Stopped in Your Tracks
“As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’” — Acts 9:3–4 (NIV)
There are few things more humbling than being extremely confident and extremely wrong at the exact same time.
It is bad enough when this happens over something relatively harmless. You confidently drive twenty minutes in the wrong direction. You insist that you remember exactly where you parked the car and then spend the next half hour wandering around a parking garage (I have beef with parking garages). You give someone directions before realizing halfway through your explanation that you have definitely invented a road that does not exist.
There comes a point when confidence stops being helpful if it is attached to the wrong thing.
Saul (later Paul) seemed to know something about that. When Acts 9 begins, Saul is not questioning his choices. He is not spiritually curious. He is not quietly wondering whether there might be something to this whole Jesus thing.
He is hunting Christians. Persecuting.
“Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples.” — Acts 9:1 (NIV)
That is quite an introduction.
Saul had already approved of Stephen's execution in Acts 7. Afterward, he began destroying the church, entering homes and dragging Christian men and women off to prison (Acts 8:1–3). By Acts 9, he has asked the high priest for authorization to travel to Damascus so that he can arrest any followers of Jesus he finds there and bring them back to Jerusalem.
Saul is not accidentally opposing Jesus. He is committed to it.
What makes his story even more interesting is that Saul apparently truly believed he was doing the right thing. Paul later describes himself as extremely zealous for the traditions of his ancestors (Galatians 1:13–14). He was a Pharisee, deeply educated in the Jewish law, and fiercely committed to what he believed honored God.
He had passion. He had knowledge. He had conviction. He had religious credentials.
He was also completely wrong about Jesus.
That should probably make all of us at least a little more humble. We tend to treat sincerity as evidence of truth. If I believe something strongly enough, defend it confidently enough, or have held the belief long enough, it can become difficult to imagine that I might need correction. But you can be sincere and mistaken. You can be passionate and misguided. You can know a lot about Scripture and still miss what God is doing directly in front of you.
Saul certainly did - He was traveling toward Damascus with letters in hand and a plan already in motion when suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. Saul fell to the ground and heard a voice ask:
“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” — Acts 9:4 (NIV)
Saul responds with a question:
“Who are you, Lord?” — Acts 9:5 (NIV)
And then comes the answer that changes the entire direction of his life.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” — Acts 9:5 (NIV)
Imagine being Saul in that moment. Chills. The Jesus you believed was a fraud is speaking to you from heaven. The people you have been imprisoning were right. The movement you have been trying to destroy belongs to the Messiah you thought you were serving God by opposing.
There really is no graceful way to recover from that.
Saul had spent his journey looking for followers of Jesus — Instead, Jesus found him.
I love that detail because Saul's conversion is one of the clearest pictures in Scripture of just how far the grace of God can reach. Jesus did not wait for Saul to clean himself up. He did not wait for him to become slightly less murderous. He did not wait until Saul had developed a healthier attitude toward Christians, attended a few services, asked some good theological questions, and generally made himself into a more promising candidate. Saul was on his way to persecute the church when Jesus stopped him. Paul (formerly Saul) would spend the rest of his life knowing exactly what kind of man Jesus had saved.
Years later, he writes to Timothy:
“Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy.” — 1 Timothy 1:13 (NIV)
Then he says:
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” — 1 Timothy 1:15 (NIV)
Paul never seems to get over the fact that Jesus saved him. And Christians today should never get over that either. We can become so familiar with the language of salvation that grace starts sounding normal. Of course God loves me. Of course Jesus died for me. Of course my sins are forgiven. We have heard it enough times that the scandal of it can start to wear off.
Then we read the story of Saul. He is breathing murderous threats, carrying arrest warrants, and heading toward another city to imprison Christians. And Jesus says, essentially, I want him.
Not because Saul's sin was insignificant. Because Christ's mercy was greater.
There is no person who has wandered so far that God has somehow lost the ability to reach them. There is no past so ugly that it intimidates the grace of Jesus. There is no amount of failure that makes someone too complicated for redemption. Saul's story destroys our categories of who seems likely to become useful to God.
If the early Christians had been asked to make a list of potential missionaries, Saul would probably not have made the first round of interviews. In fact, when Jesus later tells a disciple named Ananias to go find Saul, Ananias basically responds by reminding the Lord who Saul is.
“Lord, I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem.” — Acts 9:13 (NIV)
Which is an understandable response. Jesus, just making sure we are discussing the same Saul, you know, the one who is murdering your people??
But the Lord tells Ananias:
“This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.” — Acts 9:15 (NIV) (emphasis added).
The persecutor would become a preacher. The man attempting to stop the Gospel would spend the rest of his life spreading it. The person dragging Christians into prison would eventually be imprisoned for preaching Christ himself! Only Jesus writes and redeems stories like that.
