Acts 26:12–18

There are no mere repetitions in Scripture. Take the three accounts of the conversion of Saul. Even the most casual reader can see that the aim of each is quite different. The one in Acts 9 is the actual narrative of what happened, written with the pen of inspiration, so it gives the facts as history. The one in chapter 22 is Paul's own description of the change worked in his soul, spoken to the Jews in Jerusalem... The one we have in this chapter is also given by Paul himself — when standing before Agrippa. In this there are fewer details about his conversion, but a very full and precise account of his mission.

In Acts 9, we see a man on the highway to Damascus with a commission from the high priest to persecute the Jewish Christians. That was the only commission Paul received from man — an authority, not to preach the Gospel, but to stamp it out, if that were possible. But the Lord, in sovereign grace, did more than convert Saul of Tarsus. He sent him out, straight from Himself, as a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

Paul received his own special commission. He gives a very beautiful statement of it in his address to Agrippa, in Acts 26: "In this connection I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests." What a different "commission" he received before he entered Damascus!

Before his conversion, he did not have this happiness. His privileges as a Jew could not give it to him. He had a good conscience as a man, but it was badly informed. He did things against Jesus that he thought he ought to do... For the rest, he knew the religion of his fathers well. He was a Pharisee of the strictest sect, very active, and marked out for his zeal. He had studied under the teacher Gamaliel. The high priest gave him his orders (v. 12), and he was in open war with the Lord Jesus... With all our conscience, our religion, our learning, and the approval of the teachers of this world, we may be at open war with the Lord.

Favourable circumstances did not throw him in the way of the gospel. It was the very opposite: he had no attachment to the Christians and no lukewarmness toward the law. All his preferences were for Israel, all his prejudices against the gospel. Still, he had carried this to the very limit. With the authority of the chief priests he had sought to persecute them to death. Yet the grace of God rose above everything in the heart of Paul, whether religious ties or religious hatred.

He did not go about it half-heartedly; he did not hand out persecution in small doses, not at all — it was a whole-hearted, thorough, real desire to wipe out every trace of Christ and of Christ's people from the scene.

Now he recounts his journey to Damascus with the authority the chief priests gave him. But the light from heaven, brighter than the sun at noon, reduced their authority to nothing.

Paul was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. He bowed to the Lord. He was right, as became a man taught of God. He "declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance."

He is breathing out threats and slaughter. He is on his way to drag those simple, faithful Christians to Jerusalem, really for their murder. In one moment a light shines about him and those with him, brighter than the sun at noonday. Now, mark that! The noonday sun with us is often not very bright. Our sky is often murky. But picture the wonderful brightness of the Eastern noonday sun, when nothing dims it and it casts its rays over all the land. And yet that light was dimmed by a brighter light; and what was the mightier light? "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6)... That light brought this self-confident, self-righteous man to the end of his own self-will. Light from heaven did it. It was not an earthquake. It was not a lightning flash. It was not a hand that struck him. It was light that struck him down.

Never was sovereign grace so clearly shown... For what could more completely prove that Christ is everything to the one who believes? Up to that moment his legal zeal against the grace of God in Christ had blinded him. To that very man Christ reveals Himself. He sweeps into nothing all that a Jew boasted in and rested on. And He identifies Himself, in the glory of God, with the One Who died between two crucified robbers — the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

The light from heaven brought the whole company down into the dust, and not Paul only. Further, the voice was in the Hebrew language. This is remarkable. The earlier accounts tell us that his companions heard the voice, but it meant nothing to them. It was in their own language, yet they did not understand. It affected them all physically, but only Paul spiritually. Conversion does not turn on great sights or wonderful sounds. It turns on the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus showed Himself only to Paul, and in such a way that he discovered Him to be his Lord.

By now Paul had served the glorified Son of God for a quarter of a century. Here, in his defence before King Agrippa, he declared, "at midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun." In Acts 9, "a light from heaven"; in Acts 22, "a great light from heaven." Here, not a mid-morning light, but a light above the brightness of the noonday sun. The light had not changed. His grasp of it had changed. He had grown spiritually since that light shone on him and into his heart.

