our eyes
will be opened at last.
Conversion (vs. 1-9)
We have here an instance and a picture of conversion — of a
human soul
pursuing the wrong course, being arrested by the Divine
hand, and
submitting itself willingly to the rule of Christ.
was moving with the whole force
of his strong and ardent nature in the
direction of active persecution
of the friends of Christ (vs. 1, 2, 5). Sin
sometimes takes this special
form now. More often it takes the shape of:
Ø
guilty indulgence, or
Ø
utter worldliness, or
Ø
confirmed unbelief and
rejection of the truth, or
Ø
indecision and procrastination.
But whatever particular form it
takes, its essential nature is this — that the
soul which was
created to love, honor, and please God
is pursuing another
and an opposite path; it is found
in highways or byways of evil. It is not
with God, with Christ, but
against Him (Matthew 12:30). It itself is not
in active sympathy with Him,
rejoicing in Him, delighting in His truth and
happy in His service; and all
the influences, both those which (as in the case
of Saul at this time) are the
direct result of conscious effort, and those
which flow spontaneously and
unconsciously from the life, are hostile to
His truth and to His kingdom.
that he was “apprehended
of Christ Jesus.” Christ laid hold upon him
as he was going on his guilty
way, arrested him in his own name, and
charged him to turn round and
pursue another and a better course. The
Savior’s interposition in his
case was unusually sudden, and it was
exceedingly striking in its form
(see vs. 3-5). It is seldom that the hand of
the heavenly Lord is laid so manifestly,
so powerfully, on the human heart.
Yet it is being continually laid
upon us, and we now are being arrested by
Him, with effectual power in
redeeming love.
Ø Christ’s arrest of us is sometimes sudden,
but more often gradual.
Sometimes a man
who has been proceeding far in some way of folly and of
sin is
instantly convinced that he is guilty and foolish; in an hour, in a
moment, the truth of God flashes into his soul and
lights up the dark depths
within,
and it shines upon and illumines the dreary and fatal path before
him,
and he stops and turns. More frequently the Lord of love and power
works gradually
in the heart; by degrees He insinuates His heavenly truth,
and gradually
makes the soul to see and to feel that the way of selfishness
and of sin is a
path which must no longer be pursued, from which it must
escape for its
life. (Genesis 19:17)
Ø The Divine arrest is sometimes by
extraordinary but usually by ordinary
means.
Occasionally God comes in power to the human soul, by some
vision of the
night or of the day, or by some very remarkable ordering of
His providence,
by some experience which is shared by no other or by a
very few; but
commonly the hand of His renewing power is laid upon us by
ordinary means,
by the gracious influences of a Christian home, by the
appeals of the
Christian minister or teacher, by the sickness which brings
DEATH
AND JUDGMENT INTO FULL VIEW, or by the loss which
compels us to
feel that we do need and must secure a Divine Friend who
can succor and
console in the drear and lonely hour of life.
result of feeling the pressure
of the Divine hand may be, perhaps generally
is, spiritual agitations. We
may be “trembling and astonished” (v. 6), or,
if not moved so powerfully, we
shall be agitated, earnestly concerned,
exceedingly solicitous; we shall
be as those thoroughly awakened who have
been partially asleep, our spiritual faculty of inquiry will be called into
fullest exercise. But the main and all-important result is spiritual
submission — readiness and eagerness to accept the rule of Christ. The
question of Saul will be the
question of our heart, now reduced to loyalty
and self-surrender, “Lord,
what wilt thou have me to do?” Christ will tell
us that He wants us:
Ø
to trust Him,
Ø
to follow Him, and
Ø
to work for Him.
And these three things we shall
gladly do. But the victory is gained, the one
supreme step is taken, death is
left behind, and the gates of life are before us,
when, responding to His merciful
and mighty touch, we submit ourselves to
His sovereign will, when we turn
round in spirit and say, “Lord, what wilt
thou have me to do?”
Blind Eyes, Open Soul (vs. 8-9)
Attention is invited to what is suggested by the
interesting fact that, after
seeing the vision, Saul remained blind, and so absorbed in
thought as to be
wholly indifferent to food, for three days. That there are
miraculous
features in the circumstances attending Saul’s conversion
can hardly be
denied, but some incline to exaggerate the miraculous
features, while
others put them under too severe limitations. We need not
assume a
miraculous blindness, or so serious a matter as a lightning
stroke. The
phenomena rather suggest a sunstroke of a severe but
temporary character.
In the Divine order this was arranged to give the surprised
and humbled
man an opportunity for quietness and loneliness, that he
might carry on,
and carry out to a conclusion, the conflict which had been
begun by
hearing the voice of Him whom he had called the Nazarene
impostor
speaking from heaven, and speaking words of power and
command to him.
And it was also designed as a continuing physical effect
which would
assure Saul of the reality of his heavenly vision. In
endeavoring to estimate
the thoughts of Saul’s time of blindness, consider that:
belonging to the well-to-do
classes. Special knowledge, as trained in the
best Jewish schools; especially
as having a kind of collegiate culture, as a
Pharisee, in the highly esteemed
wide knowledge of both Holy
Scripture and rabbinical tradition, which
must have included the grounds
for expecting the coming Messiah the
Prince. Saul would not need even
his Bible in those lonely hours, for
memory brought abundant subjects
of thought. Thus, the advantage of
early teaching of
God’s Word. Thus we become prepared to
make the best
of the sudden occasions of life.
key was this — the Messiah has come. He was Jesus of
risen, living,
exalted.
APPLICATION OF THIS KEY.
It had to explain the prophecy that
Messiah should be born at
Bethlehem, and be of the lineage of David. It
must explain the figures of the
King and Conqueror under which Messiah
had been presented. Saul must
think over the grounds on which his
prejudiced opposition had
rested, and over all that was involved in the
proved fact that Jesus was risen
from the dead and had won God’s
acceptance. For with his eyes
blinded, and the ordinary cravings of his
body dead, Saul saw with his soul — spiritual things were gaining
clearness. He was smitten with conviction; and utilized
these quiet times
to full decision
and consecration. So much good work
begun in souls is lost, proving but as” morning cloud and early dew,” for want
of quiet meditative
times following upon convictions
and impressions. Seasons of loneliness, meditation, and prayer are as truly
needed for newly awakened souls, as
shady, covered times for slips,
or plants, newly potted, in order that they
may get safely rooted. God provided this blind season for the
awakened
and humbled Saul.
The Sequestrated Soul (v. 9)
In the wonders of the conversion of Saul we are greatly
impressed with the
close regard paid to the needs of human nature. It is not
all miracle, nor
must it be so viewed. Amazing is the grace of what cannot
be construed as
anything less than superhuman intervention. An adoring
surprise is
certainly not diminished when we notice how that
intervention condescends
so soon, so readily, to make itself at home with the
harmonies of human
nature. It does not affect to disdain them, nor does it
dispense with them,
because of the majesty of its own omnipotence, but rather
emphatically
“condescends to the low estate of men.” For the
experience of intense
excitement through which Saul had just passed is sure, upon
the reckonings
of human nature by itself, to be decisive of his future. If
it do not make
him, it will most surely undo him for ever. He may “be
exalted above
measure” (II
Corinthians 12:7) or he may be depressed “above measure.” Either
of these two extremes is a constant result in human life of
whatever might come
nearest to such excitement and impression as those here
described. In the presence
of a position so critical, it does not follow that nature
is entirely helpless
nor that miracles must be implored. In succeeding degrees
repose, silence,
even darkness will be prescribed, and we shall be told
unerringly that life or
death is the alternative issue of attending upon such
prescription or
neglecting it. And this is a principle observed in the
marvels of the
conversion of Saul. That which may be viewed as proof of
intervention
superhuman does its short, sharp work, to be followed by
the immediate
resumption of methods which human wisdom and human
experience would
dictate. The experience of Saul here narrated may be
regarded as it was:
No doubt the exceeding
brightness of the “light that shined
about him from
heaven” may be credited with a natural
power to infer the
blinding of his eyes. But the
same light “fell round about them that
journeyed with” Saul, and they saw that light (see the accounts in chapters
22 and 26.), and yet it had no
blinding effect upon them — at all events no
effect of the kind lasting three
days. In fact, for Saul it was but the signal of
the light that flashed upon the inner
eye that belonged to him. But it is of God,
and it is not below the Spirit
of God to assert and to prove the completest
mastery over man — body, soul,
and spirit. And the continued loss of sight
and the continuous fast are
justly regarded as the result of the deep mental,
spiritual impression now made on
Saul. That impression was of the nature
of:
Ø
The shock of
inordinate surprise. Not an idea, not a fear, not the vaguest
surmise had come near the strong
horseman of such an arresting check.
Ø
The shock of
overmatched force. The weak and tender and gentle will
yield and bend. It is a matter
of breaking to others, and if the heart break
not, who can imagine the strain? That heart will be
rocked to its
foundation.
Ø
The shock of a flood
of mental conviction, and so far forth illumination,
breaking in upon an estranged
nature and terrifying by the dark shadows
it casts proportioned to its own
luster.
Ø
The shock of the rapid
rising of the tides of penitential grief, and grief
that
energetically stirs up repentance.
Ø
The shock of
compunction for ingratitude and all the past hostility of a
hating heart when mercy began to
dawn and love began to be born.
Ø
The shock of one mere
glimpse through the merest chink of the
sepulchral soul into the outer
and upper and most inspiring light.
Ø
The shock of a real
change. What busy but amazed, aching, anguished
tumult within that soul! And who
shall stay bodily sense and bodily
appetite from resigning and
retreating from that scene and confessing
themselves merely the
subordinate and temporary?
DEEPER IMPRESSION AND FOR LASTING RESULT. Very strong
impressions, if made very
rapidly, may very rapidly pass away. Explain it as
we may or leave it unexplained,
the fact is too well ascertained. How very
vivid sometimes the dream that
visits us! how exceedingly difficult to
throw it off for the first
minutes of waking! but after those few first
minutes are past, no mist
climbed the mountain-side, nor morning cloud the
heaven, quicker to vanish than
that dream and its impression vanish. And
so it is evident that everything
is not necessarily gained or surely gained
when vivid effects, ay, effects
howsoever vivid, are gained.
Ø Vivid impression needs the staying effect
of reflection.
Ø Vivid impressions which are also of the
most startling personal character
need the
conciliating influences of some calm familiarity with them. They
must be faced, must
be looked at so that they may be recognized again,
must be granted
the opportunity of revealing their lovely aspects as well
as their bright
or powerful aspects.
Ø The vivid impressions that belong to a
heart touched by the Spirit of
God
particularly demand to dwell a while with that Spirit, and dwell as
though quite alone
with Him:
o
that He
may be honored;
o
that He
may work His work amid the absorbed and
the undivided,
undistracted
attention of that human heart. In
what ineffable
communion
with the Father supreme, with the Savior and Mediator
Jesus,
and with eternal realities, will the Spirit then engage the
yielding
heart! It is not that
the Spirit cannot work apace, but, as in
everything
else, it is that man cannot — he is slow, slow indeed, as
compared with
that Spirit’s swift power.
o
Strong
convictions do none the less need the confirming effect of
deliberate
resolution, of some contributing and very conscious effort
on our own
side.
o
The
most right resolutions need that we summon our whole self, after
carefully “counting
the cost,” to prove moral courage and spiritual
vigor by taking
some practical step. It is Jesus Himself who lays the
stress on “counting
the cost,” for those who would be His followers,
do His work, “enter the
And to changed
objects of life, methods of life, and society in life,
such as those
to which Saul — ay, to which any true convert — is
called, needs
it not the entrance by unmistakable, confessed self-
renunciation?
Of the honesty and thoroughness of such self-
renunciation it
is at all events no feeble symbol when sense and
appetite resign
their grip, generally so tyrannical. And now in no
parable, but in
most literal truth, Saul is befriended by Divine
forethought and
care. The strong man is taken out of his own
keeping. When
he was his old self, like Peter, he had indeed
“girded
himself and walked whither he would;” (John 21:18)
but now he is
too glad to “stretch forth his hand, and that another
should gird
him” and lead him whither he had never, never thought
of going. It
was the completing so far of God’s great love to him,
and Jesus’
great compassion toward him. He is delivered, fairly
delivered from
himself for three days. He sees not, eats not, drinks
not. Neither
does he go out to this present world by the beautiful
gate of the eye,
nor does the support of the outer world come so
much as to his
body. He is sequestered with the
Spirit, who
reveals
to him the errors of the past and something of the destiny
of
the future; who makes him to know Jesus and himself — the
fullness
and grace of the one, the poverty and insufficiency of the
other. The plain facts for Saul
again and again speak with lessons
most needed for
us and for all
time. They suggest to
us what meditation
we need, what
devotion, what
divorce from sight
and from appetite
which may so
seduce the soul, what
grateful and close communion
with
God, obedience to the Spirit, and trust in the Savior, and how
the safest augury
for the future is that we do break
with the past.
Wonderful and
fascinating to imagination Saul’s “retreat” of
three days. To
the things that then transpired, however, we need
not be and
ought not to be entire strangers. We may learn what
Saul learned if we
will go where he learned them, and may ere
long say for
ourselves:
“There if
thy Spirit touch the soul
And grace her mean abode,
Oh, with
what peace and joy and love
She communes with her God!”
