“The churches of Judea, which are in Christ, kept hearing, “The man who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.” Galatians 1:23
Saul on the Damascus Road: “Bent on checking a plague that threatened Israel (Saul) was constrained to turn right around and become a champion of the cause which, up to that moment, he had been endeavoring to exterminate… (henceforth) he was dedicated to building up that which he had (previously) set out to destroy…” F. F. Bruce Apostle of the Heart Set Free
Saul of Tarsus Does a One-Eighty
In 1973, I did a one-eighty. Driving my 1964 Chrysler four-door, returning to Cortland, New York, from Southern California. With five other people in the car, I went into a slide on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was not yet dawn when we commenced to climb a mountain pass where the roads turned icy and snow-packed. Even at highway speeds, I was comfortable on such surfaces and normally nimble at the wheel, able to manage slides and ride them out. As a raw youth, car slides were part of my daredevil joys growing up in Oregon. I would find a curvy gravel back road and speed into a curve, inducing a slide, and then manage it as close to ninety degrees as possible before aligning to the straightaway. But on this occasion, no fun and games were in my veins. The reckless teens were behind me. Near the crest of the mountain pass, there was a slight curve and patches of hard-packed snow, but something else as well – patches of black ice. Usually, extra weight helps a vehicle grip the road in snow and icy weather, but if and when the car begins to go into a slide, the weight can work against you. It was going into this slight bend that I suddenly felt the black ice and the car helplessly drifting to the right. All my instincts developed from my youth leaped into play. Braking is the first impulse, but braking accentuates the slide. Instinctively, I stayed away from the break, let up on the gas, and slightly curbed my front wheels so as to go with the slide, not away from it. Usually this works. I thought I was going to pull out of the slide, but the full load worked against me. Add to this the slight bend and the slight downward slant hampered my recovery. At the last second, realizing I wasn’t going to bring the car out of the slide, cinching down on the steering wheel, I pulled myself up out of the seat and jammed my right foot, shod with my trusty Red Wing Cowboy boots, down on the brake with all my might. Instantly, the car did a 180 and came to rest on the shoulder parallel with the road, pointing in the exact opposite direction. At that precise moment, an eighteen-wheeler crested the hill and wisped by us, traveling full speed. I was not just stirred, I was shaken!
On the Damascus Road, Saul of Tarsus did an existential and missional one-eighty. He was headed one direction in life (evidently making admirable progress) and near the conclusion of his week-long journey, big trouble suddenly stole a march on him and overcame him, and one might state, threw him into a slide that lasted 72 hours (it’s not over till it’s over”). Paul lost control, not merely of his purpose for coming to Damascus, but of his life purpose and mission, in fact, all that he understood himself to be and be about. This happened near the conclusion of his journey to Damascus when Jesus, in all his glory, appeared to him a short distance from the city gate. But while this direct encounter with the Lord caused him to immediately lose control, the out-of-control movement of his life did not cease for a full 72 hours, during which time he did not eat or sleep. Only at hour 72 did the vehicle called “Saul of Tarsus” come to rest, pointing in the exact opposite direction his entire life had been traveling up to that point in time.
In this meditation, I argue that when this Damascus Road encounter occurred, he was left between heaven and the deep blue sea. This direct encounter took away Saul’s mission and subverted the beliefs it was founded on, but it did not immediately give him a new mission and a new ground of belief to rebuild on. One thing was for sure, for weal or for woe, on the Damascus Road, Saul fell into the grip of the divine power and glory of Jesus.
Listening to the accounts of this happening on the Damascus Road, it reads like an arrest, inquest, and indictment all wrapped into a few terse words with an opaque, cryptic charge tacked on at the end. Saul, the zealous Pharisee commissioned by the high priests to use force to arrest, capture, whip, stone, beat, and imprison members of the Way, is himself arrested in his tracks, made to gaze into the face of the glorified one, forced to hear charges made against him before being struck blind. Yes, at that encounter on the Damascus Road, there is an opaque, terse reference to something more coming, but this is not unpacked or developed. Only at the end of the 72 hrs does it make its debut via Ananias, whom the Lord sends to Saul (note: it is true in one of Luke’s three renderings of this event in Acts, the one depicting Paul’s speech before Agrippa, Luke / Paul collapses the Street Called Straight climax into the Damascus Road encounter. Why? because these timing gaps were not germane to the point Paul was making before Agrippa. On the Damascus Road Saul and Jesus share a terse exchange on the Damascus Road about the future. It begins with Saul crying out, “What do you want me to do?” as if, for a long time, subconsciously, he was on the run from what he was really supposed to be doing. As I will note later, there is also the following phrase spoken to him at the time of this direct encounter: (Saul) “it’s hard for you to kick against the pricks (“my yoke is easy, my burden is light”). Saul of Tarsus is subconsciously battling with the Spirit and his destiny and calling!
