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.
But as he was journeying, it came to pass that he drew near to Damascus; and suddenly there shone round about him a light out of heaven,
Saul is at the peak of his campaign against the followers of Jesus, almost at Damascus, when heaven stops him. Two small words carry the verse: "suddenly," and "from heaven."
The verse catches Saul mid-journey. Who sent him, and how hard he was driving himself, sharpen what happens next.
Here we see the most striking instance of his zeal for the Jews' religion. The damage done among believers in the Lord Jesus in Judea was not enough for him. He persecuted them even to foreign cities. His authority and commission came from the high priest, the chief priests, and the whole council of the elders. His zeal was so unbounded that he allowed himself no midday rest. While the sun was at its strongest he pushed on his way, and had come very near his goal. We see him in the pride of his greatness, when suddenly he is struck to the ground by a light greater than the brilliant sun.
Paul described that light again years later. His own words give the measure of it.
Commenting on it later, the Apostle described it as "a light from heaven, brighter than the sun." Since it was midday, that would be the sun at its most brilliant. The sun may shed its rays of light, heat and life-giving properties on the natural body. But it takes a greater light out of heaven to affect the soul.
That brightness had a source, and the source was a face.
He is breathing out threats and slaughter. He is going to drag those simple, faithful Christians to Jerusalem, really for their murder. In that moment a light brighter than the sun at noon shines about him and those with him. Picture the Eastern noonday sun, casting its rays over all the land in undimmed splendour. And yet a brighter light dimmed it. What was that 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." Where did that light come from? It came from the face of the Man in glory, and the brightness of that face eclipsed the sun at noon... It was light from heaven that struck him down: not an earthquake, not a lightning flash, not a hand.
The hour of day and the men walking beside him answer anyone who calls this a vision inside Saul's head.
The hint in Paul's later account is that it was "about midday," more precise than Acts 9:3. This makes the vision far more striking. It was not a trance, but an open fact. The light which shone around him out of heaven outshone the sun at midday, in the presence of men who were travelling with him. Deception was impossible.
The light stopped more than Saul's body. What fell with him was his own will.
Occupied in this way, he approaches Damascus. There, at the height of an unbroken career of self-will, the Lord Jesus stops him. A light from heaven shines around him, and wraps him in its dazzling brightness. He falls to the earth, and hears a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" The glory that threw him to the ground, together with that voice, left no doubt: the authority of God was revealed in it. His will broken, his pride overthrown, his mind subdued, he asks, "Who are you, Lord?"
Saul was not alone on the road, and what his companions saw was not what he saw.
The Lord had His eye on him. They all fell to the earth; they all saw the sudden light; Saul alone saw the Lord. All heard a sound, but not the voice of Him who spoke to Saul... He was to be an eyewitness of the glory of the Lord, and a witness to the words which He had personally spoken to him. But it was the glorified Lord. He had not known the Lord in His humiliation; he was to begin with the glory.
- Suddenly — the Lord met Saul at the peak of his rage, pressing on without even a midday rest, close to the city.
- Light — the flash outshone the noonday sun; the sun reaches the body, but only a light from heaven reaches the soul.
- Face — the brightness came from the face of Jesus Christ in glory. Paul said the same light has shone in believers' hearts.
- Fact — it happened at midday before witnesses, not in a trance; deception was impossible.
- Glory first — Saul's will, pride and mind collapsed at once. He had not known Christ in His humiliation, so he began with the glory.
and falling on the earth he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?
Saul is on the road to Damascus to arrest believers. A light drops him to the ground, and a voice speaks his name twice. The question is not "why are you persecuting them?" That one word, "Me," carries the weight of the verse.
The words came to Saul in the language he had grown up with.
"I heard a voice speaking to me, and saying in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" Imagine hearing your own mother tongue from glory. That is what Saul heard that day… And be sure of this, when God speaks to a sinner, He always makes him understand… When God speaks to a man, He singles that man out. The man is like a wounded deer. A deer hunter goes out, and a whole herd may pass by, but he takes aim at only one. The wounded deer then leaves the herd and goes off alone to die. When the Holy Spirit convicts a man of his sin, he gets alone with God.
The Speaker had every right to end Saul's life on the spot.