10 “And there was a certain disciple at
to him said the
Lord in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am
here, Lord.” Now for and,
Authorized Version; and the Lord said unto him
for and to him
said the Lord, Authorized Version. Behold,
I am here. The regular
Hebrew answer (Genesis
22:1; I Samuel 3:4, 6, 8, etc.).
11 “And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street
which is
called Straight,
and enquire in the house of Judas for one called
Saul, of
named for called, Authorized
Version; a man of
Version. The
street; ῤύμη – rhumae - lane, usually the narrower lanes in a town as
distinguished from the πλατεῖαι – plateiai - or wide streets. So Luke 14:21,
“The streets and lanes of the city,” and the Septuagint in
Isaiah 15:3, couple
πλατεῖαι (streets) and ρύμαι - rhumai – alleyways (Septuagint). Here,
however,
the term applies to the principal street of the city, which
runs quite straight
from the east to the west gate, and is a mile long. It
still exists, and is called
the
the apostolic age, a hundred feet wide, with colonnades
separating the two
footways on the side from the central road, and adorned
with a triumphal arch,
it is contracted into a narrow mean passage.
The Sight that Jesus Notes (v. 11)
These words, spoken by Jesus Himself from heaven to one
disciple of His
and about another, the very youngest of all, single
out a fact, and point to
it as a sight worthy to be observed. The fact is in itself
a very simple one, in
the judgment of many a very ordinary one, in the unheeding
judgment of
most men an exceedingly uninteresting and unimportant one.
Nor would it
be easy to find a more clearly outlined illustration of the
different estimate
of earth and heaven, of Jesus and of erring man, than that
found here. Jesus
points to the sight of a man on his knees as one worthy to
be beheld — to
the fact of a man praying as one to engage attention, deep
regard, and
practically altered conduct on the part of his fellow-men. This is the
simplest statement of the history that is before us. And it may be objected
that, though it be a true statement so far, it is true only
in this instance, or,
if not only, yet that it is to such a degree exceptionally
true here, that it
may not be drawn into a
precedent. But the burden of proof of
such a
position will fall upon those who shall hesitate to admit
that one and the
same essential element of noteworthiness attaches to the
same situation,
the same spectacle, wherever it presents itself. This,
then, which was a
spectacle to the Lord Jesus, and of which He speaks to His
disciples in that
very light, may well interest the gaze and devout thought
of all generations
— “Behold, he prayeth!”
to the question, “WHAT IS IT TO PRAY?” since Jesus gives
such
prominence to the act.
Ø It is the first sign of some great change.
It betrays something novel that
has been at
work, unseen but not unfelt. It portends much to come.
Ø it is itself the first movement of
spiritual life, the new-born infant’s trial
of the
spiritual lungs, and first lifting of them up and first breathing of
spiritual air,
the first voice of the “babe
in Christ.”
Ø Its form may be a single word, a simplest
sentence; one gentlest sigh
may bear it up
all the way to heaven, one passionate cry may speed it up;
one upward
glance of the eye may reveal it to that benignant eye which is
ever bended
down in compassion on us (“The eyes of the Lord are upon
the
righteous and His ears are open unto their cry.” Psalm 34:15);
one big solitary
tear, that drops into the earth and can no more be
gathered up,
will be “counted” for it by Him who doth “count all our tears.”
(Psalm 56:8)
Ø The time it takes may be a moment, the
twinkling of an eye, or it may be
the exercise of
agonized hours.
STATE?” The man who
prays is the man who has come into a certain new
state towards God — a state that
makes him desire also to come in a very
new attitude
into His presence.
Ø It is the state of one who has discovered a
need of a kind, a depth, an
amount,
and an urgency he had never dreamed of before.
Ø It is the state of one who has become
ready and anxious to make a
thorough
confession. Pride has gone. Self-satisfaction has gone. Trust in
the world’s
short resources has gone. Blindness and delusion are dissipated.
Ø It is the state of one who has been shaken
by conviction of sin. The first
prayer is not
for mercies temporal, but for mercy — the mercy that a
creature wants
who has been growing up a long time, but not growing up
in either
perfect or even conscious relations with his Creator-Father.
Conviction is
the grandest interpreting exposition of the prophet’s dictum,
“Be
sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23).
Ø It is the state of one who, let him be
what he may, let him have been,
have done, what
he may, toward God, or toward man, or toward his own
heart and
conscience, has been visited by some glimmering ray of light, and
has felt the
warmth of some feeble flame of hope. Real prayer and absolute
despair, real
prayer and utter darkness, never go together. So prayer is
the
pulse of vitality. Its feeblest expression is the radiation of the spark of
God’s
light, life, love, not
extinct.
Ø It is the case of one long sore sick, for
whom the crisis of fatal danger is
past, the
disease stayed, and on whom, with more than the loudest
solicitude of
the tenderest parent, the Lord Jesus looks down and
vouchsafes to
point out the blessed symptoms, saying, “Behold, he
prayeth!”
He is a Jew, well taught,
of pious forefathers, of strict Pharisee
school, full of earnestness,
free from immorality, given to striving for
superiority and profiting above
his equals, and given to saying prayers. So
that, whatever a certain kind of
light and moral character and virtue might
avail, he had the benefit of
them. On the other hand, “the light that was in
him was darkness;” his zeal was bigotry; his high character was to the scale
of human measurement only; he
had never touched deep ground; he was a
sinner and didn’t know it; he
persecuted “saints” and didn’t know it; he
kept the raiment, and consented
to the stoning, of them that stoned
Stephen, and didn’t know what he
was doing or what they were doing, —
till now, in the full career of
a very successful “breathing out of
threatenings and slaughters,”
he is flung to the ground, and becomes as one
stunned. Yet spoken to, he knows
the Lord, and in a moment owns his
rightful Master by word. The
prayers of the crucified Jesus, and of the first
martyr Stephen “Lord,
lay not this sin to their charge;” “Father, forgive
them; for they
know not what they do” — are answered;
and he who was
just now breathing out those threatenings and slaughters, now breathes the
deep, earnest, pleading accents
of prayer. And there is no mistake,
deception, nor unconscious
delusion; for he who knew all says, and hushes
every doubt and objection while
he says it, “Behold, he prayeth!”
Ø To the risen Jesus, at all events, no real
surprise could be possible. Only
a God’s wonder
— whatever that may be — might be understood here, if
the charmed
words had been words of soliloquy. But they are not words of
soliloquy. They
are condescendingly spoken in order to disarm the very
faithlessness
of human distrust, which, nevertheless, insisted on expressing
itself. Jesus
calls attention to what may teach us a large lesson of liberality,
of charity, but
above all of trust in the force victorious and “more than
conquering”
of His gospel and His
Name.
Ø
Jesus
calls attention to what we may think little of, and think amiss
therein. Many
are the things we think little of little sins, to wit-of which He
thinks much, to
hate them. Many are the things we think little of — little
kindnesses,
little cups of cold water, to wit — of which He thinks much, to
love them. And
much — oh, how much! — will waken our astonished
attention one
day, soon to come, that moves us with not a ripple of either
surprise or
interest now. Still, he that
hath ears to hear may hear now that
heavenly “Behold!” It speaks in most striking contrast to
the “Lo! here,”
and “Lo!
there,” of earth and men.
Ø Jesus says, “Behold!” because He
would call attention to a change that
was a pattern
miracle of His power and grace. He calls attention to it, not
as unique, but
as a model instance. Such a character revolutionized! Such a
life and force
of life, and combined elements of life, and characteristics not
all unmingled
bad, changed! What, then, shall not Christ and the
Spirit be
able to do?
Twenty centuries have justified that “Behold!” in both these
aspects — as
pointing out a model conversion in Saul’s conversion, and as
vindicating it
as but the first of an amazing
and glorious series.
Ø Jesus, in saying “Behold!” teaches us
where to look, and so also where
not to look, in ourselves for evidence of real
change. All objection, all
inquisition,
all human dogma, all ecclesiastical domination and forging of
creed and
formula and fetters, — perish they all before the decisive
“Behold!” of Jesus — “Behold, he prayeth!”
Before this sight human
presumption may
well be silenced, as before it “Satan trembles.” In
conclusion,
still, alas! for once that the gracious finger points while the
gracious lip
says, “Behold, he prayeth!” how often must it be said,
“Behold, he prayeth
not”! Though there be
every reason to pray, every
encouragement
to pray, how many pray not!, Yet no monarch on the most
powerful and
majestic throne, and wielding the mightiest sway, is in very
deed to compare
for one moment with the man whose attitude is on his
knees before
God. Who can describe the new cheerful readiness with which
in due time
that man regains his feet? Though Saul
had labored abundantly under the
wrong master, after
that praying he “labored more
abundantly,
yet
not he,
but — the grace of God that was in him,” (I Corinthians 15:10)
and in him
through that praying.
12 “And hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in,
and
putting his hand
on him, that he might receive his sight.”
He hath seen for hath
seen in a vision, Authorized Version and Textus Receptus;
laying his hands for putting
his hand, Authorized Version and Textus Receptus.
A Spiritual Wonder (v. 12)
“Behold, he prayeth!” “Behold!” The Church, the world, invited to look on
the sight. The enemy, the Pharisee, the warrior, behold his
hands clasped in
prayer, countenance bathed in tears, voice uttering
petitions. Look into
that house of Judas; it might have been filled with
mourning; it is the scene
of a spiritual victory. We can look back and look forward; what he was,
what he will be.
There was great mercy in the blinding stroke, shutting Saul up
in his own thoughts. His cry was, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to
do?”
Ø In the mind. Thoughts of
Jesus. Acceptance of Messiahship. Overthrow
of legalism.
Satisfaction of understanding in the Divine authority
manifested.
Exaltation of
“What think ye of Christ?”
Ø In the heart. The
persecutor penetrated with the feeling of Divine love.
The perverse
will, kicking against conscience, against the reproach which
like a goad was
left by the remembrance of Stephen’s death. Personal sense
of sin the root
of a true conversion. “I am the man.”
Ø In the conduct. Obedience
to the heavenly vision. Tractable as a child;
led by the
Spirit. The prayer recounts that his face was turned towards the
new way. Christianity not a
mere change of views or sentiments, but a
proclaimed rule
of life. Walk in the way. Obedience.
own future, yet that Peniel was the introduction of a prince of God to his
kingdom. What a step from the
chamber in Judas’s house at
Ø
Prayer the preparation for activity. All great spiritual leaders do this
before they have gone down
into the battle-field. Jesus set the
example
in the mountain solitude!
Ø
Prayer the lifting up of the fallen. Through:
o
peace
with God.
o
reopened
eyes.
o
a
blotted-out past.
o
the
goads of conscience exchanged for the light of a new life,
o
the
message of a reconciled Father,
o
the
commission of the heavenly King to His chosen ambassadors.
Ø
Prayer the pledge of fellowship. He prayeth; go and pray with
him.
Private prayer and public prayer
are closely connected together.
Religion is not a secret thing. “Behold!”
We should take knowledge
of the state of souls around us.
Those that feel prompted to secret
prayer should welcome the visit
of the Christian brother, and the
appeal to take the Name of Christ upon them, and the place which
is appointed us
both in the fellowship and work of the Church.
13 “Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this
man,
how much evil he
hath done to thy saints at
Authorized Version; from many for by many, Authorized
Version; did for hath
done, Authorized
Version. Ananias’s answer shows his profound astonishment,
mixed with doubt and misgiving, at the commission given to
him. It shows, too,
how the news of Saul’s commission had preceded him, and
caused terror
among the disciples at
dreaded enemy would be the
channel of God’s richest blessings to His
Church throughout all ages until THE COMING OF CHRIST!
How empty
our fears often are! How ignorant are we where our chief good
lies hid! But God knows. Let us trust HIM!
14 “And here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind
all that call
on thy name.” Upon for on, Authorized
Version. That call upon thy name.
So also v. 21; Romans
10:12-13; I Corinthians 1:2; and above, ch.
7:59,
this same phrase describes the believer who makes his
prayer to the Lord
Jesus and trusts in His Name for salvation.
15 “But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen
vessel
unto me, to bear
my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the
children of
To bear my name
before the Gentiles (see ch. 22:21; 26:17-18; Romans
15:16;
Galatians 2:7-9, etc.) and kings (chapters
25 and 26; II Timothy 4:16-17, with
reference to Nero), and
the children of
the children of
Gentiles. But we know that even Paul’s practice was
to preach Christ to the Jews
first, in every city where there were Jews.
God’s
Take the single sentence, “He is a chosen vessel unto me;” literally, “a
vessel of election.” Illustrate by the apostle’s own figure
of the “potter
having power over the clay,” and refer to prophetic
illustrations taken from
the potter’s wheel and art. Here, however, the meaning of
“vessel” may
rather be “instrument,” or “tool.” In every age God has called forth special
workers, fitted for the occasions; “with the hour always comes the man.”
In the ordering of God’s providence, the time had come for
the extension
of Christianity to the Gentiles, and now we are directed to
Saul as God’s
chosen vessel, or instrument, for this work. From his case
may be
illustrated the following points concerning “God’s chosen
vessels:”
After showing how Saul was
being fitted by his earlier experiences, one can
find further illustration
in the earlier careers of Joseph, Moses, David, etc.