I believe the spread of 72 hours is helpful and significant for grasping the transition Saul went through. On the Road to Damascus, Saul suddenly lost control and was thrust into a slide in which he would not and could not recover. This slide continued in slow motion for 72 hours in a room off the Street Called Straight inside Damascus city. Only after 72 hrs did the crisis Saul was thrust into come to a rest. In other words, for sure, Saul suddenly lost control of his life as he was living it on the Damascus Road, but it would be 72 hrs before he regained control of his life. And but this control would not be of a kind he practiced before. Saul (who Luke would commence to call Paul after his first telling of this story) henceforth proceeded to live suborned into and aligned with the higher will and Apostolic commissioning of Jesus. He was now enlisted in the very mission he had been enlisted in to destroy. This happened when a member of the Way named Ananias entered his room and, standing beside “Saul of Tarsus” audibly restored his sight, after which Ananias clarified why he had seen Jesus with his eyes (“the Just One”) and heard his voice from heaven on the Damascus Road when he cryptically referenced something he must do. Only at this Ananias intercession did that something he must do come out into the open – namely, he had been chosen to bear witness to Christ to the Gentiles.
“Something Is Happening Here, Mr. Jones, But I Don’t Know What It Is” (Bob Dillion)
Something of momentous significance for the career of the WAY was occurring in this Damascus Road apprehension and the Street Called Straight 72-hour reflection, and its climax with Ananias. The religious ground floor needed to mainstream the Gospel of the Jesus is Lord message to the wider Gentile world was lacking. In short, until Paul Gentiles converted to Christ still had to become Jews. It was Paul’s job to free the “Jesus is Lord and Savior” Gospel that commenced at Pentecost from its Torah -temple ties inside Judaism, where it existed as a sect. Paul created an “extra nomos (Torah) ecclesia“(church-people of God body). It would be naive to think that this would occur without the new movement creating a radical Christocentric theological ( i.e., religious) foundation.
The Existential and Missional Reasons For Saul’s Arrest.
Lest we have missed anything necessary to unpack the significance of what went down, it is necessary to linger further. Ananias told Saul why he was arrested on the Road to Damascus. When Jesus physically presented himself to him in his glory, it was because he had been chosen by “the God of our fathers” to bear public witness to the Gentiles. After this, he was instructed to rise, eat so as to restore his strength, and be baptized and wash away his sins.
At the end of these seventy-two hours, Saul’s entire life, all that it consisted of, including his passionate anti-Christ religious mission and the Torah foundation of his life, was lost for good, and his life became aligned in the exact opposite direction that he had been going. What happened?
From Darkness to Light: Seventy-Two Hours of Saul’s Life
Saul was immediately blinded when Jesus appeared and spoke to him on the Damascus Road. After seeing the risen Lord, the brilliance totally blinded him, and he remained blind in that darkness for 72 hours, during which time he did not sleep or eat but prayed, the wheels of thoughts no doubt furiously turning. Sometimes, literal darkness, cutting off the outward gaze, serves as a catalyst for inward reflection. But this darkness was like no other. Saul almost surely turned every stone of his life journey, starting many years back, feeling after the anomalies, the mistakes, and wrongs in his life when and where he blunted his conscience. No doubt he recalled the verses of Scripture that he had used over and over to defend and justify his mission to stamp out the Jesus is Lord and Christ movement. In times like these, myriads of threaded memories neatly packaged and stored in the recesses of his mind suddenly break free and present themselves to one’s consciousness as if the time of their captivity had expired and the moment to speak the bare truth, that had long been neatly domesticated and cocooned, had arrived. Like a beast takes to the saltlick, Saul returned to every word and phrase uttered to him by the glorified Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road. One phrase in particular, however, stuck in his mind: “It is hard (Saul) for you to kick against the pricks”.
