and, having received food, got strength. And he was with the disciples who [were] in Damascus certain days.
A quiet sentence sits between Saul's first sight and his first sermon. He eats, gets his strength back, and stays in Damascus with the very people he came to arrest.
Saul's three days without sight, food or drink ended when his sight came back. One writer follows what happened next, and points out the plan Saul dropped:
When Saul received his sight, his fast ended, and eating food gave him strength. Then he remained some days with the disciples in Damascus, not returning to Jerusalem, as he had planned.
Some have asked whether the eating here carries a spiritual sense. One reply keeps it simple, anchoring the meaning in the fast recorded a few verses earlier:
Acts 9:19, which was also quoted in the question, must surely refer to natural food. Verse 9 says that Saul was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
Saul had come to Damascus set on wiping out the disciples there. One account sets the entry he had planned beside the one he actually made:
He is blind for three days, and can neither eat nor drink. So he enters Damascus, blind, broken, humbled, under the solemn judgment of the Lord! How different from what he had intended! He now joins himself to the company he had resolved to wipe out. Yet he enters in by the door, and humbly takes his place with the disciples of the Lord.
Saul's place among the disciples is more than a fact about him. One writer reads it as the normal fruit of the Spirit's work, and of the new life itself:
Two things stand out after Saul's conversion: first, that he was at once found together with the disciples (v. 19)... It is God's mind that all who believe should be together. Wherever the Spirit of God is acting in power, it is always the case. It is also a necessity of the new nature, once we stand on the ground of redemption. Another apostle says the same: "That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us."
Acts does not say what those days held. One writer suggests private contact with the disciples, matching how Paul acted years later:
Saul kept company with the disciples in Damascus, and it seems he did so before he preached in the synagogues (Acts 9:19). This fits well with his private meeting with the apostles and elders at Jerusalem fourteen years later... He had been an active and well-known persecutor. So contact with the disciples would have been only consistent conduct: it would convince them of his conversion, and perhaps let him share with them the gospel he was about to preach.
Where these days sit in Saul's story is not certain. Another writer compares Acts with what Paul himself writes, and finds the gap is no loss:
Comparing these two passages shows clearly that the Spirit of God did not set out to give a dated account in Acts. There is no mention there, for example, of the visit to Arabia that Paul speaks of in Galatians. So we cannot now tell whether the Jews' plot to kill the apostle happened before he went to Arabia or after he came back. Nor is it of the slightest importance that we should settle it, since it is the spiritual teaching of the narrative that demands our attention.
The change in Saul is startling. One writer refuses to leave it as something to admire from a distance:
But let us also remember that our own conversion needed the same divine power. Without the grace that visited the heart of Saul of Tarsus, we would have remained in our evil condition of enmity against God. We would have stayed blind to our own state, and blind to the glory of His beloved Son. Not all are called to be such chosen vessels as Saul was, but all of us, equally with him, have been the subjects of divine grace.
- Fed — The three-day fast ends with ordinary food. Strength comes back before any service starts.
- Joined — He enters by the same low door as anyone else and takes his place with the people he had planned to destroy.
- Together — Life with the disciples is not an extra. It is God's mind for all who believe, and a need of the new nature.
- Unhurried — Days pass before he preaches, and Acts leaves the timing open. The spiritual teaching is what matters, not the calendar.
- Ours — The same power that turned Saul turns anyone. Not all are chosen vessels like him, but all believers are subjects of the same grace.
And straightway in the synagogues he preached Jesus that *he* is the Son of God.
Only days before, Saul had travelled to Damascus with letters that authorised him to destroy the followers of Jesus. Now he stands in the synagogues those letters named, preaching the one claim that had sent Jesus to the cross.
Saul's message went beyond what the apostles had preached so far. They announced Jesus as Lord and Messiah. Saul announced who Jesus is in Himself.
Saul makes no delay in confessing and declaring his faith; and what he says deserves close notice. He preaches in the synagogue that Jesus is the Son of God. It is the first time anyone preaches this. Others had already preached that He was exalted to the right hand of God — that He was Lord and Christ. The rejected Messiah was exalted on high. But here it is the simple doctrine of His personal glory: Jesus is the Son of God.
The difference is not that the others lacked the truth, but that they had not made it their message.
The other apostles knew it, but they are not said to have preached it. Peter had long ago confessed the great truth with singular strength, and the Lord had pronounced him blessed for it. Flesh and blood had not revealed it to him — His Father in heaven had. Yet we never find Peter proclaiming the Lord in this way at Pentecost or afterwards. He sets forth the crucified Jesus as having been made both Lord and Christ.
The Sanhedrin — the Jewish ruling council — had sentenced Jesus to death over this very claim. Saul now preached it in the open, and he could add something no other apostle could say.
He preached what, as far as we know, no apostle had preached before: that Jesus is the Son of God. He also proved that He is the Christ… The Sanhedrin had condemned the Lord to death for that very claim. Saul at Damascus declared it to be the simple truth. What is more, he could affirm there what no other apostle could say. He had seen the crucified One in heavenly glory, and had heard words from His mouth. So in those synagogues he could present himself as the messenger — the apostle — of the Lord Jesus who is in glory.
Note where he went. The synagogues on his list became his pulpit.
He is indeed "filled with the Holy Spirit." At once he preaches in the synagogues named in his letters of authorisation. And he preaches that very Jesus whose followers he has orders to destroy. He preaches Him also, as the twelve apostles have not done so far in the history, in the very character in which Israel had rejected Him — as Son of God. This is the fullest reversal of his own mad unbelief, and the completest challenge to Israel's. The missionary of their enmity has suddenly become the champion of the "Way" he persecuted.
The word "immediately" matters here. One writer points to what Saul did not do with his letters:
Now Saul is a Christian. But how strange and new everything was to him! Immediately he went to the synagogues. He did not go to deliver the letters that were in his pocket. I think he burned those letters. But he went and boldly preached Christ, that He is the Son of God.
A note on wording: some writers quote an older English version, "he preached Christ." The ESV reads "he proclaimed Jesus."
This was not a convert's first burst of enthusiasm that later cooled. It set the direction of everything that followed.
The power and force of this showed at the very start of his career. Straight away he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God. He kept to this all through his career as a servant of Christ. Dangers by land or sea, in the city or the wilderness, from robbers or false brothers, beatings, stonings, shipwrecks — none of it could turn him aside from his path of service.
- Son — Saul preached more than Jesus as Lord and Messiah. He preached who Jesus is in Himself: the Son of God. No one had preached that in public before.
- Sight — He alone had seen the crucified One in heavenly glory and heard His voice. What he saw became what he preached.
- Straightway — There was no waiting period. He went to the synagogues named in his arrest warrants and preached the Name he had come to destroy.
- Sentence — The claim that made the council sentence Jesus to death became Saul's public message.
- Sustained — What he began with, he never left. Beatings, stonings and shipwrecks never moved him off this one theme.