Our Lord’s secluded life at
view the wonderful ways in which
they have been prepared for the stern work
of their full manhood. The fact is so fully recognized as to have passed into a proverb, and we say, “The child is father to the man.” (William Wordsworth)
Then it follows that the wise
training of our children should include the
careful culture of any special gift or endowment of which
we may see indications.
man should find out what he
can do; he must wait on God to teach him the
time for the doing, and the
sphere in which his work is to be done. Saul
had yet to wait some time before
his life-sphere was pointed out to him.
But we need have no fear.
Willing servants are never left idle, and when
God’s work is ready He will call
to it the workmen He has prepared. A
North-country proverb is, “The
tools come to the hands of him who can
use them;” and God’s people can
tell strange stories of the gracious
orderings of providence that
brought their great life-work to their hands.
to a particular service carries
with it the assurance that sufficient grace for
the work will be
given. Fitness is not enough, if it
stand alone; it must be
followed up by daily grace for efficient working. Compare Moses willing to
go on to further journeys only
if the Lord would go with him; and the
Apostle Paul “able
to do all things through Him who strengthened him.”
(Philippians 4:13) We can always do what God calls us to do. We
are wrong,
as Moses, Jeremiah, and Jonah
were wrong, if we shrink back or flee from
the Lord’s work.
God’s chosen vessels are found
out by the Divine signs which accompany
their labor. There may be
temporary prejudice on account of their former
life, as in the case of Saul, or
on account of the particular form and feature
of their work; but if God
acknowledges a man’s service with His
benedictions, God’s people arc
usually ready to acknowledge it too. If in a
very strict sense some only can
be called “God’s chosen vessels,” in a large
and comforting sense the term
may be applied to all God’s people, for each
of whom he surely finds work and the grace needed for doing it
well.
The Choice of Perfect Forgivingness (v. 15)
Ananias demurs to the errand assigned. It was not
altogether unnatural that
he should do so. His hesitation, however, does not resemble
that of Moses.
And, in expressing the
grounds of it, he was only occupying by anticipation
the position which it would become necessary to occupy when
any and all
actual interposition of the great Head of the Church should
be withdrawn.
Then, as it is to this
day, it became among the most critical cares and the
most solemn responsibilities of the Church and of its
leaders, its “pastors
and elders,” to
consider what prudence may permit, and act as much with
the wisdom of the serpent as with the innocuousness of the
dove. The
hesitation of Ananias does not appear to be reproved, but
is plainly
overruled; and we are therein reminded still how:
CHOICE OF JESUS. The “things
that are highly esteemed among men”
are not only sometimes “held
in abomination in the sight of God,”
(Luke
16:15) but the things that are
with justice lightly “esteemed among men” are
taken up sometimes by God, that
He may in them magnify His transforming power.
Ø Reputation is an uncertain guide. It is even particularly so, perhaps it
may be said,
when it is a good reputation; for how “many that are first,
shall
be last”!
Ø The tyranny of reputation is not
for a moment recognized by Jesus. As
peremptorily as
He would bid the worst sinner depart from the error of his
way, as
lovingly as He would persuade the most disreputable to “sin
no
more,” so graciously does He receive
such also; and
let the censorious
world say what
it will, He discountenances the censoriousness by word, and
here
emphatically discountenances by deed, what might contain the germ
of the
principle. It is a thing to be much thought upon by the true disciples
of Christ. The world and A WORLDLY CHURCH aggravate the difficulty of the returning sinner. This is the opposite of the way of Jesus. Jesus helps a
man to recover his character; He helps his struggles
while he does so; He
shows him sympathy, and, “though he fall” many a time in the
struggle, graciously
watches him and
upholds him again and again that he be not
“utterly cast down for the Lord upholdeth him by His
hand.” (Psalm
37:24) It is a proverb that the world keeps the man down who is
down.
And when the
Church approaches anything of the like kind, it means to say
that it is only
in name the Church, and is drained miserably dry of the
Spirit.
FROM HIS CHOICE.
Ananias did not misstate anything, did not
exaggerate the case against
Saul, was not overridden by strange tales
untrue. But he did fear; he had
a nervous apprehension; he had not up to
that moment learned, what
probably he did at that moment learn, and from
that moment never forgot, the wonderful reach of the power of Christ. How
long it is before any of us
attain to the right conception of Jesus and His
heart and His hand! We still
think Him such as ourself (Psalm 50:21), He is
only something greater, greatly
greater; something better, and very much better. We need to see that He is divinely greater,
divinely better, and all that divine means.
Ø The antecedents of a man’s life may largely betoken
its real bent.
Ø They will largely have made his habits.
Ø
They will almost
inevitably color all his future way of viewing things.
But to these three things the
answer for Jesus is that He, ay, He alone can:
Ø
reverse bent,
Ø
undo habit, and
Ø
can give to see light
in God’s light (Psalm 36:9).
VITALITY FROM LIVELY MEMORY OF PAST INJURY BELONGS
TO JESUS. Genuinely to forgive is acknowledged to be one of the
highest
moral achievements of human
nature. Nevertheless, there are ascending
degrees even to this virtue; and
when some men are satisfied that they have
done their most and their best,
all that nature admits of or that God
demands, it must be allowed that
these men are but beginning their higher
flight. To forgive the bitterest
opponent in these senses — that you love
him again or for the first time,
as the case may be; that you sympathize
with him and accept his
sympathy; work with him and accept his work and
devotion — nay, select him
as your chief man, and set him forth and
forward as your champion; — is a
type of forgiveness rarely reproduced.
With sublimity of
ease JESUS
DOES THIS NOW! Not Peter, not John, not
James, but this wild enemy,
Saul, is the man He called and honored “to
bear
his Name before
the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of
sins shall not be remembered
against him forever. They are, then,
really
BLOTTED OUT! He is not forgiven, but put rather low down; forgiven,
but kept rather down, lest he
should not be fit to be quite trusted; forgiven,
but in deepest truth left still
a marked man. No; if he is marked it is for honor,
for renown, for
grace, and for the unfading crown of glory. In sight of this
proof of the perfection of
forgiveness that is with Jesus, we may well sing:
“Mighty
Lord, so high above us,
Loving Brother, all our own,
Who will
help us, who will love us,
Like to thee, who all hast known?
Who so
gentle to the sinners
As the soul that never fell?
Who so
strong to make us winners
Of the height He won so well?”
ONE OF THE ULTIMATE MYSTERIES OF HUMAN EXISTENCE
AND HUMAN RELATION TO GOD. When we ponder this subject, if we
side with the infidel, we
ridicule and at the same time we are putting
ourselves nowhere. If we side
with the reverent, we are in the depths too
deep for this. The choosing of
Jesus is mystery, unfathomable mystery for us.
Ø It is mystery because He gives no account
of it nor will be arraigned nor
questioned
concerning it.
Ø It is mystery, because not all our reason,
nor all our reverent study of the
oracles, nor
all our diligent search of history, nor all our scrutiny of human
will and
character, can trace the law of that choosing. It baffles us in reason
and in fact.
Its startling anomalies presented to our view in closest
juxtaposition,
its sudden appearance in the most unexpected place, and its
equally
conspicuous and impressive absence, speak the mystery of
sovereignty.
Ø It is mystery in the wonders which it
reveals of surpassing
condescension,
grace, and clinging love. While reason still stands afar off
in cold repulsion
and haughty distance, hearts draw near. And for its last
achievement it
works out this harmony for
all those, without one
exception,
who have become the objects of it; they adore the free grace
that has drawn
and brought them; they condemn in the same breath the
perverseness
and folly and guilt in themselves, which left them so long
outside.
16 “For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my
name’s sake.”
Many for great, Authorized
Version; Paul’s whole life was the fulfillment
of this word of Christ (see II
Corinthians 6:4-10; 11:23-27).
Jesus’ Far-Seeing Compassion Appearing in an
Unexpected Way
(v. 16)
That Saul, when now called Paul, did indeed suffer many and
great things
for Jesus’ “Name’s sake,” is most true. He knew
it when he suffered them;
he knew it also by anticipation (ch.
20:23; 21:11) — a kind of
knowledge that to many would be of the most harassing and
distressing
consequence; and he knew it as he looked back (II
Corinthians 11:23-31;
12:10), not indeed to murmur, nor to repent of having
exposed himself
to it, but, while glorying in the suffering, to testify how real it was. That,
therefore, of which Jesus tells Ananias that he will
forewarn Saul, did by all
the witness of history come to pass. But it is another question
why he is
forewarned of it, and why Jesus assures Ananias that he
shall be so
forewarned. Nor can it escape our notice that much
significance is intended
to lie in the statement as here introduced. Let us consider
this
announcement of Jesus:
objection of Ananias, by
suggesting to him:
Ø
That Christ did not
overlook, had not overlooked, the specialty of the
case.
Ø
That Christ would be
Himself answerable for the education of Saul for
his work, failing the
antecedents that Ananias supposed would have
been of more auspicious promise.
Ø
That that education
would not fail to be what, in its character and the
severity of its discipline,
would both:
o
attest the reality of
the change passed upon Saul and
o
confirm and deepen
that change.
Ø
Possibly Christ may,
in the mode of His reply, desire also very
condescendingly to still any
smallest germ of:
o
personal envy or
o
forwardness to suspicion lurking in the character of Ananias.
It is very certain that the
mischief of these two very things
unacknowledged and covered over
with finer words, has amounted to a total result of very great disaster during
the career of the Church, ever since the personal intervention of Jesus has
been absent. How often did Jesus in the days of His flesh stand by the sorry
sinner round whom
surged the murmur of the envious
multitude! But the half-stifled and cautious envy and suspicion of the wary individual
has often proved
itself a more cruel enemy to
souls, and must be a more offensive
obstacle, in the eyes of Jesus,
to His work making way in some poor
guilty but struggling soul.
Certain it is that:
“Since our dear
Lord in bliss reposed,
High above mortal
ken,”
His Church has, times without
number, made to pass through severest quarantine heartbroken volunteers for His
service. The effects have
been all deteriorating and
disastrous. They would have been ruinous
save for the still steady, if
invisible, rule and headship of Jesus Christ.
The Church (whether only so
named or so in deed and in truth),
mistaking duty and right, has
failed in such cases to note sufficiently
the Divine treatment as
here illustrated in the three days’ blindness
and fasting of Saul, succeeded by
the confidence and trust of the great Master, given immediately in the
kindliest and most unreserved
manner.
no time, but “go” at once to bear to Saul the
message, so far as the way
could be prepared for it by
human lips; and herein suggests to us to notice
certain relations of this
language to Saul.
Ø
Christ, having chosen
His servant, apprises him both faithfully and early
of what awaits him. No false,
nor tempting, nor too favorable gloss is put
by him on his own “most worthy”
service.
Ø
He apprises him also
of what is expected of him. If Jesus show to any
one, whether in the ways of
apostolic time or in the ways of time present,
“how great things
he shall suffer for His Name’s sake,” “how
great things” life and circumstance and earthly lot are likely to make him
“suffer,” “how great things” His divinest directest
call shall impose upon him to “suffer,” — it must be that He is addressing a
call to him that shall invoke all his heroism. It is very much as though
the condescending Jesus did here introduce the Christian hero into the possible
ranks of His own blessed Church. All must come of Him, all does surely
come of Him; but
if it be possible, something
shall be credited to the range of human virtue.
Manifestly Saul was a good
instance by which to set forth this. He had
been conspicuous; he had been a
hero of some sort; he had shown lavish
energy, which shall no longer be
sacrificed to lavish waste. Thus from
the first Jesus gives a tone to
certain of His servants — those, to wit,
who are of the sort to answer to
it readily and really. Life and labor and the success of real usefulness do
often largely own to original impulse
and early impression. The high-pitched
thought and purpose and feeling of youth and of first effort are rarely lost,
when they are genuine to begin with. They tell and count and swell to the echo
as year and period pass by. Nor can it be denied that many a true Christian
life falls under the condemnation of being a feeble and an unfruitful life,
because it was
not at the first appealed
to with power. It never got the idea of
trenchancy. And indecision — its
watchword — was snare and delusion
to it.
Ø
He apprises him of
what may be calculated upon, as acting like a certain
and safe check to both pride or
vanity and self-confidence. How many have fallen upon the very threshold of
what would have been a great spiritual career through one or both of these
things! And the pride ecclesiastical and
the self-confidence that “lords it over the faith” of
others are just two of the most
pronounced pestilences of human nature. From the fright and the fire and the
faintness of the “three days” which Saul had now known, it were well that
he should not be brought out at once to the light and “the cheerful sun” and
the splendid hopes and prospects of a great career. It is better that a
tempering interval find
place. It is safer that his
thought and heart find tonic in a Savior’s call
and in a Master’s demand — that
he familiarize himself with the outlook of suffering, and great suffering.
Ø
Though lastly, yet
most of all, Jesus will connect everything in Saul’s
thought now with Himself. How
great, how true, how kind was this
philosophy! Saul has sinned no end against Christ, and he shall suffer
no
end for “His Name’s sake.” What
healing for Saul’s soul that foretelling
announcement! Saul has
persecuted fiercely those who were dear to
Christ unspeakably, and he shall
bear the brunt of fiercest persecution
for the sake of Christ and in
the service of His loved ones. It is the only compensation for his
self-respect, it is some anodyne for his inward smart, and, though an
undiscerning world would never have thought it, it is the supreme mark of
Christ’s sweet forgivingness, of His delicate considerateness, of His tenderest sympathy. “I will show him how great things he must
suffer for my name's sake.”