How completely grace is joined with the authority that so plainly belongs to the glorious Speaker! And how unanswerable is the question! It might have been a sentence of judgment, but it seeks only the soul's own judgment of itself.
Our instinct expects judgment to fall on such a man.
With our natural thoughts about God and His ways, what would you expect Him to do with a wretch like Saul? He was breathing out threats and murder against the disciples of the One he hated so terribly. Of course, you say, almighty power would sweep such a plague off the earth… But how different from all this natural thinking was His way with poor Saul. God will stop him — but with what? With the pit? No, with glory. A light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shone around him. At midday, when the sun is at its brightest, something brighter still stopped Saul.
Everything turns on the pronoun. Three words were possible; only one carries the full truth.
The voice did not say "Mine," nor even "us," but "Me." "Mine" would imply a company of people who belong to Christ — true indeed, but not the whole truth. "Us" would imply a company of people associated with Christ — also true, but not the full truth. "Me" means a company of people in union with Christ, and so closely joined to Him that to touch them is to touch Christ.
The question also holds a puzzle Saul could not solve.
"Why are you persecuting Me?" was the question. But Saul had never seen Him. How could he on earth persecute One in heaven? That question contained a truth, a revelation. This was the first glimpse of the Body of Christ, and it came, as was fitting, from the Head Himself. "Me," He said — not "My people," not "My saints," but "Myself."
He was on that road out of conviction, not carelessness.
What a revolution this brings about in his whole being! What a discovery of what man is at his best before God! All his strict conscientiousness, earnest religiousness, and blameless outward walk made him the most open enemy of Christ in glory the world had ever seen.
The name behind the voice was the last one Saul expected.
Fallen to the earth, he heard a voice charging him with persecuting the One he could not admit to be the Lord. The astonished Saul learns, to his utter confusion before God, that it was Jesus — Jesus persecuted in His own, who were one with Him.
The reach of "Me" does not stop at persecution.
The words should arrest us as they arrested Saul; there is surely a fullness in them that is little understood. 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.
- Light. A light brighter than the noon sun stopped a man who was sure he was right. His religious zeal had made him the most open enemy of Christ.
- Voice. The Lord named him twice in his own language. When God speaks to a man, He singles him out and makes him understand.
- Question. What could have been a sentence of judgment came as a question. It sought Saul's own verdict on himself. God stopped him not with the pit, but with glory.
- "Me." Not "Mine," not "us," but "Me" — the first glimpse of the Body of Christ. Believers on earth are so joined to Christ in heaven that touching them is touching Him.
- Now. The same word reaches forward: to hurt, despise or neglect one of His people today is to do it to Christ Himself.
And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And he [said], *I* am Jesus, whom *thou* persecutest.
Saul is on the road, breathing out threats against the disciples of Jesus, when a light from heaven stops him. He answers with a title — "Lord" — before he knows the name, and the answer changes everything he believed.
Saul asks for a name. The way he asks tells you his will has already given way.
"And I said, Who are you, Lord?" He does not say, "Who are you?" No, he asks, "Who are you, Lord?" In a moment he senses it: I am in the presence of One who knows all about me. I am in the presence of One who Himself is God. He knew very well who it was; though, perhaps, he dared not mention His name. He was in the presence of God — in the presence of the exalted Son of Man. "Who are you, Lord?" His will breaks, once he recognises the Lord.
Three words undo a lifetime of religious effort. If the voice from the glory is Jesus, Saul must ask what his religion was worth — its high priest, its ruling council, all of it.
What a revolution this word caused in that mighty heart! It overthrew his confidence in man and in self, down to the foundations — everything his life had been building up with such zeal. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." It was the Lord, beyond doubt. He declared He was Jesus, and Jesus was Jehovah. He dared not doubt any longer: to him it was self-evident. If Jesus was Jehovah, what then had his religion been? What had the high priest or the Sanhedrin done for him?
Saul had never laid a hand on Jesus. He had hunted His followers. Yet the Lord speaks of them as Himself.
The Lord of glory has His members on earth. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." It was Himself: those poor disciples were bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh. He looked on them and cherished them as His own flesh. Two truths are tied to Saul's conversion: the glory, and the oneness of the saints with Jesus, their Head in heaven.
The same union means one thing for a believer and another for a persecutor.
