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.