17 “And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and
putting
his hands on him
said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that
appeared unto
thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that
thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy
Ghost.”
Departed for went
his way, Authorized Version; laying for putting, Authorized
Version; who appeared for that appeared, Authorized
Version; which thou earnest
for as, etc., Authorized Version; mayest
for mightest, Authorized Version.
The
laying on of hands is the medium of conveying any
special grace. Here it precedes
the baptism, and was the channel of restoring sight
to his eyes. Doubtless he did not
receive the Holy Ghost till after his baptism (see ch. 2:38.)
18 “And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been
scales: and
he received sight
forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.”
Straightway for immediately,
Authorized Version; as it were for as it had
been, Authorized
Version; received his sight for received sight forthwith,
Authorized Version and Textus Receptus; he arose for arose, Authorized
Version.
As it were scales (λεπίδες – lepides - scales, or flakes); any thin substance which
peals off; a frequent term in Greek medical writers. And was baptized. It is a
curious difference between Paul and the other apostles
that, if they were baptized
at all, which is doubtful, they must have been baptized by
Christ himself; whereas
Paul received his baptism at the hands of Ananias. This is
one mark of his being
“born out of due time.” (I Corinthians
15:8) And yet he was not behind the
very chiefest apostles.
Christ’s Treatment of Us and Our
Obedience to Him
(vs. 10-18)
FIRST PERPLEXING. (vs.
10-14.) Nothing which Christ could have
given Ananias to do would have
surprised him more than the duty with
which he was entrusted. It
filled him with astonishment and perplexity.
Instead of immediately
acquiescing, he raised a strong objection (vs. 13-14).
It seemed impossible to him that
this should be his mission; nevertheless
it was so, and the obedient
disciple of
morning’s work than when he
conveyed sight to the eyes and
gladness to the heart of the
last and greatest of the apostles. We may be
summoned by our Lord, either
through the promptings of His own Spirit or
through the instrumentality of
His Church, to do work which at first seems
surprising, undesirable,
useless. We may be invited to appeal to those we
deem unlikely to welcome us, to
address ourselves to apparently
unremunerative toil, to cultivate ground which looks sterile to our eye;
but
it may be that we are really
called of Christ to do a most needed and useful
work.
SPIRITUAL CAPACITY.
(v. 15.) There may be very much more of
spiritual power resident in us
or in our neighbors than of which we have any
conception. How many have lived
and died with vast possibilities of
good in their nature never
realized! Their talent has been buried. Has not
our Master some good or even
some great work for us to achieve? May
we not, like Ananias, be
instrumental in leading forward some servant of
Christ who has great capacities
of usefulness in him? We must make the
most and best of ourselves and
of others; only our Lord and theirs knows
how much it is in us and in them
to accomplish.
EVER GIVEN TO HIS SERVANTS TO FILL. (v. 16.) He may
summon us to “suffer
for His Name’s sake.” We never reach so lofty an
altitude, never come so near to
the Master Himself, never so nobly serve
our kind, as when we willingly
and cheerfully suffer for the kingdom of
heaven’s sake; then we may “rejoice
and be exceeding glad, for great is our
reward in heaven.”
(Matthew 5:12)
MANIFEST THAN WHEN WE DO WORK FROM WHICH WE
SHRINK. (v. 17.) When
it is in our human nature to shrink from any
duty, but when, from regard to
our Master’s will, we address ourselves to
it, then we do that which is
acceptable to Him. It is at variance with our
material interests, against our
inclinations, opposed to our tastes and views;
“nevertheless at
Christ’s word we will” do what is
desired (see Luke 5:5).
Ananias shrinks from approaching
the arch-persecutor; nevertheless
at Christ’s bidding he goes,
takes a friendly tone and does a brotherly deed.
REDEEMER. (v. 18.) As soon as the scales had fallen from his eyes and
he received sight, as soon as he
had been favored with this further
confirmation that he was under
the teaching and leading of the Son of God
Himself, Paul “arose
and was baptized.” No interval elapsed between the
time when he was free to act as
one redeemed and healed of Christ, and his
action of open acknowledgment of
conversion to the faith. We do well to
wait till we are thoroughly
assured of our whole-hearted reception of Jesus
Christ before we confess Him
before men; but as soon as we clearly see that
He is our Lord and
that we are His disciples, it is
Ø
our simple duty, as it
is
Ø
our valuable
privilege, to honor our Redeemer by an open declaration
of attachment to Him, and
to join ourselves to His disciples (v. 19).
19 “And when he had received meat, he was strengthened. Then
was
Saul certain days
with the disciples which were at
He took food and for when
he had received meat he, Authorized Version; and
he was for then was
Saul, Authorized Version and Textus Receptus. Some
commentators would interpose the journey to
between vs. 19-20; and this seems to be the intention of
the Authorized Version,
where the clause commencing with Then (v. 19) seems to wind up and close the
preceding narrative. This too is the view strongly
supported by Canon
Farrar, vol. 1. Acts 11., and by Lewin. Alford places the
journey to
in the time comprised in v. 22; others before v. 22; Neander, Meyer,
and others, in the time comprised in the “many days” of v.
23. And this
last is undoubtedly the easiest, were it not for the
considerations urged by
Farrar with great force as to the probability of Paul
seeking a period of
retirement after his conversion before commencing any
public preaching,
and the further countenance given to this view by Galatians
1:17,
where Paul certainly says of himself that εὐθέως – eutheos - immediately, after
his conversion he “went away to
and supposing that either Luke was not aware of the sojourn
in
that he omitted from his notes some brief notice of it
immediately
preceding the description of Saul’s preaching in
explained the following εὐθέως (anon; straightway, immediately),
it seems best to understand the latter part of v. 19 and
all that follows as
subsequent to his return from
after his conversion, and then retired to
that this interpretation gives a significance to the
mention of the “certain
days” which
otherwise it has not. There is a further difference of opinion as
to what is meant by
bordering upon Arabia Deserts, and reckoned as part of
two days’ journey from
understand it in its more strictly Hebrew sense of the
(Farrar, vol. 1. p. 212, and Exeursus
9.; Dean Howson on Galatians in
‘Speaker’s Commentary;’ Bishop Lightfoot on Galatians
1:17). This
view is decidedly strengthened by the fact that, in the
fourth chapter of the
Epistle to the Galatians, Paul clearly means by Arabia the
Peninsula of
thither by a spirit akin to that which formerly had driven
Elijah to the same
region. Standing on the threshold of the new covenant, he
was anxious to
look upon the birthplace of the old; that, dwelling for a
while in seclusion
in the presence of the mount that burned with fire, he
might ponder over
the transient glories of the ministration of death, and
apprehend its real
purpose in relation to the more glorious covenant which was
now to
supplant it.” His journey to
more than two or three mouths. It seems certain that he did
not preach
there, because he says (ch.
26:20), “I declared to them at
first,” etc. (see another coincidence between the Acts and the
Epistle to the
Galatians in ch. 13:2, note).
Saul and Ananias (vs. 10-19)
through the terror of the
lightning and the thunderbolt, comes the mediate
revelation through the familiar
voice and manner of one’s fellow-man.
Ananias is not an
apostle; he is a disciple, a member of the Church simply,
entrusted with no
particular office or position.
Possibly the reason for this
was that Paul might not be dependent
on any of the other apostles, he was,
he said, “an apostle, not from men nor by
men, but by Jesus Christ.” But
the general lesson is on the unofficial
service of Christians to others.
Officialism often brings Christianity into suspicion. The genuine service
of
private Christians is always of
value and always an evidence of
the Spirit of
Christ.
is directed to go to Saul, “for
behold, he prayeth!” A pregnant word by
which to describe the condition
of a converted sinner. He prays; therefore
he is no longer a persecutor of
Jesus, but a captive of His grace, subject of
His love. He prays; therefore
his heart is emptied of its former hate towards
the brethren, and is filled with
meekness and charity. The expression also
betokens the gracious mind of
the speaker. The Lord looks down with pity
on the broken heart prostrate
before Him in prayer. And the Church are in
like manner to turn to Him, as
one though lost yet found, no longer a foe
but a friend. “Behold,
he prays!”
the messenger of Christ coming
in and laying his hands on him that he may
receive his sight. It is by its
associations that any great event in the outward
world or in the mind fixes itself
on the memory. Paul was to look back
upon those days as an
inexhaustible fund of deepest spiritual impressions.
He shall be able to say, “I
received my office as apostle not from man but
from Jesus
Christ.” He shall be forever cured of
his Pharisaic wisdom and
pride of the flesh. (I like the
song by the Del McCoury Band -
Recovering Pharisee, - CY
– 2016)
He was not reasoned into Christianity,
but the living Christ was
revealed in him, in ways too manifold and various
to be mistaken.
Ananias hesitates. The acts of
men are standing evidence
of their disposition. What safer
guide can we have? Yet the Divine voice
quells the hesitation of
Ananias. Saul is a chosen vessel, instrument, or
tool, fashioned by the Divine
hand and for the Divine purposes. In the
mysterious world of the human
heart all things are possible to God — even
as elsewhere. The volcanic fire
which is working beneath the convulsions
of the earthquake is a formative
as well as a destructive agent. The
passionate outbreaks of a man
against a principle or a party are often a sign
of internal change going on. Saul was to be fashioned as an instrument for
the greatest work, perhaps,
ever committed to man — the bearing of the
Name, i.e. the message and doctrine of
Christ to the Gentiles, to confront
and shake the
powers of the world with THE POWER OF THE
CRUCIFIED
ONE! Such a missionary must need no common training.
He must have known
the depths of the evil of his own heart,
the heights
of redeeming
grace. That Christ could conquer the proud and stubborn
Pharisee, and turn Saul into Paul, was a
prophecy of the nature of His
progressive conquests over mankind.
Christ will show the newly
called, not what things he is to enjoy, what
honors he is to reap, but what
things he must suffer. Never was prophet
called of God without some
adumbration of future suffering, of struggle
painful to flesh and blood. With
us all there is something awful and
repellent in the forms of duty.
It is the “stern daughter of the voice of
God.” Yet in obedience alone can
we enjoy true freedom and the presence
of God in the soul. And the
greater the strength given, the greater will be
the struggles imposed, the pain
to be endured, the inner sense of joy and
triumph to be experienced. To
follow Christ truly is no soft and sentimental
thing — it is an enterprise
which taxes manhood to its utmost. To Him may
be applied the words of the
poet:
“Stern
Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead’s most benignant grace;
Nor know
we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face.”
Ananias comes with his cheering
message and his inspired acts to
emancipate the body and soul of
Saul.
Ø He is to see again. The first view of new truth “blinds with excess of
light.”
Presently the scales fall, and the eyes are found to have new powers
of perception.
We may find a parable here. The exchange of fleshly wisdom
and narrow
views for spiritual insight and wide command of the field of
vision seems at
first a loss. We can see nothing for a time; the old horizon
has vanished.
Presently the darkness lifts, the dawn appears; we are in a
new scene, and “behold,
all things are become new.”
Ø He is to be filled with the Holy Ghost. The moment of the break-down
of all our old
system of thought and life is that of extreme weakness. It is
that
self-emptiness which is utterly painful, but prepares for the
incoming
and
indwelling of Divine power — the Holy Spirit.
Ø Baptism as an epoch of life. It closes one era, it opens another. The
putting on of
Christ — the essential thing in baptism — involves
renunciation on
the one hand, fresh choice on the other. God sets us free
that we may
serve him.
“I
myself commend
Unto thy
guidance from this hour.
Oh, let my
weakness have an end!”
To live out in our own
experience the call, and conversion, and initiation of
Saul is to get to the heart of
human nature and of the relation of Christ to
that nature.
Baptism of Saul (vs. 10-19)
While the conversion was independently of human agency, the
new life
awakened was immediately called up by Divine appointment
into
fellowship with the life of the Church. The baptism is here
plainly a Divine
seal upon the individual, an invitation to the privileges
of the Church, a
consecration to higher life and service.
As a “chosen vessel” (v. 15) Saul was
marked out by the Lord! The
sympathy of an experienced Christian with a young convert
is unspeakably
precious. The introduction to Ananias was an introduction
to the Church at
training in that city for the reception of such a man. They
would be less
startled then at the announcement that he would go to the
Gentiles. Thus
God works all things according to the good pleasure of His
will. The
converted Saul opens his eyes in
His baptism was an acceptance on Saul’s part of the Lord’s
commission. He knew
that he would have much to do for Christ. He was aware of
his past and desired to
make up for it by entire devotedness to Him whom He had
persecuted.
The Holy Ghost especially consecrated Saul
with gifts to higher service.
Extraordinary conversion is a preparation for extraordinary
service.
Grace abounding to one who has felt himself the chief of
sinners becomes
abounding strength to do the Lord’s work. The special gifts
of the Holy Ghost
were bestowed through the ministration of Ananias. A miraculous
power at once
descended on Saul, and he felt himself lifted out of the
ordinary current of his life
and set in a higher level of experience and faculty.
A Parable in Things Spiritual (vs. 17-19)
We entertain no doubt that we have here a simple history of
what actually
occurred. We doubt no less that the chief interest and
significance of the
record lie in the spiritual history that underlies it. Nay,
more, though we
read facts of outer life, they do nothing more than outline
those of an inner
life, which Jesus notices, loves, helps, and even makes.