These few words hold the oneness of the church with Christ, its Head in heaven. Here is the seed of the blessed truth of the "one body." To be at war with the saints is to be at war with the Lord Himself. Blessed truth for the believer, but how solemn for the persecutor!
You would expect judgment. What comes instead is light.
Think how we naturally picture God and His ways. What course would you expect Him to take with a wretch like Saul? He was breathing out threats and slaughter against the disciples of the One who was the object of his terrible hatred. Why, of course you say, Almighty power would sweep such a plague from the earth. But how different from all this natural thought of God was His way with poor Saul. Stop him God will; but with what? With the pit? No; but with glory. He comes not to hurl him into the bottomless pit, but to take him up, in the riches of grace and mercy.
Some older Bibles add "it is hard for you to kick against the goads" here. Commentators say these words belong to Paul's own later account, not to Luke's.
Luke gives us the first account of his conversion (Acts 9). From that record we should leave out these words: "It is hard for you to kick against the goads. And he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what will You have me to do? And the Lord said to him." The passage should simply run: "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting; but arise, and go," and so on. That the Lord did say, "It is hard for you to kick against the goads," Paul declared at Caesarea.
The picture comes from ploughing. It shows why resisting hurts the one who resists.
Goads were the pointed sticks that drove oxen on while ploughing. When the oxen kicked against them, they only hurt themselves. The Lord applied this picture to Paul when he was struck to the ground at his conversion.
- Light first. God stopped the persecutor not with the pit but with glory — the arrest was already mercy.
- Lord first. Saul bowed to the speaker's authority before he learned His name. The will bows first; the mind catches up after.
- Jesus. The name he was trying to wipe off the earth answered him from heaven. His whole religion collapsed in one sentence.
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- Both ways. That union comforts the believer and warns the persecutor. Touching the saints is touching Christ. Kicking against the goad only wounds the one who kicks.
But rise up and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.
A man who set out to arrest Christians is lying blind in the road. His first words ask for orders. The risen Lord gives him no doctrine and no career, only an address: get up, go into the city, and someone there will tell you the rest.
Saul's question is not curiosity about the future. Commentators hear in it a broken will. They set it beside the confident offer of another disciple who did not yet know his own heart.
He said, trembling and astonished, "Lord, what will You have me to do?" This time it is not the answer of another who did not yet know his own heart — "Lord, I will go with You," and so on. No, that was the will of man. It is rather, "Lord, what will You have me to do?" This soul was converted to Christ. Here was the will of man broken; the will of God alone allowed. This was the instinct and the voice of obedience — the first mark of the new man.
The record here does not include Saul's question; he reports it himself in his later account. Yet the Lord's reply counts on a heart already set on obeying. That obedience runs ahead of any settled peace about forgiveness.
In his own account to the Jews he tells us what he said: "What shall I do, Lord?" (Acts 22:10). The inspired historian does not quote it here, though he gives it later where it mattered. But in any case the Lord counts on obedience. He counts on it even before Saul could be expected to grasp the doctrine, or to rest in peace on the sprinkling of His blood… The newborn soul may not yet know that he is cleared of all guilt. Even then his heart is made up to obey. He does not obey through fear of punishment. Sovereign goodness draws him, and he submits to God's word… But even an apostle must be told what he must do; he cannot discover it for himself.
The man who had been hunting the Lord's people had every reason to expect a death sentence from heaven. The command he heard was a reprieve, and he never forgot it.
What must it have been to him to hear that comforting command, "Rise and enter the city"! The penalty of immediate death, with everlasting ruin to follow, was not to be measured out to him. This event stayed vivid in his memory. No wonder, then, that he could write in later years: "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost."
The whole of Paul's later usefulness is traced back by one writer to this single sentence spoken on the road.
He cried to Him in astonishment and submission: "Lord, what will You have me to do?" In that prayer we find the secret of all his later effectiveness as a servant of that Lord to whose will he then fully surrendered himself. He abandoned his own will so that the will of Christ should be supreme in his life and ways. That was the chief feature in this servant of the Lord, as it should be in all.
The Lord could have answered Saul on the spot. Instead He sent the answer through another believer. Commentators draw two lessons from this. One sees a check on independence:
How perfectly natural, then, that he should ask the Lord what he should do. But the Lord did not give him instructions independently of His own followers. He is told to go into Damascus, and there he would be told what he was appointed to do. Blinded by the light for the time, he needed the help of others to find his way.
