at mid-day, on the way, I saw, O king, a light above the brightness of the sun, shining from heaven round about me and those who were journeying with me.
Paul stands before King Agrippa and tells his conversion story for the third time, adding a detail the earlier accounts leave out: the light outshone the sun. What was that light, why did it come at midday, and why did it change only one man out of the whole travelling party?
Paul is careful about the hour. The light came not at night but when the sun was at its strongest.
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.
The light fell on a man carrying official papers to arrest believers.
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.
Paul says the light shone around him and those who journeyed with him. His companions stood inside the same blaze. They walked away unchanged.
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.
Compare the three accounts in Acts and the description grows. Commentators read that growth as a change in Paul, not in the light. The quotation below follows an older translation.
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.
The light also reset what Paul counted valuable.
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!
Paul had set out carrying authority from the chief priests. He arrived carrying something else.
"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.
- Midday. The light struck at the sun's strongest hour, so no one could put it down to a trick of dusk or a dream.
- Above. The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ outshone that sun. No light in nature could match it.
- Around. It fell on the whole travelling party. But shared light is not shared sight: only Paul heard, understood, and came away changed.
- Within. The light that shone on him also shone into him. In his own telling it grew: "a light from heaven," then "a great light," then brighter than the sun.
- After. He set out with a commission to arrest believers. He left that road belonging to the One he had persecuted, counting everything under the sun as worthless beside Him.
And, when we were all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? [it is] hard for thee to kick against goads.
Paul stands in chains before a king. He tells the story of the Damascus road again — and only here does he report the words about the goads. Two questions follow. Why does the risen Christ call the persecuted disciples Himself? And what does a farmer's cattle-prod have to do with a religious man's conscience?
The voice does not accuse Saul of harming Christians. It accuses him of harming a Person. One writer presses on that single word:
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.
Saul had the nation's authorities behind him. Their approval is what makes the discovery so crushing.
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.
The voice speaks to him in the language of his childhood.
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.
Yet the men travelling with him fell down too, and the words went nowhere. Hearing alone was not enough.
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.
The image comes from farm work, and it explains itself once you see the animal.
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.
Something had already been prodding his conscience:
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.
Notice who receives the pity here. It is not the Lord, and not the followers Saul was persecuting.
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."
This audience would catch the picture at once.
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.
- The goad. A driver's sharpened stick. Every kick drives the point deeper, so resistance only deepens the wound.
- The voice. From the glory a Person says "Me." The disciples Saul was hunting are members of Christ's Body, counted by Him as Himself.
- The language. Heaven spoke in his mother tongue. The others heard the same words and understood nothing. Sights and sounds do not convert; the Spirit does.
- The collapse. His conscience, his law and his official backing all pushed him one way. That way turned out to be war against the Lord.
- The mercy. The complaint is not "hard for Me" or "hard for them," but "hard for you" — the persecutor is the one being pitied.
And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, *I* am Jesus whom *thou* persecutest
Paul is on trial, retelling the day on the Damascus road when a voice from heaven answered him. That answer joined two things Saul never joined: the glory that had thrown him down, and the hated name of Jesus with the people he was hunting.
Saul knows he is facing God. He does not yet know the name.
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.
The reply names Him. It is the name Saul was trying to wipe off the earth.
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.
Saul had never touched Jesus. He went after His followers. The answer erases the difference.
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.
The same truth shows what the world is doing when it attacks Christians.
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."
Saul was sincere. His conscience was clear, and he was still fighting Christ.
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 reply is a rebuke, yet it threatens nothing. Something else won Saul over.
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.
Writers apply the words past Saul to anyone who has treated Christians with contempt.
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?
- Glory — Saul sees the Lord of glory before he knows the name, and asks who it is.
- Name — the answer gives the name he hated most. The man from Nazareth he wanted wiped off the earth is Lord at God's right hand.
- Me — the Lord does not say "Mine" but "Me". He counts the feeblest believer as part of Himself.
- Conscience — conscience, religion and learning did not save Saul. They left him at war with the Lord.
- Grace — grace won him, not force. The goodness of God in Christ reached his conscience to its depths.