Notice
three days he had been blind in
a bodily sense, but for probably three and
thirty years he had been blind
in the other sense. And this is just what he
had been. He had not been
vicious, immoral, sottish, nor an infidel, nor
irreverent toward all religious
truth and feeling. But he had been blind —
blind to the very type of human
nature. And his blindness is but the type of
that of every
one of us, till he “receives his sight from the Lord Jesus.”
BLESSING IS CONVEYED.
If Jesus had been in a literal sense upon the
earth, He would have spoken to
Saul, He would have laid His own hands
upon him. The actual ministry,
the visible ministry, is passed, however,
now into human agency. This was
a plain-spoken statement of it. How
great the honor laid on men! and
how great their responsibility by this
devolution of the highest and
holiest functions! How full of solemn and
inspiring suggestion, too little
traced out in devout thought by us — that
the actual work which for a
space of time Jesus’ own voice and hand had
attended to, are now to be
attended to by man, fellow-man.
Ø That work, that ministry of service to the
soul of a fellow-creature, finds
out very soon
and very surely all that is of the nature of sympathy. It tries
sympathy it
wakes it, it increases it. The fearful Ananias and distrustful of
one hour ago finds,
and no doubt honestly, the word “brother” now on his
lip — “
Brother Saul.”
Ø Jesus Himself became genuinely a Brother
to those He came to save, not
by virtue of
His Divine power and practical pity only. That His might be the
very type of
brotherliness, He
took our nature on Him,
and made Himself
Brother
(Hebrews 2:11, 17).
And when He ascended, His representatives
are to be found
in those who were men alone. That what might seem the unnecessary thing
is here done, in a man being sent with the mere message
of re-given
sight, and the mere formality of “laying on hands” where no
virtue could
pass, must mean all the more to set honor on the spiritual work which
one man should do for others.
ALL SAVING HELP CAME.
Ø Jesus sends Ananias. He has directed him,
and where necessary corrected
him also.
He has fixed the time, and hastens the lingering step of Ananias.
Ø Jesus, who “began the good work,”
perfects it. The
Jesus who met Saul
in the way and preemptorily reined up his career is the Jesus who gives
him
now light and
liberty and his commission. The miracle is the miracle of
Jesus;
His the power, the will, the love, the sovereign grace. Nor can this be
too well
remembered by the servants of Christ, in all they do now toward
the salvation
of a fellow man. Those who will most readily admit that the
touch of their
hand can do nothing to work sight for the blind, are not
always quite so
clear that their voice, their wisdom, their persuasion, their
mental influence on a fellow-being’s mental
state, are correspondingly
impotent in and of themselves. Yet it is so. The
love of Jesus and the
command
of the Spirit, and these alone, “make
dead sinners
LIVE!” Of one
thing we may be
convinced, that, had Ananias only spoken a hollow word
of respect to
Jesus, and flattered himself that the healing and sight-giving
were going to
be his own, the miracle would have broken down in the
middle, if it
had got so far, as Peter sank in the middle of his walking upon
the sea. Does
the preacher, does the teacher, does the pastor, remember
this principle
constantly enough? Do they possess an unfeigned humility of
faith in it?
Ø The work of the Holy Ghost is announced.
Ø The presence of the Holy Ghost is
announced as the result of the
sending of
Jesus Christ (John 16:7).
Ø The commanding need of the Holy Ghost for
a renewed man and an
enlightened
man, that he may remain surely so, is strongly enough implied:
“That
thou mightest be filled with the Holy Ghost.” Nothing so hinders the
spread of
Christianity, the force of Christian life, the conversion of souls, as
the neglect or
the indifference shown
to the work of the Holy Spirit.
Christianity
is in the fullest sense “the
dispensation of the Spirit,” and yet
prayer for that
Spirit, dependence upon Him, understanding of Him, arc
often all of
the vaguest. The power and persuasion
and grandeur of Christ
and
the cross of Christ only move into vitality as the Spirit takes of them
and
brings them to men’s hearts. We
do all and always need
the Holy Spirit
for both conversion and for sanctification, and for knowing and doing
acceptably any
service for God, for Christ, in man’s heart and life.
OF THE HANDS OF ANANIAS.
They followed just as though it were by
his own “power and holiness”
that this miracle was wrought. So in our
spiritual work, we should look
for results. We should feel their cheering
effect. We should delight in
them. We should be grateful and honored
exceedingly that we are
permitted to be instruments in the “mighty hand”
for doing them. But, meantime, we are bound never to forget how fearful
the robbery and the
guilt if we give not all the glory to God, to Jesus, to
the Spirit.
20 “And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that
he is
the Son of
God.” In the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus for he preached Christ
in the synagogues, Authorized
Version and Textus Receptus.
The preponderance
of manuscript authority, and the ὄνομα – onoma – name of v. 21,
and the
ὅτι οϋτός
ἐστιν ὁ Ξριστός – hoti houtos estin
ho Christos – that this One is
the Christ of v. 22, seem conclusive in favor of Jesus rather than Christ.
As
regards the expression straightway,
we must understand it as descriptive of Saul’s
action upon his return from
the same meaning as he may have heard Paul use it in when
speaking of
his
in Galatians 1:17, viz. as expressing that he did not wait
for authority
from the apostles, but
at once, fresh from the Divine call, and having a
direct commission from Christ Himself, entered upon his
apostolic ministry?
If the Epistle to the Galatians was written A.D. 58, it
would be just about
the time that Luke joined Paul, and might be commencing to
collect
materials for his history. So that the phrase in the
Galatians and the phrase
in this twentieth verse might really be the expression of
one thought
committed to paper by Paul on the one hand, and uttered in
the ear of
Luke on the other. It is a confirmation of this view that
in II Corinthians,
written about the same time, there is also an account of
Saul’s escape from
letters of the high priest were addressed, empowering him
to arrest either
man or woman who called upon the Name of Jesus, and bring
them as
prisoners to
were amazed.
Saul’s First Sermons (v. 20)
Revised Version, “And straightway in the synagogues he
proclaimed Jesus,
that He is the Son of God.” The point to which
all the effort of the apostle
was first directed was naturally the Messiahship of Jesus,
and that in the
higher view in which Christianity exhibits the Messiah,
namely, as the Son
of God. Very different ideas are entertained as to the
advisability of encouraging
young converts to begin preaching at once. The difficulty
arose in the China mission field, and the new convert earnestly pleaded to be
allowed to tell the little he did
know, and so grow to know more. This principle Saul
followed, beginning at once to “preach
the faith which once he destroyed,” and he made the
opportunities just
where he was, going into the synagogues, and using his
privilege as a rabbi to read
and expound the Scriptures. The text briefly indicates what
truth Saul had
gripped, and, taken with v. 22, it shows how large his grip
was, and that
it concerned the very basis-truth of Christianity. He saw
that:
Hebrew word “Messiah,”
and would often be wisely changed for the Hebrew term.
Ø the foregoing prophecies of Messiah,
showing how they had given tone
to the
national and religious sentiment;
Ø the actual expectation of the coming of
Messiah about that time
seems to have
possessed both the Jews and the Gentiles. The practical
question
dividing public opinion at the time was the question which divides
the Jew and the
Gentile up to this present hour; it was this — Had Messiah
come, or had He
not come? Saul was now able to deal with this question,
and he
proclaimed openly that Messiah had come. This was an important
step, as it
narrowed the field of inquiry for all those
pious souls
who “looked for redemption in
The better manuscripts give
the reading, “preached Jesus.”
If Messiah had come, had He been
recognized, and acknowledged? Saul
firmly answered, "Yes; Messiah was Jesus of
Teacher, Healer,
holy Man, who was crucified, had risen from the dead,
and was exalted
to heaven.” Surely this was a
great theme for his
preaching, one demanding
explanation, argument, evidence, and the
“accent of his own conviction.”
But Saul had seen more than even this, and
so further proclaimed that:
as:
Ø
compared with “Son
of man;” and
Ø
as gaining to the
apostles its deeper and fuller meaning.
To Saul had evidently come an
insight into the glorious mystery of the
Incarnation. He realized:
Ø
that Jesus was the
Christ in a high spiritual sense;
Ø
that Jesus was
entrusted with a present power to save and to sanctify;
Ø
that Jesus had Divine
rights, and made Divine claims to the immediate surrender to Him of the heart
and will and lives of men.
So it is evident that Saul
grasped at once the very essence of the gospel, and the very center of that
doctrinal system which, urged by the necessities of the Churches, his genius
developed. There is still no more searching test of our religious condition
than can be found in the question, “What think ye of
Christ?
Whose Son is He?” (Matthew 22:32) If
we feel that we must say, “He is the
Son of God,” then we are bound to:
Ø
bow our souls
before Him,
Ø
seek His grace,
Ø
accept His
salvation,
Ø
acknowledge His
authority, and
Ø
bind on our whole lives the livery of His
service.
21 “But all that heard him were amazed, and said; Is not this
he that
destroyed them
which called on this name in
hither for that
intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief
priests?” And for
but, Authorized Version; that in
that destroyed them (which called on this Name) in
and he had come hither
for this intent for and came hither for
that intent, Authorized
Version, differently
stopped; before for unto, Authorized Version. The chief priests.
The plural seems
to mark how the high priesthood at this period was passed from
one to another.
Caiaphas, Annas, Jonathan, and Theophilus
would all be
included under the term.
Amazement’s Opportunity (v. 21)
The amazement of the disciples of Jesus, and of others also
who heard
Saul preaching at
circumstances and in any view of it. Yet distinct and
emphatic mention of it
asks for a somewhat more careful observation and scrutiny
of its nature
and peculiar features. Notice:
Ø That Saul, a bitter opponent heretofore of
Christ and His truth, now
preaches
Christ, the whole Christ, and nothing but Christ. He preaches “the
whole Christ” in
this sense, that, as we are told, he uplifts the central and
so to speak
crucial fact about Christ, “that He is the Son of God.” This
once granted “with the heart,” all else
follows. He has not yielded upon
some side
aspects of the matter, and for some political reasons joined a
remarkable
movement. But he has yielded the stronghold of his own
unbelief, and
has acknowledged the impregnable character of the
stronghold that
he had been striving to batter down, to under-mine, to
“utterly”
destroy.
Ø That Saul, a notorious opponent of
Christ, comes now to preach in the
places where
his change of front would also become most notorious
confessed, and
where it in turn would be the mark and butt of keen
opposition. He
preached Christ “in the synagogues.”
Ø That, with the most unreserved and
apparently even unconscious self=forgetfulness, Saul mingles in this work side
by side with men, for the
apprehension of
whom, and for the conveying of whom “bound to
Jerusalem,”
he had in his pocket
official authorizations.
Ø That Saul does this “straightway,” without
finding delay a possible thing,
without waiting
for anything of the nature of diplomatic introduction.
There is
something or other fresh in his heart, and it comes with all
promptness and naturalness
and force, full of its freshness, into his life.
Ø They were in part disciples. It is
impossible to say that all those who
were amazed
were of the number of either disciples or non-disciples. It is
said “all”
that “heard
him” were amazed. These must have consisted of
both disciples
and non-disciples. The one had not left off entirely to
frequent the
synagogue, and the others would, as a matter of course, be
found in some
sort of number there. So far as they were strictly disciples,
their amazement
marks no doubt, on the one hand, grateful and adoring
impression;
but, on the other, it is not altogether free from the imputation
of betraying
that the glories of the Spirit’s
power in conversion, and the
force
of the truth and call of Jesus, were at present only dawning upon
their
minds.
We still speak of remarkable
conversions, chiefly because they
are so rare. We
have had enough instances of them to satisfy us as to what
the force of
conversion is on every kind of sinner, in every kind of nature,
and in
every “nation.” We are ever to magnify Christ and the Spirit, and
gratefully to
acknowledge their triumphs in conversion, but the expression
of amazement
may sometimes derogate from their honor. Perhaps the
conversion
of Saul was not only the most remarkable conversion that had
yet
taken place, but was
the only one that, all things together, had stood
out uniquely
enough to compel attention individually.
Ø They were in part unconvinced Jews, who,
dead in formality, still
frequented the
synagogues in Damascus. The lingering and somewhat
feeble faith
and knowledge of the
disciples finds something to
counterbalance
it, perhaps to some little degree, in the quickly aroused
criticism and spirit
of observation on the part of others less enlightened
than they. The indirect influences of Christ and of
His truth are many and
effective. His enemies, and the force and the
violence and the cruelty of
their
opposition, He often makes tributary to the advancement of His cause.
Many who had
hitherto willingly spread opposition, and opposition only,
now become the
means of spreading tidings of how the chief of the
opposition had
thrown up the contest and joined heart and hand to help.
And they spread
this ominous fact in the most contagious manner. It is by
the manner of
wondering, excited question, and question that wraps up in a
sentence or two
the salient and really telling aspects of the whole matter.
The
astonishment of the godly is often deep down in their own souls or
sacred in the
converse of one another; the astonishment of the ungodly is
sure to be loud
on their lip. But when this latter largely reinforces the
former, both
advantages are secured, and the march of victory advances to
the step of
both friends and foes. It was so now, and throughout the whole
people far and
wide notoriety was as the consequence given to the
conversion of
Saul — a notoriety which had its share in bringing on the
“Churches’
rest” spoken of in v.