From then on, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ eclipsed everything under the sun for that man... Every excellent thing under the sun became to him only fit for the refuse bin!

"with authority and commission from the chief priests" — what a different "commission" he received before he entered Damascus!... Here is a glorious truth: believers are joined closely to the glorified Man in Heaven. The passage does not state it outright, but it implies it in a beautiful and powerful way.

What did that "Me" mean? It meant that the persecuted saints were every one of them united to Christ in glory by the Spirit who lived in them. They were members of His Body, that which He counts to be Himself, just as He had become their life. There had been nothing like this before. The Church came into this relationship at Pentecost, but this was the first hint of it. The whole truth of it was wrapped up in the words that fell so strangely from heaven on the ears of Saul.

Making excuses for the evil was useless; zeal for Judaism was zeal against the Lord. His own conscience had only fed that zeal. God had appointed those authorities, and centuries of honour surrounded them. Yet they had only approved and encouraged his efforts against the Lord. The Jesus whom they rejected was the Lord. The testimony they were trying to crush was His testimony.

Imagine hearing your mother tongue from glory. That is what Saul heard that day... When God speaks to a sinner, He always makes him understand. When God speaks to a man, He singles that man out.

The light from heaven brought the whole company down into the dust, not Paul only. Further, the voice was in the Hebrew tongue. This is remarkable. The earlier accounts tell us that his companions heard the voice, yet it meant nothing to them. It was in their own language, yet they did not understand. They felt it in their bodies, but only Paul was reached in his soul. The essential element in conversion is not great sights, nor wonderful sounds, but the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit.

This means that Paul was like a stubborn ox. His master wanted him to go one way, and pricked him with his goad — a stick with a sharp point at the end — to make him obey. But the ox kicked the goad, and the point went into his leg, and hurt him still more. Each time he kicked, the goad hurt more.

Saul of Tarsus no doubt flinched at the words, "It is hard for you to kick against the goads." At times the natural conscience of man feels this pricking and goading. Its zeal and eagerness is forced and unreal. There are stings in the conscience, that principle which sits in judgment on men's actions. A man may try to silence its voice with fresh zeal, but it never rests.

But it is the accepted time, the day of salvation. That voice, full of infinite compassion, once more falls on his ear: "It is hard for you to kick against the goads." Hard for you! What boundless mercy! Who of Adam's race would have cared how hard the path of his persecutor had been?... The Lord does not say, "It is hard for Me to have patience with you." He does not say, "It is hard for those poor afflicted followers of Mine to bear up under your relentless persecutions." No, no — "It is hard for you. You are the one to be pitied."

The Lord's words, "It is hard for you to kick against the goads," are found only in this account. His audience would understand them well, for the comparison was not unknown to Greek and Roman writers.

Saul had not seen the Lord — he had not followed Him when He was present in the flesh. The twelve apostles had known Him in the days of His flesh, and had seen Him disappear in the cloud. They knew by faith that He was seated at the right hand of God, but they never saw His glory with their own eyes. This is where Paul begins. He saw the Lord's glory, but did not know who He was. Of one thing he was certain: the glory and the voice of the Lord Himself had appeared to him. So he asks who this is, and the Lord replies, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting." He was not a man of the earth, nor the Messiah gone up to heaven, but the Lord of glory, still acknowledging Himself as Jesus, and also as Jesus of Nazareth.

Saul lay face down and asked, trembling, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came from glory: "I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting." That name was enough to draw from a Jew words and gestures of the deepest hatred. Yet the man from Nazareth was the Lord of glory, David's Son and David's Lord at the right hand of God! It was the name Saul had thought it his duty to fight with all his energy, the name he would gladly have wiped off the earth if he could.

His church is more than a valued and beautiful possession; it is a living thing, it is His body. Looked at this way, it is not a relationship between two, but an unbreakable unity. Christ and His members are one. Jesus of Nazareth, glorified and crowned in heaven, did not say, "Why are you persecuting Mine?" but ME. The words should stop us as they stopped Saul. There is a fullness in them that few have grasped. To persecute one saint of God on earth is to persecute Christ. To despise or neglect one saint of God on earth is to despise and neglect Christ.

