But Saul, still breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, came to the high priest
Stephen has just been stoned, and Saul helped it happen by word and deed. Now he is not cooling down. He is hunting believers further afield. The verse raises the question the whole chapter answers: what does God do with a man at the peak of his hatred?
The word "still" ties this verse back to what came before. Saul was not reacting to something new. He was continuing a campaign, and Jerusalem was no longer big enough for it.
Saul makes himself the apostle of Israel's hatred against the disciples of Jesus, the servants of God. He is not content to hunt them down in Jerusalem. He asks the high priest for letters, so that he can go and seize them in foreign cities. When Israel is in full opposition to God, Saul is the eager missionary of their malice. He acts in ignorance, no doubt, but he is the willing slave of his Jewish prejudices.
Notice where Saul goes for backing: to the high priest, the top of the religious system. Nothing in his life was irreligious. That is what makes the picture frightening.
As a man he had a good conscience, but it was poorly enlightened. He did things he thought he ought to do against Jesus. Conscience is so often distorted by education, and that was his case. He followed its directions and obeyed its orders, and through that very thing he opposed Christ with all his might. He did the greatest possible wrong, and he did it in good conscience… 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.
The verse calls them "the disciples of the Lord." Saul had not reckoned with who owned them.
Saul of Tarsus had been persecuting, in ignorance, the saints of God. He persecuted the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. He had not thought that he was "breathing threats and murder" against the brothers of Christ. Then the Lord from heaven owned the people Saul was trying to destroy as His brothers — yes, as part of Himself. How great his distress must have been.
This was Saul's condition on the day mercy reached him.
What was there on Saul's part to bring him to God up to that moment? Was there any — I will not say merit, but the least repentance? — even any earlier regret? Was he not in the middle of his crusade against the name of Jesus? Was he not "breathing threats and murder" at the time? Who was so full of religious pride? Had he not the highest authority of that day on earth? He had no idea that this is no safeguard. It may be the greatest illusion, as it was in his own case.
He set out with letters to arrest believers. What happened next was not an improvement of Saul. It was a takeover.
And here we find Saul, helping on Stephen's death by word and deed. Spurred on by these events, and still breathing threats and murder, he asked the high priest for letters to carry on his war against Christ. The high priest was quick to help him in his zeal, and gave them. While he was doing this, the Lord took him up. Saul was the apostle of the hatred of the human heart, and of God's chosen people, against God and against His Christ. The Lord took him up to make him the apostle of His sovereign grace, which he had experienced in his own person, and of the glory of Christ which he had seen.
Saul's case was not filed away as an exception. He later gave the reason himself: no one afterwards should think they are beyond reach.
Saul was therefore taken up as a pattern convert, a pattern convert of the day of grace. He wrote later that he obtained mercy so that in him first Jesus Christ might show the whole of His longsuffering, as a pattern for those who would afterwards believe on Him for eternal life (1 Tim. 1:16). Our blessed Lord displayed the whole of His patience towards Saul of Tarsus, the chief of sinners. So all future ages would know His heart of grace, and the worst of sinners, as people say, would take courage to trust Him.
- Still — his hatred had not cooled after Stephen. Jerusalem was not enough, so he chased believers into other cities.
- Sanctioned — the high priest handed him letters. His conscience, learning and religion all backed him, and he was at open war with the Lord.
- Seized — the ones he hunted were "the disciples of the Lord," and the Lord from heaven owned them as part of Himself.
- Saved — no repentance, no regret, no prayer. Grace reached him mid-crusade, and his religious authority was no safeguard at all.
- Sample — the Lord made the apostle of man's hatred the apostle of sovereign grace. Saul stays on record as the pattern, so the worst of sinners dare trust Christ.
and asked of him letters to Damascus, to the synagogues, so that if he found any who were of the way, both men and women, he might bring [them] bound to Jerusalem.
Saul does not act on impulse. He goes for paperwork: official letters that let him hunt down believers in a foreign city. Two things stand out here — the religious authority he leans on, and the strange name the first Christians carried.
Saul's request was not empty. His letters carried real weight far outside Judea:
The high priest and elders in Jerusalem held the same kind of spiritual authority over the synagogues of nearby countries that the pope and cardinals have since claimed over the churches in communion with Rome. They issued orders. Over their own people they had real power: they could expel a man from the synagogue, have him whipped, or put him in prison. When they had reason to use this authority, they sent out messengers, called apostles, carrying letters of command to the local synagogues.
Damascus lay far outside Judea, and that distance is part of the point:
He who was to go out to all the world with the gospel could not, in earlier days, rest in his legal zeal within the bounds of Jerusalem or Judea.
The phrase Saul used for his targets is unusual. It suited something that matched neither of the religions around it:
At this time Christianity had no name. It had come into the world, but was not of it, nor of its ways. It was not Judaism with its ceremonies, instituted by God, though now corrupted by man. It was not heathenism, with its wild rites of uncleanness and abomination. It was a strange and heavenly thing, governed by no principle that governed the world. And it had no name. People called it "the way."
A warrant could identify these people by one vague word. One writer explains what made that possible:
Saul begged the high priest for permission to arrest the Christians in Damascus. He knew one thing was enough: the written authorisation only had to describe them as men and women of "the way"… to be a Christian was a way of life, and not only in certain respects but in every aspect of life. What is more, the walk of the believers, alone and together, was so distinctive that people could see it as a particular "way".
Saul's warrant made no exception for women. And prison was not the end of the plan:
Before he sets out on his strange mission he goes to the high priest and asks for official papers… What a task! What a business! To bring men and women, who loved Jesus, bound to Jerusalem, and force them to blaspheme His holy name or die.
Nothing in the verse hints at hesitation. One writer looks past Saul's record to what filled his heart:
His outward life was blameless. He was careful to keep every detail of the law's ritual. Yet in his heart he held the bitterest desire for revenge against those who had accepted Jesus of Nazareth as Lord and Christ… As far as we are told, he never once had a doubt about his course… It is certain, in any case, that he had never sought Christ.
The verse sets up a collision. Saul wanted religion's highest approval for a campaign of death. On the road he met something else:
This was the man who was full to the brim with deadly hatred. He wanted the highest religious approval for a war to the death against every man or woman who called on the Lord Jesus. Armed with the high priest's letter, he came near Damascus. Then a light out of heaven flashed round him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice accusing him of persecuting the One he refused to own as Lord.
Set beside other conversions, this one stands out:
The conversion of the dying robber was a striking display of fitting though sovereign grace; that of the living pursuer of the saints to prison or death was far higher.
- Letters — Saul asked the high priest for written authority to the synagogues in Damascus. Jerusalem's leaders truly held power over Jewish communities abroad: they could expel, whip and imprison.
- Distance — his zeal would not stay inside Jerusalem or Judea. The man who later carried the gospel to the world first crossed borders to stamp it out.
- The Way — the faith had no name yet. A warrant could still find its people by their walk alone, because that walk was so different.
- Men and women — his warrant spared neither sex. He meant to drag believers to Jerusalem and force them to blaspheme the name they loved.
- Grace — he had never once sought Christ. Yet the light from heaven found him, and the conversion of this living persecutor stands higher even than the dying robber's.