31.
Ø A very wide hearing was gained irresistibly,
not for the truths of
Christianity
alone, but for its triumphs as well. One triumph is itself a
sermon better
than a thousand merely spoken sermons. And now this
triumph-sermon,
this sermon of sermons, is proclaimed and repeated by
thousands of
lips.
Ø Even when first impressions had died away,
substantial increase of faith
and hope was
left in the character of all “disciples.” They had without
doubt known
already striking instances of changed opinion and feeling and
life among
those to whom Christ had been preached, and for whom His
mighty works
had been done. But this was not what is generally meant by a
remarkable
conversion. The grand feature here was not the reform from an
unholy life,
but the reform from an uncompromising antagonist into a
devoted and
very powerful champion. This would be a comparatively new
and a most
refreshing testimony to disciples of the nature and the force of
the
new treasure they had in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Ø
Slumbering
enmity and indifference to Christ in those who were not
disciples were
brought into the shape in which they would be best dealt
with —
malignant enmity and
active resistance. Now “the sinners” and
“those who were
at ease” wake themselves. Here is found a foeman worthy
indeed of their
“steel,” if they had weapon of the make. But they had not.
They,
therefore, conspire and “watch day
and night,” to
learn how vain the
attempt to
take those whom Christ holds so safe in His hand and love. The
fruit of
confessed amazement and undoubted amazement at the mighty
deeds of Christ
must ever be either:
o
hearty
obedience to Him, or
o
an
understanding more blinded and life aggravated to perverseness
itself.
22 “But Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded
the Jews
which dwelt at
The Christ for very
Christ, Authorized Version. The repetition of the phrase
ὅτι οῦτός
ἐστιν (that this One is - vs. 20
and 22) is remarkable. As already
observed, it presupposes the mention of Jesus, of whom it
is thus predicated
that He is
both “the Son of God” and “the
Christ” (compare ch.
2:32, 36; 4:11,
etc.). Observe the incidental proof of the general
expectation of the Jews
that Christ should come in this description of the
apostolic preaching as
directed to the one point that Jesus of Nazareth was the
Christ.
The New Convert Proving His Sincerity (vs.
19-22)
Characteristics of Saul
appearing in the new phase of his life.
Ø Intelligence. He is ready
to grapple with subtle antagonists, he seizes the
great central
truth of the gospel — the Messiahship of Jesus. He employs
his vast
knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures.
Ø Boldness and energy. Not even
waiting for opportunity, but making it;
entering the
synagogues, producing amazement by his vehemence.
Ø Self-surrender to Christ, as before consuming zeal for the Law. Where
he was expected
as the persecutor, there he
appears as the convert. All
sense of shame
swallowed up in devotion to Christ.
“increased the
more in strength.”
Ø Conviction deepens by speaking. Many lose strength by remaining silent.
Work for Christ
lifts up the heart. The idle ones doubt; the active ones are
cheerful.
Ø The sense of victory a great help, both to individuals and the
Church. A
bold aggressive
policy specially demanded. In proving the doctrine, we
must advance
into the midst of the opponents. Especially should those that
can speak of
great grace not be ashamed of Jesus. Personal testimonies
have remarkable
power. Let the world be amazed.
Ø The gifts of the Spirit should not be
restrained. There is something for
each one to
do. If we cannot speak, we can proclaim Christ by the active
life of
benevolence. The disciples at
from the
example of Saul. An earnest Church creates an earnest minister,
and an
earnest minister an earnest Church.
23 “And after that many days were fulfilled, the Jews took
counsel to
kill him:” When for after
that, Authorized Version; took counsel together for
took counsel, Authorized Version. The phrase many days is quite elastic
enough to comprehend
whatever time remained to make up the three years
(Galatians 1:18) which Paul tells us intervened between his
conversion and his visit to
Luke frequently uses ἱκανός – hikanos - for “many” (Luke
7:11; 8:27;
23:8). So in Hebrew, יָמִים רַבַּים, many days, is applied to considerable
portions of time. In I Kings 2:38-39, it is applied to
three years.
24 “But their laying await was known of Saul. And they watched
the
gates day and
night to kill him.” Their plot (ἐπιβουλή - epiboulae - ) became
known for their
laying await was known, Authorized
Version; to Saul for of Saul,
Authorized Version; the gates also for the gates, Authorized Version and
Textus Receptus; that they might for
to, Authorized Version; a colon instead of
full point at end
of verse.
The New Faith Exposed to Trial (vs. 23-24)
All manifestations of God’s Spirit stir up the opposition
of the evil one.
The bold faith drives back the enemy into ambush.
Conspiracy against truth
always means confession of weakness. The false Church takes
counsel to
kill. But God knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations. (II Peter
2:9) (Don’t forget the next clause in the same verse. He also knows how
“to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.” – CY – 2016)
on his future, on his spirit, as
preparing him for suffering and humiliation
for Christ. We never know what
our religion is to us till we suffer for it and
feel what it is in suffering.
The persecutor persecuted. The
faith of the new convert shown to be
strong enough to stand such a
trial. The seal of the Lord put upon His
servant. He was dealt with as
many of the prophets. We must remember
that we “fill up that which is behind of
the sufferings of Christ for His
Body’s sake, which
is the Church.” (Colossians 1:24) Be patient.
25 “Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by
the wall
in a basket.” But for then,
Authorized Version; his disciples for the disciples,
Authorized Version and
Textus Receptus; through
for by, Authorized Version;
lowering him in for
in, Authorized Version. Lowering him,
etc. The Authorized
Version gives the sense freely; and combining the verb καθῆκαν – kathaekan –
they let him down - with the participle χαλάσαντες – chalasantes – lowering
him, translates both by the one word “let him down.” The by
of the Authorized
Version seems preferable to the through of the Revised Version, as
through suggests the
idea, which cannot be intended, of making a hole in
the wall. The escape of the spies from
2:15, was exactly in the same way, except that they had
only a rope to
descend by, whereas Paul had a rope-basket. In the
description of his
escape given by Paul to the Corinthians (II Corinthians
11:33), he
uses the same word for “let down” (ἐχαλάσθην – echalasthaen – I
am lowered),
tells us he was let
down “by the wall,” Revised Version,
with the additional
particular that he
got out through the window, διὰ τοῦ τείχους – dia tou teichous
-
and that it was a σαργάνη – sarganae – wicker
basket, a basket made of ropes
(which describes the kind of basket somewhat more
accurately than the σπυρίς –
spuris – basket;
hamper - here used) in which he was let down (see
note
on v. 20). The passage in II Corinthians gives us a further
interesting
account of how the Jews went about to accomplish their
purpose of killing
Paul. It seems that at this time, either in revolt against
the Romans or by
permission of Caligula (it is not known certainly which), a
certain Aretas,
or Hareth, King of Arabia Petrea, included
a time, i.e. through the reigns of Caligula and
Claudius. He appointed an
ethnarch, who was doubtless a Jew, to rule the large Jewish
population
according to their Law, and who was the ready tool of the
unbelieving
Jews, using his power as governor to have the gates kept
day and night so
as to prevent Saul’s escape. But he that keepeth
nor slept (Psalm 121:4), and by His watchful providence
Saul escaped from
their hands.
Saul at
to make victims of the followers
of Jesus, he was found owning and
proclaiming His Name. And his
proclamation was that Jesus was the Son of
God. This was,
perhaps, a new truth to the Christian Church — or at least
in the clear recognition and
definite expression it has now — and must
have come with extraordinary
power from lips that were learned and
eloquent and charged with the
profound conviction of one whose thoughts
had undergone an entire
revulsion. “I believe, therefore have I spoken.”
The Divine Son;
His life and love, His work for mankind;
— this is the
heart of all Christian preaching.
feeling and of conduct in Saul.
Astonishment breeds curiosity and gives rise
to inquiry and information.
Wonder at the extraordinary phenomena of
nature is the parent of science.
Wonder at the extraordinary phenomena in
the
change of heart and life is the standing
moral miracle. When he whom we
have known as passionate, proud,
and fierce is seen to be meekly giving up
all worldly advantages for the
sake of a despised cause, counting things
that had been good loss for the
excellency of a new knowledge, it is an
evidence not to be resisted.
“Fool!” must have been the verdict of his
friends of the Sanhedrin on his
conduct. “For Christ’s sake” was the secret
in the breast of Saul.
newly found and grasped, with
power to nerve the will and impart
influence over others. The man
of convictions, and with the courage of
them, is the true conqueror.
Second-hand opinions and inherited prejudices
cannot stand against original
force in the moral sphere. THIS IS THE
CHRIST! One man
believed it with all his soul, and triumphed over the
world in its hatred and ignorance. But the growth of moral power in an
individual calls up the dark shapes of envy and jealousy. Secret and
cowardly
opposition is the compliment which passion offers, the testimony it bears
to
the forms of clear, calm truth. Malice lurks and lies in wait to destroy
what
it fears to encounter in the open
field. Energy in diffusing light and truth
will be certain to evoke a corresponding energy out of the kingdom
of
darkness to obscure and to destroy. So did the storm gather about
Saul’s
devoted head. But the servants of God bear a charmed life until
their work
is done. Already
the promise of the Savior, that Saul must suffer many things,
is being fulfilled. In trouble and the deliverance out of it God is made known
to our spirits as our God
and our Savior.
The Beginning of Perils for Paul (v. 25)
To this beginning of “perils” Paul will often in later days
of life have looked
back. He did not live to any prolonged period, but if he
had, there is not a
length of life so long nor charged with changes so violent
as to be able to
cut off from us the effects of the touching comparisons and
the telling
contrasts of beginning and ending. Many a broken portion of
life offers us
such effects; but how much more moving those of life
itself! Long was the
list of perils and sufferings, varied and sharp the
discipline of them; but
when the rehearsal of them comes (II Corinthians 11:16-33),
it speaks a
perseverance unbroken, a courage unquenched, a heart,
fidelity, love,
stronger and more determined than ever. That rehearsal
somewhat
remarkably closes with the mention of the first peril
of Paul, as here given
us, as though his memory, deliberately traveling backward,
reached last
that which life brought to him first. The opportunity may
be seized for
considering at least one side of the great service of suffering. It
must be a
ministry full of expression, full of meaning, full
of deep feeling, and, if not
made full of use also, it must be of all loss “most
miserable.” In the present
connection let us observe that:
·
IT TESTS A CAUSE, OF WHAT SORT IT IS. With rare exceptions, it
may be said that the cause which
bears the test of suffering, and of much
suffering, will be a cause alike
great and good. Human hearts, strong
though they be, are not strong
enough to bear gratuitously a vast amount
of suffering. The vast amount of the worst sort of suffering that sin entails,
that comes inevitably in its wake,
is of course not in the place for a test,
and cannot operate as such. (“For
what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted
for your faults, ye shall take it
patiently?” - I Peter 2:20) The abundant
presence of it, therefore, where it is, does not invalidate the position. The
cause that asks suffering to espouse it, to sustain it, to carry it to completion,
is self-hedged around as with some sovereign safeguard. The frivolous will
not come near it, and the great multitude will pay no court to it. But:
Ø
If it
arrest the attention, kindle the enthusiasm, win the practical
confidence of a
few, and those, perhaps, the thoughtful, the useful, the
unselfish, it is
a considerable augury of something substantial and
substantial
good in it.
Ø
Enthusiasm
can do very great things for an hour. It will encounter and
even court any
amount of suffering. We cannot, therefore, consider taking
service in a
cause that imposes suffering any decisive test. The test,
however,
becomes much more decisive when
that service is persevered in,
still
entailing suffering, year after year, and on to the maturity of life.
Ø
The
highest kind of human test is reached when the cause is one
persevered in
to the very end of life, through suffering all the way and
almost every
step. The enterprise that can secure this allegiance says as
much for itself
as any enterprise on earth can, and the best. And this is
abundantly the
case with Christianity. When Saul embraced it, it meant
peril, and
labor, and privation, and much direct suffering. But, “being
persuaded of
it, he embraced it,” and was faithful to it through the
succeeding
periods and phases of his own earthly career, and up to the very
last. Then in
old age, beaten and weather-beaten, in prison and in chains
and bonds, he
does not dream of repenting or of recanting, but says, “I am
not
ashamed,” and bids
others follow in his steps (II Timothy 1:12). If it
had been a
flowery path and an easy career, Paul’s perseverance would
have been no
argument for it. But because it was a suffering career, his
perseverance
spoke, not his praise alone, but that of his Master’s cause yet
more. How many
a cause will waken enthusiasm! how few will sustain it!
How many will
beg it! how few reward it! There is the difference of a
world, ay, of
two worlds, between the two.
persevere in fighting a
suffering battle, it is certainly so far forth an
argument for the object of the
battle. But if he do not fight the battle, or
beginning do not carry out to
the end the struggle, it by no means
condemns the cause. The question
will have to be settled whether blame lie
with the cause or whether it do
not rather lie with the person.
Ø Suffering for the individual tries high
moral quality and improves it.
Ø Suffering tries many individual virtues
and graces — those of faith, of
hope, of
perseverance, of love that fires cannot burn away nor death
destroy. And it
unfailingly improves them.
Ø Suffering certainly tends to fix and give
clear “evidence” to an unearthly
type of
character.