The other notices who that helper was — not an apostle, and not the leadership in Jerusalem:
Here again was a striking break with all that had gone before among the apostles. The Lord commanded no return to Jerusalem. Saul must enter Damascus. There he would learn what had been appointed for him to do — not from an existing apostle, still less from the apostolic body, but from a disciple of no high position. This is how grace reigns: have we really learned this?
The reply did not end Saul's trouble; it opened three days of darkness. That gap was itself part of his training for the ministry ahead.
He asked what the Lord would have him do. The answer was a command: "Rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." He had to wait for more instruction, and for deeper soul-searching, before he could enter the enjoyment of peace and deliverance. He was to be a chosen vessel for ministering the truth of God. So he had to learn from his own experience the difficulties souls face in passing out of darkness into light.
- Arrested. The voice from heaven gave no sentence. It gave a command: get up and go. That was mercy to the man who called himself the foremost of sinners.
- Surrendered. His question marks a will broken; where another had once said "I will go with You," Saul now asks only for orders.
- Sent. The road gave him no answer. Christ sent him into the city to hear it from someone else — dependence built in from the first hour.
- Served by another. Commentators differ here. One says Saul could not stand apart from God's people. Another says grace passed the apostles by and used a disciple of no high position.
- Shaped by waiting. Blindness and delay stood between the question and the answer. The future teacher of struggling souls learned the darkness from the inside.
But the men who were travelling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but beholding no one.
The men travelling with Saul to Damascus stood inside the same light and heard the same voice from heaven. Yet they came away with nothing. Two questions follow. What did they hear? And why does Paul later say in Acts 22:9 that they did not hear the voice at all?
One Greek word covers what Saul heard and what his companions heard. The form of that word marks the difference between them.
The word often means 'voice', and that is the right translation in verse 4, where Saul heard plainly what the Lord said to him. Here his companions did not hear a single word clearly, as Acts 22:9 tells us. Yet they did hear that someone was speaking. So 'sound' seems the more accurate word for what happened. A small difference in the form of the Greek phrase confirms this. The genitive case, which points to a part, appears where the physical effect was incomplete. The accusative appears where the words came home in power.
This verse and Acts 22:9 look like a clash. The writers quote Acts 22:9 in an older translation, which reads "they heard not the voice." Their answer is simple: hearing a sound is not the same as catching the words.
Acts 9 says that Saul's companions heard "a voice." Chapter 22 says that "they heard not the voice of Him that spoke to me." So they heard a sound — which really was the "voice" — but they could not make out the words spoken; they did not hear them. The Lord's communication was to Saul alone, and he alone received it. The same thing happened in John 12. A voice came from heaven to our blessed Lord in answer to His prayer, "Father, glorify Your name." Those who "stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spoke to Him." They also heard the voice, but did not understand it.
They saw the light but no person, and heard a sound but no words. That half share had a purpose: they could confirm the event without owning the message.
His travelling companions were witnesses to the truth of the vision, but did not know of the revelation entrusted to Paul. The bright light shone around them, but they did not see the Lord. They heard a voice, but not the words of Him who spoke. Paul was a witness of what he had seen and heard. Paul's companions were able to testify to the vision, which was a real thing, and not an invention of Paul for his own glory.
These men shared the road and the light, and none of it changed them. One writer marks the gap between watching an event and hearing God speak to you.
Others were with him when the brightness of the glory of the Lord Jesus struck him to the ground. These men "saw indeed the light." They saw many of the outward things that had stopped this furious zealot. But as he himself says, "they heard not the voice of Him that spoke to me." Here is the grand point. The voice must speak "to me." "The God of glory" must appear "to me," before I can live as a pilgrim and stranger in this world. Faith that is national or in the family is not enough. Only personal faith makes us real witnesses for God in the world.
Here the men are standing, yet Paul's own retelling puts them on the ground. Commentators do not claim certainty; one offers a reconstruction from the story.
Paul, telling the story before Festus and Agrippa, says that all had fallen to the earth before he heard the voice speaking to him (Acts 26:14). Here is one explanation drawn from the narrative. The light startled them. They heard a voice they could not make sense of and could not explain. The company might well have stood speechless, as if stopped suddenly in their course. The next moment they were face down on the ground, and the conversation between the Lord Jesus and Saul took place.