The mind is all too often in subtle bondage to the perversity of the spirit that has taken shape within a person. This perversity often subdues reason, Scripture’s witness learned from youth and rehearsed, conscience too is dulled, even heaven’s footprints often fail to give one pause in life’s journey. Johnny Cash’s lyric comes to mind “I hurt myself today to see if I still feel”. Nothing is to be dreaded more than the day when. “Kicking against the prick” (i.e., resisting the Spirit’s attempt to awaken one to light and truth over darkness) will on our part succeed in quieting and silencing that which has drawn near to free us for God’s truth and purpose. When the self succeeds in squelching truth, light, and conviction, the soul is in danger. It is the truth that sets one free. John writes in his Gospel, “you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free”. The seat of our problem is in the heart. Jeremiah states that “the heart is deceitful above all things…who can know it”. Even the self deceives itself. The Damascus Road was the end of Saul, “kicking against the pricks”. The subtle sophistries of the mind were once and for all exorcised.
In this verse about Saul kicking against the pricks, we change seats. We cease to be onlookers, voyeurs of Saul’s unique experience, but fellow travelers on the Road to Damascus. Suddenly, we too understand and know Saul. Saul is perversely invested in something contrary to the will of God. Saul can give himself or a fellow inquirer a thousand reasons justifying his actions, and so can we. Often, God ups the ante as he did with Saul. If we succeed like Saul, we also will lose, but if we lose control of our justifying narrative like Saul did in his 180 slow-mo slide, we will “succeed”.
I submit that Saul, at this juncture, is tired. Why? Because the text states, “Its hard to kick against the pricks”. If it’s easy, one has a long way yet to go, or God has already left (“grieve not the Holy Spirit whereby you are sealed”). “Come unto me all you who are weak and heavy laden, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, my yoke is easy, my burden is light”.
The Unique and the Common
The Common
The Damascus Road was not the first divine encounter Saul had, but it was like none before. The earlier ones were subtle and not game changers. And these resistances to God’s moving on his mind and spirit, we understand. We, like Paul, are in this sense contemporaries. Moreover, many souls going down the road of life in the wrong direction have suffered a subtle or not-so-subtle challenge such that s/he could not persist onward but must turn around and go the opposite direction! As a raw youth, Martin Luther headed off to study at the university to become a counselor of the law in obedience to his father, and also with the desire to please his father. Midway, a bolt of lightning hit the tree directly in front of him, and he instantly cried out to St Anne for God’s mercy and instantly changed course and went into the monastery, obeying the conviction he had suppressed.
The Unique
But there is another side of Paul’s story that was as subtle as a train smash. Saul did not merely come face to face with the risen glorified Christ; he did not merely have a close brush or an amazing spiritual experience. Christ, clothed in his glory and power, arrested him, charged him, and made a claim on him for weal or woe; at that moment, Saul did not immediately know for sure. One thing was clear – henceforth, it was Jesus with whom he had to deal. Saul’s life was, from that moment on, caught in the inexorable grip of Jesus and his power and authority. There was no altar call, no confession, no formal repentance, no call to faith and decision. Paul, in his own words, was “apprehended” (Philippians 3:12), then commanded, and at the conclusion of those 72 hours, commissioned to undertake a new mission. Paul’s Christian beginning was very muscular. How to get inside this muscularity? Directly after the Diet of Worms, Martin Luther, returning to Wittenberg, was kidnapped and spirited away in the dark to a castle. Soon enough, Luther learned it was Fredrick the Wise, his protector, who arranged this ‘kidnapping’ for his own safety. This piece of history reminds me of the word Paul uses in his words, scripted to the Philippians, translated as “apprehended”. Quite apart from Paul’s permission or will, God made a vertical non- non-negotiable claim on this man who was called Saul of Tarsus, soon to be known as Paul. In this, we see the power and freedom of God.
