Acts 22:3-16, or 9:1-22. Psalm 117:1-2. Mark 16:15-18.
I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus was not just a turning point in Saul's life, who became Paul, but also perhaps the turning point of Christianity as we know it know. Paul's entire life can be explained in terms of one experience—his meeting with Jesus on the road to Damascus. In an instant, he saw that all the zeal of his dynamic personality was being wasted, or rather all his zeal transformed into something larger than him or his religion.
Many people don’t realize that Paul never met the historical Jesus, who was only a few years older. He hardly ever quotes Jesus directly. In almost all of Paul’s preaching and writing, he refers to the Eternal Christ Mystery or the Risen Christ rather than Jesus of Nazareth before his death and resurrection. The Risen Christ is the only Jesus that Paul ever knew! This makes Paul a fitting mediator for the rest of us, since the Omnipresent Risen Christ is the only Jesus we will ever know as well (see 2 Corinthians 5:16-17). And, be certain, we won’t be the same after encountering the Risen Christ.
Paul had acquired a zealot’s hatred of all Jesus stood for, as he began to harass the Church: “entering house after house and dragging out men and women, he handed them over for imprisonment” (Acts 8:3). Now he himself was “entered,” possessed, all his energy harnessed to one goal—being a slave of Christ in the ministry of reconciliation, an instrument to help others experience the one Saviour.
One sentence determined (or at least gave shape to) Paul's theology: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). Jesus was mysteriously identified with people—the loving group of people Saul had been persecuting and treating them like criminals. Jesus, he saw, was the mysterious fulfillment of all he had been blindly pursuing.
From then on, his only work was to “present everyone perfect in Christ. For this I labour and struggle, in accord with the exercise of his power working within me” (Colossians 1:28-29). “For our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction” (1 Thessalonians 1:5).
Paul’s life became a tireless proclaiming and living out of the message of the cross: Christians die baptismally to sin and are buried with Christ; they are dead to all that is sinful and unredeemed in the world. They are made into a new creation, already sharing Christ’s victory to rise from the dead like him. Through this risen Christ the Father pours out the Spirit on them, making them completely new.
So Paul’s great message to the world was: You are saved entirely by God, not by anything you can do. You are loved totally by God. In whatever condition you are now. You can't merit God's love and salvation by your good works. Saving faith is the gift of total, free, personal and loving commitment to Christ. The good news is that it is already given to you: it's all yours for the taking!
Paul is undoubtedly hard to understand. Try his Letter to the Romans, for instance! His style often reflects the rabbinical style of argument of his day, and often his thought goes way above our heads. But perhaps our problems are accentuated by the fact that so many beautiful jewels have become part of the everyday coin in our Christian language.
At any rate, Paul's conversion teaches us one great truth. To follow any religion (even Christianity) blindly, without the spirit of love and sacrifice, could make us even mass-murderers, as Paul's fundamentalism portrays. Laws do not give life, only love gives life. Laws can only give us information, and even helpful information, but they cannot give us transformation. Until people have had some level of inner religious experience (a meeting with the Risen Christ), there is no point in asking them to follow the ethical ideals of Jesus. Indeed they will not be able to understand them.
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