God can aim a voice so that only one person takes in its meaning. One writer carries that over to the Lord's call at His coming.
At the conversion of Saul, his companions heard a voice — that is, the sound of a voice. "But they did not hear the voice of Him that spoke to me," that is, the meaning of the voice. So will it be when the Lord Himself descends from heaven. All His own will hear the shout and understand what it means. If others hear it, it will only seem like the roll of distant thunder.
- Sound. The companions caught the noise of a voice, but not one clear word. The Greek marks that gap with a different form of the same word.
- Word. Saul alone received the words, because the Lord spoke them to him and to no one else.
- Witness. What little they saw and heard made them honest witnesses that the vision was real. The revelation itself stayed with Paul.
- Personal. Sharing the road and the light saved nobody. Faith does not pass down from nation or family. It comes when the voice speaks to me.
- Selective. God can send a voice that only its intended hearers understand. The same will hold when the Lord calls His own at His coming.
And Saul rose up from the earth, and his eyes being opened he saw no one. But leading [him] by the hand they brought him into Damascus.
Saul left for Damascus hunting the followers of Jesus, with letters from the high priest in his hand. He reached the city blind, holding someone else's arm. Commentators read both the blindness itself and what it showed about the man.
Commentators explain his blindness as the effect of a brightness his eyes could not take.
When he rose up, Saul turned out to have no power to see — blinded, we may well say, by excessive light. So they led him by the hand into Damascus, and for three days he saw nothing and neither ate nor drank. A deep work went on in a soul able to feel grace and truth as deeply as he could judge himself by the light of God. That light had exposed the empty wickedness of religion that is all outward form, even at its best. It had brought the zealous missionary, armed with power to investigate and punish, to where Job of old was brought — to hate himself in dust and ashes.
His companions stood in the same light and walked away seeing:
He obeyed the command to rise up. He had strength to walk, but he could not see. The dazzling glory of the light from heaven had blinded him. So his companions led him by the hand and he entered the city. They had seen the light, but were not blinded. He alone had seen the Lord Jesus on that occasion.
Older translations say "he saw no man"; the ESV says "he saw nothing." Either way, commentators read the darkness over his eyes as a picture of his soul.
It was, without doubt, real blindness. But that blindness showed the state of his soul at that moment. Until his glorified Lord met him, he thought he saw clearly. He had thrown himself into persecution with all the energy of his strong will. He was sure he was serving God by hunting out the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Now everything had changed. The light he thought he had turned out to be complete darkness, so he could see nothing. He was helpless too, and depended on his own servants for help. The man whose name struck fear into timid disciples arrived at his destination as helpless as a baby!
He had planned how he would enter Damascus. The way he came through the gate turned that plan inside out.
He set out on his journey like an officer sent to hunt people down. No doubt he thought the Christians at Damascus would be easy prey, as so many in Jerusalem had been. In fact he entered the city as a captive, led by the hand until he reached the house of Judas... He entered with the letters from the high priest that authorised his commission. He never delivered them. Another commission, just given to him, had replaced the old one. And he could not refuse to obey it.
The same contrast is drawn between the two ends of his journey:
What a difference between Saul of Tarsus as he left Jerusalem, and the same Saul as he entered Damascus! He left Jerusalem breathing out threats and murder against the disciples; he entered Damascus a blind, helpless man, led by his companions, his physical condition a picture of his mental state, his rage and his purpose completely overthrown.
That hand had carried letters from the high priest. Now another hand leads it.
The first thing we notice about the hand of Paul (or Saul) is this: another took control of it. He was led by the hand. This man's hand had held the authority of the Jewish ruling council against the name of Christ. Now we see him bowed to the will of another. That is an important thing for us to notice. If we are to serve, we must know what it is to have our wills subdued. We cannot serve well with a weakened sense of the Lordship of Christ.
The blindness was not the end of the story. The same glory that closed his natural eyes gave him a sight he never had.
Human eyes could look at the lowly Babe of Bethlehem, could look on the Man of Sorrows... but His ascension-glory is beyond the perception and grasp of mere humanity. His enemies fell to the ground as dead in the presence of the light of it, a radiance brighter than the noonday eastern sun. They saw the light and were afraid. Saul was blinded by the glory of that light. Yet its moral perfection shone into his heart, by the power of the Holy Spirit, "to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
- Light first. The glory of the risen Christ, brighter than the noon sun, took his sight. Too much light blinded him, not too little.