An Apostle is a unique foundational entity in God’s purpose. They see and then believe and proceed to witness to the rest of us who do not see but hear and believe and proceed to live by faith and hope. We are all standing on the shoulders of the Apostles. Yes, of course, all the Apostles had to proceed to live by faith, hope, and love, suffering the contradictions between faith and sight. When I was about 19 years old, I learned N T Greek and translated 1 John 1:1-3. These verses, in my estimation better than any other in the N T, poetically describe the exceptional, unique experience of the Apostles. Paul’s direct physical encounter with the risen Christ and his Apostolic charge to witness to Christ was a belated part of this Easter encounter and commissioning.
But Paul’s Apostleship possessed a unique purpose. As noted, the Gospel under the shepherding of the Apostles and especially the leadership of James, the half-brother of Jesus, was in danger of remaining inside the ecclesial piety and purity marked out by the Torah, a messianic sect somewhere on the outer boundaries of Judaism. Moreover. As I hope to discuss in a later Part Two of this discussion, Saul of Tarsus may in fact have been Jerusalem’s top Priestly officials’ merciless answer to that part of the WAY Jesus sect infecting Judaism from the inside, especially those who increasingly relativized the temple and the Torah. Almost certainly, the apex leaders of Jerusalem saw in Saul of Tarsus a zealous, highly educated Pharisee who embodied in his person both the avant-garde Hellenistic (Greek) culture inherited from his Tarsus upbringing and also his extensive Hebrew Torah training in Jerusalem. It was this combination that rendered him a suited candidate to purge Judaism from the more radical fringe of this WAY movement. Almost certainly, Saul’s fitness for the mission he embraced for Judaism and its vanguard leaders included his distinguished Pharisee credentials. But the matter, as not a few scholars have noted, goes deeper than the above sketch.
It is to be remembered that the Jerusalem church possessed ethnic tensions from the get-go. There were the Hebrews and the Hellenists (the natives and the immigrants), and the latter (on account of their cultural depth within the Greco-Roman culture) were the immigrant liberals in the Apostolic Church. Stephen was a Hellenist; in fact, likely all the decons’ so-called waiters of tables were Hellenists. Stephen was stoned, and the charges were that he spoke against the law and the temple. And Saul was there at his stoning, almost certainly not as an observer, but overseeing the nasty deed, fully justified because the Torah foundation of Judaism, ostensibly being subverted by Stephen, must be defended.
Here then is the pinch of the point regarding the peculiarity of Paul’s apostleship. Following Scripture’s and F F Bruce’s assessment that Saul of Tarsus did a 180, I am not merely using fanciful dramatic language. Saul of Tarsus possessed the perfect background, upbringing, professional training, and Pharisaic alignment and bilingual bi-cultural make-up necessary to purge Judaism of this Jesus is Lord and Saviour WAY scourge. Ironically, this entire unique make-up, all of it A TO Zed, once transformed by his Damascus abduction and commissioning by Jesus Christ, provided him all the religious, Biblical and cultural insight and learning needed to carry the nascent Hellenist-Stephen Gospel vision of the Way’s destiny to transcend Judaism and embrace the world. The seeds were almost certainly in Stephen but Paul’s apostleship was needed to bring these seeds to reality. Almost certainly, Saul of Tarsus was motivated to purge Judaism of a Jesus Christ witness to truth that had begun to take shape in its more radical disciples. According to his enemies, Stephen spoke against the Torah and Temple. But Paul in his teaching and ministry, cogently argued that the covenantal people of God rested on a new foundation. In the space of 72 hours, this highly educated Pharisee (who studied under the famed scholar Gamaliel) embraced the position of these former WAY Hellenists, some of whom he had stoned. Moreover, he became the movement’s foremost advocate for a transition to a new foundation -Jesus Christ for the People of God. But he was not merely one of eventually many such advocates; single-handedly, he plumbed the elemental makeup of the existing Christian Gospel/Evangel preached and taught by the Apostles that preceeded him and relaid the foundation of the ecclesial people of God such that Gentiles and Jewish believers shared common fellowship in and through Jesus Christ alone outside the gate-keeping perogatives of Torah purity and piety. Without this unique work, “Christian could have never proceeded to realize its radical inclusivity and universality. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to state that ‘christian ecclesia’, whenever and wherever it draws its truth and witness from this Pauline transformation of the Apostolic Gospel, impregnated as it is with inclusivity and universality, again and again is set free to transcend all parochial, ethnic, national, political, cultural and religious attempts to domesticate and quarantine it.
existence and faith 