Stephen's martyrdom and the persecution that follows show the world in its true character as a persecutor of the saints. At the conversion of Saul we learn a further truth: in persecuting the saints, the world is persecuting Christ. The Church is one with Christ in heaven, and He is persecuted in His members. This, as it has been said, is "the strongest expression of our union with Him — that He considers the feeblest member of His Body as part of Himself."

He had a good conscience as a man, but it was poorly informed: he did things against Jesus that he thought he ought to do. Upbringing so often twists the conscience — and this was his case. He followed its directions and obeyed its orders, and by that very thing he opposed Christ with all his might. In good conscience he did the greatest possible wickedness... We may have conscience, religion, learning and the approval of this world's scholars, and still be at open war with the Lord.

The heavenly light that streamed on the apostle was above all nature's light. Just as surely, the grace God showed that day eclipsed everything that was of man in his heart and past history. It all disappeared before the overwhelming strength of the goodness of God in Christ... The work was done. I do not say he already had all the peace and blessedness he would later enjoy. But at that moment the spiritual light of Christ entered, and it dealt with his conscience in all its depths. At once everything was stirred up, down to the very roots of his moral being, and underneath the good seed — the seed of everlasting life — was sown.

And then from glory came these touching words, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." Friend, He speaks to you tonight from glory... Perhaps you would not like to take that ground. Ah! you say, you did not laugh at that young fellow who said he was a Christian, did you? Oh yes, you say, I poked a little fun at him. Why? Because he was a Christian; that was why... What harm has Jesus done you, my friend?

Oh, think of that; look at the two things that come together there — "fallen to the ground," "rise." It is the man who is down that God can take up; down on the earth, down in the dust, truly, that is the man God can take up… Do you know what gives these words immense interest? Not merely the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, but that they were the last words Jesus ever spoke from heaven to earth. Acts 1 gives His last words on earth; Acts 26 gives His last words from heaven to man on earth.

The one we have in this chapter is also given by Paul himself — when standing before Agrippa. In this there are fewer details concerning his conversion, but a very full and precise account of his mission. Ananias therefore does not appear in this, for Saul's mission was from the Lord Himself, even as he says, in writing to the Galatians, "Paul, an apostle — not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead."

The word here translated "minister" is not the one often used in other passages, which means one who acts or waits in service. According to its use in the New Testament, it really means an appointed official servant… The Lord, who appeared to him, did give Paul an official place as His servant, because the mission He was about to send him on was personal to the apostle. No one else could carry it out.

We learn from this that he was to be a minister and a witness… the expression "witness" meaning that he was to display in himself what he ministered… I cannot imagine anything more wonderful than the testimony of a witness. Not all are called to be ministers, but I suggest that every believer is called to be a witness. And I am bold to say this: the most telling and weighty ministry today is the silent, quiet, but clear unfolding of this heavenly testimony in one's own person.

Here we find a sign from the very first that the things he had seen — this Christ in glory, and all that belonged to Him — were to be the subjects of his ministry. But not only those things. An ascended and glorified Lord would also make further revelations to this man in particular, appearing to him again and afresh to pass them on.

For this, another agent was raised up — a witness not only of resurrection life, but of ascension glory: the apostle of the Gentiles. He received no commission from Jesus on the earth, but from Jesus "taken up in glory." He was to witness above all to the glory to which Christ was exalted. The saints made alive by the Spirit were called to that same glory.

Moses had to build the tabernacle exactly to the pattern shown him on the mountain. In the same way, Paul was limited in his preaching to what he had seen and heard — to the things which he had received from the Lord… Everywhere, and at all times, he was to be faithful to his commission and its contents. He was never to let himself travel beyond it for one instant.

The word is not quite what our common Bibles give — "delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles." It is hard to see how "delivering" fits here. In this connection it was not so much a question of a rescue as of taking him out from the people and from the Gentiles. … It is also more than Peter speaks of in Acts 15, where God takes out from the Gentiles a people for His name. In the case of Saul of Tarsus the Lord speaks of taking him out from the Jew no less than the nations. It is therefore a separation to the new work of God from both Jew and Gentile.