Ø Suffering lends distinctness to
conviction, to purpose, to achievement. It
is a
disinfectant, an alterative, and a tonic all in one. Pleasure and
indulgence
enfeeble, that is, they tend to enfeeble and to enervate, once
past a very
moderate amount. Suffering, short of an excessive amount of it,
makes keen the
faculty, the sight, the soul itself! Wonderful is its bracing
effect on body and
mind, on heart and life.
GREAT MORAL DISPLAY IN THE WORLD. Beside the uses of
suffering in the good fruits it
produces on individual character; and beside
its use as a test, whether of
worth in an enterprise or of strength in a
person, it cannot be denied that
it lends itself to special moral service, often
on a large scale and in a wide
theater. Against it all nature rebels. For that
very reason, when it is
voluntarily encountered, patiently borne, and
embraced even to the cross, to
stoning, to torture, and the stake, the
world
has no help for it but
to notice what is transpiring. An unwilling world is
put into the dilemma
that it is either convinced or convicted.
The
confession is wrested from all beholders
that there is something present
which begs and deserves close
scrutiny and respectful attention, or that
they are in any given instance
deserting precedents that in all others they
have observed. When the
testimony of suffering is shown forth in one, the
force of it will partly depend
on the notoriety that his conduct may win,
and it may undoubtedly be
weakened by the suspicion of individual
eccentricity until this again be
rebutted. But when the testimony is borne by
many and for a length of time,
it is equivalent to the presence of a new and
very real moral force among
mankind, many of the grandest and most
impressive triumphs of
Christianity have been owing to this, and many of
its most significant impulses
have been due to it. Men and suffering have
calmly faced one another, have
measured the force of one another; neither
have shrunk from the wager — men
have not fled and suffering has not
yielded up its sting. And yet
they have made common cause, and have
made also most wonderfully effective
fight. Something in man, given him
from without and from above, has
made him fearless of what all nature
made him to fear. It is an
exhibition in the arena of the world; it never fails
of having witnesses; it always leaves its traces. And the Paul of perils and
sufferings ever stands one of
the clearest and noblest illustrations of a great
and effectual moral display.
26 “And when Saul was come to
to the disciples:
but they were all afraid of him, and believed not
that he was a
disciple.” He for Saul, Authorized
Version and Textus Receptus;
and they were for but,
etc., Authorized Version; not
believing for and believed not,
Authorized Version. The narrative thus far exactly agrees with Galatians 1:17-18,
which, however, supplies the motive of the journey to
here mentioned, viz. to see Peter. It seems strange to some commentators that
the news of Saul having become a zealous Christian should not have reached
much of those three years was spent in
state of
disciples at
zeal as a persecutor by
their own experience; they knew of him as a disciple
only by report. It may
have been only an instance of the truth of Horace’s
maxim, “Segnius irritant animos
demissa per aures quam quae
sunt occults
subjecta fidelibus.”
27 “But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles,
and
declared unto
them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that
He had spoken to him,
and how he had preached boldly at
in the name of
Jesus.” How at
had preached boldly at
statement that Barnabas
took him, and brought him to the apostles, which
some have thought
inconsistent with Galatians 1:18-19, it is obvious to
remark that
Luke’s account is fully justified by the fact that Paul did, on
Barnabas’s introduction, make the acquaintance of Peter,
and, as it seems,
pass fifteen days as his guest (Galatians 1:18); and while
there, did also
see James the Lord’s brother. The other apostles were
probably absent
from
Church assembly, in the presence of James and, no doubt,
the elders of the
Church, give the astonishing narrative of Saul’s
conversion. This removed
their suspicious and their fears, and he was freely, during
the rest of his
brief stay, admitted as a brother to their assemblies, and
took part in
preaching the gospel in the synagogues.
28 “And he was with them coming in and going out at
Going in for coming
in, Authorized Version.
29 “And he spake boldly in the name
of the Lord Jesus, and disputed
against the
Grecians: but they went about to slay him.”
Preaching boldly, etc,
the and of the Textus Receptus
is omitted, and this
clause connected with the preceding one; the Lord for
the Lord Jesus,
Authorized Version and Textus Receptus; he spake for he
spake boldly,
Authorized Version. (The παῥῤησιαζόμενος – parraesiazomenos
-
(translated
preaching boldly) ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι
Κυρίου –
en to onomati Kuriou –
in the name of the Lord, is in the Received Text separated
from ἐλάλει –
elalei – he spake); the Grecian
Jews for the Grecians, Authorized Version,
as in ch. 6:1; to kill for
to slay, Authorized Version. The
Grecian
Jews; or, Hellenists (margin). Stephen was a Hellenist, and it was
among the Hellenists that his evangelical labors chiefly
lay and from whose
enmity he met his death. Saul showed his dauntless spirit,
and perhaps his
deep compunction at the part he had taken in Stephen’s
death, by thus
encountering their bitter and unrelenting enmity.
30 “Which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to
and sent him
forth to
when the brethren knew Authorized Version.
Paul gives another reason for
his hasty departure from
(ch. 22:17-21). Caesarea,
when standing alone, means
or Παράλιος – Paralios - , or Sebaste, the seaport and Roman garrison of
that name, as distinguished from Caesarea Philippi, and is always
so used by Luke (ch. 8:40; 10:1,
24; 18:22; 21:8, 16; 23:23, 33;
25:1, 4, 6; 27:1, 2, showing it was a seaport). There is no
reasonable doubt
that it means the same place here. A seaport, near to
Roman protection, affording access to
should seem best, was the natural place for Paul’s friends
to take him to. If
further proof were wanting, it could be found in the
phrase, “brought him
down,” as compared with the converse, “gone up” (ch. 18:22),
“ascended" (ch. 25:1), when the journey was from
formed the seaport of
Selcucia, since he says (Galatians 1:21) that he came at this time
which
is exactly what he would have done if he had landed at
seaport of
The Texture of Human Life (vs. 19-30)
Of how many threads is this human life woven! Through what
changeful
experiences do we pass, even in a short period of our
course! In the brief
period — possibly three years — covered by our text, we
find Paul
undergoing various fluctuations of good and evil. It is
suggestive of the
nature and character of our common human life. We may
gather them up
thus:
Ø
Congenial fellowship.
He was “with the disciples… at
(v. 19); “he
was with them coming in and going out at
(vs. 27-28). Few things
shed more sunshine on our earthly path than the
genial society of those with whom we are one in thought and aim.
Ø
Conscious growth in moral
and spiritual power in dealing with men. He
increased in strength (v. 22).
Ø
Fearless action on
behalf of the true and right (v. 29). These are joys,
deep and full, to a human spirit
— to be growing in influence, and to be
playing a brave and noble part
in the strife of life.
Ø
The distrust of those
with whom we are in sympathy. Paul “assayed to
join himself to
the disciples: but they were afraid,”
etc. (v. 26). It is a
very painful wound to the spirit
to be distrusted by those to whom we
really belong. To have our
sincerity doubted, to have our purity
questioned, to be looked at with
suspicion rather than with kindly and
gracious eye, — this is one of
the keen, cutting miseries of life.
Ø
Persecution for
conscience’ sake (vs. 23-24, 29). This may go far
short of “seeking our life to
take it away;” it may not pass beyond the
sneering word or the curling
lip, and yet it may introduce great
bitterness into the cup of life.
Ø
Humiliation. Paul
never seems to have forgotten the incident of his being
let down in a basket (v. 25). He
felt the humiliation of it. Anything which
wounds our self-respect makes a
lasting, often a lifelong, scar on the soul.
Ø
Solitude. It is not stated in the text, but we know from his letters
that at
this juncture (probably between
vs. 19-20) Paul went into
(Galatians 1:17); there he spent
much time alone with God; there he
communed with his own spirit,
“looking before and after;” there he
re-read and read anew the
Scriptures which he imagined he understood
before, but now found to be
other and more than he had supposed. We
urgently need
this element of solitude. We are not
enough alone; more
of quiet meditation, of
communion with the Father of spirits, of reverent
contemplation, would calm, steady,
purify, ennoble us.
Ø
Social activity.
(vs. 20, 22, 29.) Whether or not we “preach
Christ,”
“confounding” and “disputing,” we must come into
contact, and
sometimes into collision with
men. We need to know how to do this
wisely and rightly, at times
showing the fearless spirit, at times the
spirit of discretion, at times
the spirit of conciliation, always the
spirit of Christ.
brethren brought Paul to
Caesarea and sent him to
elsewhere informs us (ch. 22:17-18) that the Lord Jesus Christ
manifested Himself to him and
desired him to leave
look for such trances and
visions now, but we do look, or should do
so, for
manifestations, indwellings, influences of the Divine Spirit of God, so that
we ourselves and our
whole human life may be guided and sanctified of
God. Of such elements are all our lives woven. We must
gratefully accept
and so sanctify the pleasant, meekly
and cheerfully endure the painful,
wisely employ the necessary, and
reverently avail ourselves of the elevated;
thus will our lives be blessed
of God, thus will they speak His praise and
spread His truth, thus will they
lead to His presence and glory.
Saul’s Visit to
welcome at
the records of past life. And
never was the proud former Pharisee
permitted to forget his lesson
of humility. Well might this be the meaning
of the “thorn in the flesh.” Our impression of the man is that
of a fierce and
impetuous temper, the force of
which, having been used for the devil, was
now to be used in the service of
Christ. The genuineness of his conversion,
Calvin remarks, is shown by the
fact that, having been himself a persecutor,
he can now endure persecution
with calmness.
heart, yearning for sympathy,
grateful for kindness and love. How full of
meaning on another occasion his
words, “God, who comforteth those that
are cast down,
comforted us by the coming of Titus”! (II Corinthians 7:6)
Then the affectionate Barnabas
takes him by the hand, and performs the
offices of friendship on his
behalf. The scene carries its teaching on the
nature and offices of
friendship.
Ø
The friend takes us by the hand in the hour of
need. His loyalty and
courage compensate us for the
coldness of the world. Who so self-reliant
as not to need a sponsor on
occasions? One draught of true human love
will refresh us in the desert of
others’ coldness. And doubtless, if we have
been true to love, love will be
found for us at the hour of need.
Ø
He will say for us what we cannot say for ourselves. Barnabas tells
Saul’s story when Saul himself
is not believed. The ideas of the
Paraclete, or Advocate, of the Friend that sticketh
closer than a
brother, of the
Witness on our behalf, are found again
in the highest
Christian relations. Christ fulfils to
the soul the highest ideal of
friendship. (What
a Friend We have in Jesus! – CY – 2016) Let the
recollection of our
dependence on ministry ever incline the heart to
humility and correct the excess of
self-reliance. Through Barnabas,
Saul is received as a brother, and the old
enmity and distrust is
forgotten. To be obstinately set against old sinners, to refuse a
kindly
oblivion to the
past, is to ignore the grace which delights
to heal and
to forgive.
with the Hellenists. There was a
resurrection of the martyr’s spirit in the
martyr’s murderer. Enmity is
again aroused; again Saul’s life is in danger;
and again, through friendly
providence, the way of escape is opened. Thus
through early combats, the
Christian soldier’s courage is tried and
experience is gained for future
struggles.
The Church’s Seal upon the New Acquisition
(vs. 26-30)
There was a natural doubt of the change of Saul in the
was a perceived difference between the character of Saul
and that of the leading
apostles. Barnabas
was fitted to be the mediator, both by his loving disposition and
large-mindedness as
a Cypriot. Brotherly sympathy may
accomplish much in times
of perplexity, both in helping us to overcome natural
feeling and in facilitating
personal fellowship.
In time, the true Christian laborer will prove his own work.
Let the facts speak for themselves. Preach boldly,
and all must acknowledge
THE LORD’S PRESENCE!
An Ill Odor and Its Remedy (vs. 26-30)
The odor of character and “ill report” are two very
different things. The
character of most fragrance may be in worst “report.” Was
it not true of
Jesus? The noblest personages that have graced the world
have often been
temporarily of ill report, but not, correctly speaking, of
ill odor. Of all ill
odor none is a hundredth part so bad as the ill odor of
character. Notice:
Ø It is an intrinsic shame to the person of whom
it is true. It is the result of
what he is and
what he says and what he does, and not of the mistakes
others may
possibly make respecting him in any of these particulars.
Ø It is a virulent disintegrating of human society and love. It turns
the place
and opportunity
of attraction into those of repulsion, and substitutes for the
union of trust
the disunion of suspicion.
Ø It is cruelty to all those who are of the
same kind by nature. Some kind
of sin, beside
all the black front it shows as such to God, adds the
aggravation of widespread and keenly felt domestic
misery.
Ø It is a very fountain of fear to an
indefinite number of others. The
character that
is correctly answerable to the description of one of ill odor is
an offence to
those who have to come in contact with it, and to those who
fear lest they should come in contact with it.
Ø It is constantly diffusing its noxious and
malarious influences, and not
least when
perhaps for a brief while least observed.
of the matter. That character must
be changed. Come what may, let
what
may seem risked, through
whatsoever experience of suffering and anguish
of a new birth, nothing short of
a real and penetrating change will avail.
Nothing partial, no outside
improvement, no mere mitigation of his style of
word or deed, could have
reconciled “disciples at
else to Saul, had there not been
proof patent of radical change. The source
of the old ill must be cut off,
and in such wise that it comes to be the
natural thing to men to feel
convinced that it is really and undoubtedly cut
off.