But before Saul could become the man who carried the gospel throughout the Roman world, he had to be stopped on the road.
After his encounter with Jesus, Saul opened his eyes and discovered that he could not see. The irony is almost impossible to miss - Saul had been walking around spiritually blind while completely convinced that he could see clearly. Now he physically could not see at all. Acts tells us that for three days he was blind and did not eat or drink (Acts 9:9). The man who had entered the story with authority, letters, plans, and a destination suddenly had to be led by the hand into Damascus.
Saul had planned to enter that city as the man in control. He entered it helpless.
There are moments when God allows the things we have relied on to become drastically insufficient. Our understanding does not explain what is happening. Our plan no longer works. Our ability cannot solve the problem. Our certainty disappears. Something we thought was secure suddenly is not.
And we hate that. Most of us would prefer spiritual growth to arrive through a well-organized curriculum, preferably with advance notice and minimal inconvenience. Sometimes it does. Sometimes, more often, God teaches us gently through Scripture, community, prayer, and ordinary obedience.
And sometimes life brings us to the end of ourselves in ways we never would have volunteered for.
We should be careful here, because Scripture does not teach that every illness, loss, disappointment, or painful circumstance is God's punishment for some specific sin. We live in a fallen world where suffering exists, and Jesus himself rejected the simplistic assumption that personal suffering always corresponds directly to personal wrongdoing (John 9:1–3).
But God wastes nothing.
Pain has a strange way of exposing what comfort lets us ignore. It can reveal how much control we thought we had. It can uncover what we actually trust. It can strip away distractions. It can force questions we have successfully avoided. It can remind us that our bodies are fragile, our plans are temporary, and our understanding is limited. That does not make suffering good. It means God is capable of meeting us in it.
Saul lost his sight temporarily, but his entire vision of reality was being rebuilt. For the first time, he could see Jesus for who He actually was.
And three days later, God sent Ananias to him.
“Placing his hands on Saul, he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’” — Acts 9:17 (NIV)
I love that Ananias calls him brother. Think about how much grace is packed into that one word. A few days earlier, Saul would have arrested Ananias. Now Ananias lays his hands on him and calls him family. That is what Jesus does —The Gospel did not simply give Saul a new set of beliefs. It gave him an entirely new identity, a new family, a new purpose, and a new direction.
Acts says that something like scales fell from Saul's eyes. He could see again, he was baptized, and almost immediately he began preaching that Jesus is the Son of God (Acts 9:18–20).
Same intensity — Completely different direction. Jesus did not erase Saul's personality and replace him with someone blandly pleasant. The boldness was still there. The intellect was still there. The determination was still there. The willingness to suffer for what he believed was still there.
But now it belonged to Christ.
That is transformation!
Salvation is not Jesus helping us become slightly improved versions of the people we already planned to be. It is surrender.
Paul later writes:
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” — Galatians 2:20 (NIV)
The man who once organized his life around destroying the name of Jesus would eventually organize his entire life around proclaiming it.
And the same gospel that transformed Saul still transforms people.
Most of us will not encounter Jesus through a blinding light on a highway. We may not have a conversion story dramatic enough to require multiple chapters of Acts. That does not make the transformation less real. Every Christian has been rescued from sin and brought from death to life (Ephesians 2:1–5). Every Christian has been transferred from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of Christ (Colossians 1:13). Every Christian can say, in one way or another, I was headed somewhere without Jesus, and He intervened.
And sometimes, even after salvation, we still need Him to stop us in our tracks.
We can become convinced that our plan is the right one. We can confuse our preferences with His direction. We can hold onto assumptions that Scripture needs to correct. We can move so quickly toward the destination we have chosen that we stop asking whether Jesus is actually leading us there.
Saul's story is a reminder that surrender sometimes begins with being willing to admit, I might be wrong — Wrong about God. Wrong about another person. Wrong about what obedience should look like. Wrong about the life I assumed I needed. Wrong about what I thought God could use. Wrong about who I thought was beyond His reach.
Fortunately, Jesus is not limited by our ability to see clearly. He knew exactly who Saul was when He met him on that road. He knew what Saul had done. He knew where Saul was going. And He also knew who Saul would become when his life was surrendered to Him.
The grace of Jesus reached a persecutor on the road to Damascus and turned his entire life around. So no, you are not too far gone. Neither is the person you have already decided will probably never change.
And whatever direction you are currently moving, Jesus is fully capable of stopping you, correcting you, and sending you somewhere entirely different. Sometimes getting stopped in your tracks is exactly how God puts you on the right road.
bytaylormcgee