Some have said that Paul was in fact taken out of Israel only, and not out of the nations. On that view the thought must be delivering, as in the common version. But if he were taken out from Israel, it was important to say that this was not to give him the mere position of a Gentile. You might think there are only these two places. But the Christian has another and heavenly place, and on earth is simply a pilgrim and a stranger.

The Lord's purpose was that he should be "taken out" from among the people, and the Gentiles. That is, he was to be separated from his own people, the Jews, and from the Gentiles too, so as to stand in a place distinct from both… We may perhaps say that these words were the first hint of the distinct place the church holds, called out from both Jew and Gentile. Paul was the first to be put in that place — the place into which all who believed the gospel he was commissioned to preach were brought.

"As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world." You can't send anyone into the world if he is in it already. I must be separated from it first, and then I can be sent into it. "I take you out from the people and from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you."

Separation from both best describes his position, and there is no need to stretch "to whom I send you" beyond the Gentiles. He was to be apostle of Gentiles, or of the uncircumcision, and as such he magnifies his office in Romans 11:13-14. The "I" is emphatic, and the adverb "now" is added only by inferior witnesses.

A better translation is, Taking you out from among the people and the Gentiles. The apostle had been a Jew. Now, for the purpose of his service, he was set apart from both Jews and Gentiles, taken outside of both, because he was about to be sent to both alike. His mission was from heaven, and in carrying it out he was to remember this, owning no distinction between people and people, or nation and nation. More than once Paul forgot the full force of these words; that is only too clear. His failure here led to his being taken to Rome as a prisoner instead of visiting that city as an apostle, though the Lord graciously overruled it for His own purposes. But we all know, in our smaller measure, how hard it is to remember that we have lost our nationality by being joined to Christ in His death.

The object of his mission is fully stated in verse 18. Notice first that he is distinctly sent. Every servant, whatever his service, must be both called and sent, and in this Paul is above all a pattern... But how was Paul to open blind eyes? His part was to proclaim the gospel of the glory of Christ. He was a witness of what he had seen, and he received power to carry on this blessed work. God's part was to make the light from His servant's message shine into the darkened souls of those who heard it. Man's part, for which he depended entirely on God, was to receive and accept the message. From this all blessing was to come — as the verse ends, "by faith in" Christ.

But how do we know that every man in his natural, unconverted state is blind? Because Paul's commission makes the very first thing the gospel does for him "to open his eyes." Paul was sent to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles — that is, to the whole human family — to open their eyes. This proves, by a divine demonstration, that all are blind by nature.

What do the words "to open their eyes" mean? Surely they involve discovering our own condition. A man whose eyes are opened comes to know himself, his condition and his ways. That is true repentance. It is a wonderful moment in a man's life when his eyes are opened.

The purpose of the message is "to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light." Light has come into the world. He who was its Light while He was in it has gone out of it again, rejected by it. Yet the light still streams from an open heaven, in principle as Paul saw it. So men only need to have their eyes opened to see it too. Here is their responsibility, and here too is their guilt: they love the darkness, as in our Lord's time, because their deeds are evil.

Not only is man — every man, Jew and Gentile — blind and in darkness. As if to crown it all, he is under the power of Satan. This gives a terrible idea of man's condition. He is the slave of the devil. He does not believe this. He imagines he is free. He thinks he is his own master. He supposes he can go where he pleases, do what he likes, think for himself, and speak and act as an independent being. But he is another's slave.

The power of Satan is broken, and the delivered one finds himself in the presence of God, at peace and glad. Like the man with demons in Mark 5, his chains are broken and gone. He is clothed and in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus.

The first blessing named is the forgiveness of sins. Why first? Because the first need of an awakened soul is to feel God's forgiving love clearing away guilt... Notice too that souls are turned to God so that they may receive forgiveness of sins. This is pure grace. It shows that forgiveness is waiting for those who come with repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, there is "a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me" — an inheritance, meaning all the blessings every believer will share with Christ and with His redeemed.

There was now a new, deeper, fuller sanctification. Israel's was outward — a matter of the body and of ritual. This one is living and genuine, through believing on Christ. It is the lasting result of a completed setting apart to God, from the Christian's starting point.