- Light exposes. What he had called clear vision turned out to be darkness; the blank over his eyes matched the state of his soul.
- Light overturns. The man sent to hunt believers down entered Damascus as a captive. His letters were never delivered, and a new commission replaced the old.
- Light subdues. The hand that once carried the council's authority is now the hand another leads. A servant's first lesson is a subdued will.
- Light gives sight. The same glory that closed his eyes shone into his heart, giving him the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
And he was three days without seeing, and neither ate nor drank.
Saul is led into Damascus a beaten man — blind, fasting, and silent for three days. Scripture never records what he thought in that room. Yet commentators find in these bare details the picture of a soul pulled apart and remade.
His blindness was real, and it matched what had happened inside him. The man who was sure he served God now had nothing left to see by.
As he explained later, he "could not see because of the brightness of that light" which had shone around him, and into his soul, from heaven. It was, no doubt, real blindness. But it was a blindness that showed the state of his soul at that moment. Until his glorified Lord met him, he thought he saw clearly. He had thrown himself into persecution with all the energy of his strong will, and he was sure he was serving God by hunting down the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Now everything had changed. The light he thought he had turned out to be complete darkness, so he could see nothing. What is more, he was helpless. He had to depend on his own servants to lead him by the hand into Damascus. The man whose name struck fear into timid disciples arrived as helpless as a baby!
God had a purpose in shutting him off from everyone around him for those days.
But he was blind. This was so that the inward work could be fully done in him, and so that he could feel the immense change in his soul before God in its true power, with no hindrance or interruption from man.
He did not choose to fast. He could not eat, because his settled confidence had just collapsed.
It is a mercy from God when a false peace is smashed up. The great bitterness that follows is not pleasant, but it is still the way to God. See Saul of Tarsus here, three whole days unable to eat or drink. When a man goes off his food like this, his mind must be in deep turmoil. The fact is, Saul had made a terrible discovery. For all his blameless life and religious zeal, he was at heart an enemy of God and His Son. The best man of his time saw himself as "the foremost" of sinners!
Commentators see more here than distress. They see a passage through death into new life.
Being blind, nothing distracted his mind, and his thoughts were not even turned aside to food or drink. Before his service began, Ezekiel had sat among the captives at Chebar and "sat there overwhelmed among them seven days" (Ezek. 3:15). Saul sat overwhelmed in Damascus for only three days, but his experience went far deeper... In those three days he plainly passed through a spiritual process of death and resurrection. Those days laid the foundations in his soul of what he later put like this: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).
Saul's timetable, though, is not a rule. The order and the length differ from person to person.
Sometimes a person gets forgiveness and peace before he learns the killing power of the law... Saul was in such a state that for three days he neither ate nor drank. I do not doubt it was with him deep exercise of soul; but there is, of course, no prescription as to time.
Blind and fasting, cut off from company, he was not cut off from God.
Blind, and fasting for three days and three nights, he remained in the house of his host. We do not read a word about visitors or sympathetic friends around him. To One, however, he could and did open out. Saul, the persecutor, prayed to God in heaven. Nor was it one single request, poured out in the agony of his soul... Blind and without food, he kept praying.
The Lord watched every step of Saul's distress. How He dealt with him carries a lesson for anyone trying to comfort a troubled person.
The Lord's eyes had followed him as others led him into Damascus... He had seen how agonizing his spiritual conflict was, and He had heard his prayers. What encouragement this gives to troubled souls... And what a warning against rushing in too soon to offer comfort and peace! One danger today is the effort, so often made, to shorten the exercises of a newly awakened soul instead of deepening them.
- Blind — his lost sight matched a deeper loss. The light he thought he had turned out to be darkness.
- Alone — blindness shut out every human voice, so the inward work could go on before God with nothing to interrupt it.
- Starved — God smashed a false peace, and the best man of his day found he was at heart an enemy of God.
- Buried — those three days took him through death and resurrection. They laid the foundation for "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."
- Praying — blind and fasting, he still opened out to God. The Lord let that go deep before He sent Ananias with comfort.