BROTHERLY CHARITY WITHAL. Men who go by the name of
Christian do often suspect when
they should not, and distrust too long. The
example of Jesus is clear
against such conduct and such a disposition. To
the worst sinner He was prompt
to give the hand of hope and the hand of
help, and to shield them from
the glance and the pointed finger of taunting
drawn from the past. We may
admit that the eye of Jesus recognized
genuineness, and His lip could
pronounce upon it with a certainty shut out
from ourselves. None the less
must we recognize His principle, and honor it
by using it. Barnabas now took Saul
by the hand, and showed him the
brotherly kindness the spirit of
which the great Master first gave to the
Church. And it is agreeable to
observe how “apostles” and “brethren”
thereupon believed in Saul, and
acted as though they believed in him.
Grateful is it at one and the
same time to see how the trust reposed in
Barnabas quite sufficed to
counteract the distrust that had been so naturally
felt towards Saul. Broad as is
the line, therefore, that separates the
repentant man from the sinner; uncompromising
as our conduct must be in
having no fellowship with
darkness; and trenchant as our fidelity to
doctrine as it were; — yet for all this amount of reason, the more
promptly,
gladly, and trustfully must we give heart and hand to the
repentant, whatsoever
they have been heretofore. From the
moment Jesus
pardons, receives, and sets to
work one who has long and deeply insulted
Him, we must pardon, “receive as a brother beloved,” and welcome as a
fellow-laborer that man. Nor
ever forget that to suspect and distrust a
moment too long, or to wonder
past believing, is to put ourselves into the
last position that we would wish
or mean to occupy. For our immovable
and gladdest creed is that Christ can do all things in human heart and
human life.
31 “Then had the churches rest throughout all Judaea and
Samaria, and were
edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and
in the comfort of
the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.” So the Church… had
peace,
being edified for then
had the Churches rest,… and
were edified, Authorized
Version and Textus Receptus; was multiplied for were multiplied, Authorized
Version and Textus Receptus. It is thought that the attention of the Jews to
the
progress of the faith of Jesus Christ was diverted at this
time, and their
active hostility stayed, by the still greater danger to the
Jews’ religion
which arose from Caligula’s intention of placing a statue
to himself as a
god in the holy of holies. Thus did God’s gracious
providence intervene to
give rest to His harassed saints, and to build up His
Church in numbers, in
holiness, and in heavenly comfort. Especially Paul had
another breathing-time,
which may have been the more required if, as is thought,
one at least
of the five scourgings mentioned
in II Corinthians 11:24 had been
inflicted at
same passage and been undergone in the dangerous coasting
voyage from
Caesarca to Scleucia.
The Ethiopian Changes His Skin (vs. 1-31)
Of all the remarkable events in the history of human
psychology, probably the
most remarkable is the
conversion of Paul, the memory of
which is continually
celebrated in the Church on the 25th of January. It may be
viewed:
lived. He preached the gospel
with astonishing vigor and success.
Numerous Churches were founded
by him in Asia and
facts as certain as facts can
be. He wrote Epistles also to different
communities of Christians, and these
writings are extant at the present day.
By these writings we can form an
accurate judgment of Paul’s
intellectual faculties, of the
force of his character, of the extent of his
knowledge. By these writings we
can form an estimate of his moral
qualities. We can judge for
ourselves whether, on the one hand, he was a
fanatic, an impostor, or a
knave; and, on the other, whether he was
one of
the noblest,
sincerest, and most high-minded men with whom we have ever
come in contact.
These writings, besides exhibiting an
unquenchable zeal
for the Christian faith, lasting
through years of toil and suffering, tell us
also distinctly, though
incidentally, of a time when the writer was as
vehemently opposed to the
Christian faith as he afterwards became
attached to it. They contain,
too, clear evidences of that education in the
Jews’ religion, and that
impregnation with Jewish doctrine and tradition,
which were likely to have had
the same influence upon his mind which the
same causes had upon the minds
of so many of his ablest and most learned
fellow-countrymen. They also
display those qualities of disinterestedness,
courage, and decision, which
make it to the highest degree improbable that
he should have changed his mind
lightly or without conviction or due cause
for doing so. But he did change
from a vehement and fierce persecutor to a
preacher of unrivalled zeal and
power, and a daily martyr of unsurpassed
patience and constancy. But
these same Epistles also tell us, still
incidentally but also still distinctly,
the cause of this change. It was nothing
less than the visible appearing
and the audible voice of the Lord Jesus
Christ Himself, of Him whom he knew to have been crucified, but whom
he
now saw and heard
in HIS EFFULGENT GLORY, living and potent IN
INEFFABLE
MAJESTY! It was that sight,
too bright for mortal eyes, and
that voice of exquisite
tenderness in its complaint, which had in an instant
overborne his unbelief and
melted his obdurate heart, even as his body was
swayed in terror to the ground.
Did Paul know, or did he not know, the cause
of his conversion? Did he invent
a lie, or did he speak the truth, when he
wove this history, or allusions
to it, into his Epistles to the Galatians, the
Corinthians, the Philippians,
and Timothy? But even if it were possible to
doubt the man whom we know as we
know
corroborated and developed by a
contemporary writer of unimpeached and
unimpeachable accuracy and
truth. He gives us in this chapter his own
account of this wonderful
conversion, and he reports to us two several
accounts of it given by Paul
himself — when on his defense before the
people at
noble and saintly friend? or did
he speak the truth which he had such
abundant opportunities of
accurately knowing? There is no fact in history
more certain than Paul’s
conversion, and there is no more unanswerable
evidence of the truth of
Christ’s gospel than this same conversion
grounded upon the revelation in
the way to
LEADING DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. What was it which
arrested the persecutor in
his furious course, which turned back the whole
current of his thoughts,
which wrought in him that noble inconsistency, that
holy apostasy from his
previous convictions, which have placed him at the head
of Christian teachers and
confessors? It was the clear knowledge conveyed to
him by his own senses of
sight and hearing that Jesus Christ of Nazareth was
risen, was alive, was
glorified. He knew that He had been
tried at the bar of
Pilate, condemned,
crucified, buried. He had thought that sentence a just one.
He had thought that that
life, closed in ignominy and shame, was closed for
ever, and that his own
Jews’ religion had thereby triumphed and been confirmed.
Now he knew that God had
reversed that sentence, and had raised Jesus from the
dead, and declared Him in
so doing to be His own eternal Son, both Lord and
Christ. His previous convictions
were thus refuted by the fact of the life
and glory and Godhead of the
Lord Jesus. The truth of the mission of Jesus
Christ was thus in an instant
established by irrefragable proof. Henceforth
Jesus Christ was
his Lord, his Guide, his Teacher, his Master, his almighty
Savior. Henceforth his own body and soul, his life, and all his
powers, his
whole capacity of doing and
suffering, were Christ’s, wholly and only
Christ’s. Here then we see, as
in a glass, what our own religion must be. It
must consist in a full assurance
of faith that Jesus Christ is risen and lives
for ever in the power of His
Godhead, and in the consecration of ourselves
to His service in the power of a
personal love, devotion, and attachment —
those of a person to a Person —
to last while life lasts, and to be perfected
in the life beyond the grave.
OF THE MIND AND CHARACTER OF GOD, AS THEY SHINE IN
THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST. (II Corinthians
4:4) This is Paul’s own
view of it: “For this cause I obtained mercy,
that in me first Jesus Christ
might show forth
all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should
hereafter believe
on Him to life everlasting” (I Timothy
1:16). We have
here a pattern of the infinite, eternal
mercy of God. The threatening and
slaughter of the persecutor are
met and overcome by love. The ignorance
and unbelief which caused the
blasphemies and injuries are taken note of,
and these are weighed in the
scales of mercy and are forgiven. The electing
grace, the
predestinating love, brushes aside these obstacles, and the
blaspheming tongue is made
eloquent with adoration and praise, and the
breath which was once all threatening
and slaughter now breathes nothing
but the word of peace and
salvation. Such is the mercy and wondrous
grace of God our
Savior.
real. Prejudices, blinding prejudices,
may be real, and unbelief may have
some excuse, or at least some
palliation. It is not, indeed, blameless — it
never can be, because the single eye of a pure heart ought always to
discern the true light from Heaven wheresoever
it shines. Still, it may be
that, with real
conscientiousness, and under a mistaken view of duty, and
with a blinding devotion to
certain tenets of philosophy or religion which
have been received without due
care, and concurrently with a zeal for God
and for supposed truth, a man
may reject and even hate the truth. He may
mistake his own opinions for
Divine truth, and so be bitterly opposed to
whatever opposes them. And he
may misconceive of the truth and
ignorantly believe that it
sanctions this or that error inconsistent with the
fundamental principles of
righteousness and godliness. Had Paul from
the first really known Jesus
Christ, and had he known the worthlessness of
Levitical or Pharisaic
righteousness, he would never have been found in the
ranks of the enemies of Christ.
But he acted in ignorance and in unbelief.
When the scales fell off the
eyes of his understanding, the rebound of
his
spirit toward
his Lord was instantaneous. From this
we learn a lesson of
caution in judging even the
unbeliever. There may be some cause of his
unbelief which we know not of,
but which God knows, and will perhaps
some day remove. Then the
skeptic will come with a bruised and humble
spirit to Christ, and the
Ethiopian will change his skin.
The
PERIOD OF PROGRESS. “The
Churches had rest .... and were edified,
were multiplied.” The time of rest is too often one of inglorious repose,
of
unworthy indulgence, or even fatal
luxury and corruption. But when the
molesting hand of persecution is
taken away, it is possible for the Church
to put forth all
its strength — to enter on a path of unflagging activity, of
holy enterprise,
and of gratifying enlargement.
SENTIMENT OF SACRED AWE. It should always be walking “in the
fear of the Lord.” Love, trust, joy in Christ, should be the element in which
it lives; but it must never take
leave of its deepest reverence and awe. It
must walk “in fear,”
Ø
realizing the near
presence of its observant Lord, the Lord of
righteousness and purity
(Revelation 2:1);
Ø
remembering that it is
held by Him responsible for the extension of His
kingdom, for the conversion of
the world (II Corinthians 5:19);
recollecting that, if it should
lose its sanctity, there is no human power
by which it can hope to be
restored (Matthew 5:13).
SUSTAINED BY INFLUENCES WHICH ARE DISTINCTIVELY
DIVINE. “Multiplied by the exhortation [comfort, ministry] of the Holy
Spirit.” No perfectness of machinery, no eloquence of human
oratory, no
promptings of
emulation, no pressure of authority, no earth-born influences
of any kind or
number, will suffice to sustain a Church in living power. It
must be
multiplied by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It must secure the
teaching which is
animated by the Spirit of God; it must be listening to the
doctrine which is
communicated By the Spirit; it must have the indwelling
of the Spirit in
the minds and hearts of its members; it must be looking to
the ever-living
power of the Spirit to make all its agencies and operations
effectual.
AS A DIVINELY ERECTED STRUCTURE. The Church “was edified.”
built up; it rose as a structure
rises — gradually and in due proportions.
The
characteristics of the best
building — it should
Ø
attain to a stately,
should “multiply,” grow in numbers and in the extent
of ground it covers;
Ø
become more beautiful
in aspect; and
Ø
acquire increasing
strength.
The Relation between Edifying and
Multiplying (v. 31)
For the precise meaning and the New Testament use of the
term “edified,”
consult the Exposition. The “rest” secured for the
Church at this time
followed partly on the removal of Saul from the party of
the persecutors, in
which he had been the most active member; none seemed ready
to take up
the work which had so completely dropped from his hands,
and by his
secession the whole party was depressed and disorganized.
But it followed
chiefly on the fact that the attention of the Jewish rulers
was turned away
from the disciples to resist an attempt made by Caligula to
have his statue
erected in the temple at
nations, Churches, and individuals should be shown, and the
ways in which
they usually come may be pointed out. Their value is
illustrated in
connection with our text, from which it appears that when,
in a time of rest,
the Church was edified, it was found to be also multiplied;
or, to
express it in other forms, internal culture is the best
guarantee of external
success. We dwell on
two things.
Christian point of view, is a
new and spiritual life, with which our souls are
quickened by the Holy Ghost. But
in its beginnings it is young, feeble,
untested life, like that of the
young seedling or plant. Culture is demanded.
The young life must be nourished
into strength; and while the expressions
of the life, in leaf and branch
and flower, need to be watched and guided
aright, the gardener’s supreme
anxiety is to maintain and to increase the
vitality. And so, while apostles
give good counsel for the ordering of
Christian conduct, their
supreme anxiety concerns the culture of the soul’s
life. They would have their
disciples “grow in grace and in the knowledge
[experimental] of
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” It is to such forms of
"edification” that Churches are directed in their quiet resting-times.
Two
signs were given as indicating
that this “edifying” work was healthily
progressing.
Ø There was holy walking. “Walking
in the fear of the Lord.” Christian
conduct and
conversation was “as
becometh the gospel of Christ.” The
relations of
the members to each other were kindly and brotherly, and the
character of
the disciples was increasingly satisfactory.
Ø There were signs of heart-joy. The
disciples were evidently enjoying the
“comfort
of the Holy Ghost “ —
the inward sealing of the Spirit; the power
of His impulses
to righteousness, and that happy sense of adoption which
He gives. When
the soul is efficiently cultured, its signs are apparent in
these two
things:
o &