Paul: From Murderer to Missionary - Reflections on Acts 9:1-6 (7-20), Easter 3, Year C
by John C. Holbert on Tuesday, March 18, 2025
The conversion of Saul, the raging persecutor of early Christianity, is among the most famous events of the biblical story. It is told three times in the book of the Acts (22:3-21; 26:9-18), and is mentioned several times in Paul’s letters (1 Cor.15:8; Gal.1:11-17; Phil.3:6; 1 Tim.1:13). Clearly it is a very important tale for the church, because Paul becomes the apostle par excellence of that church, and the reality of his fury at the church is matched by his later unchangeable conviction that Jesus is the Messiah, and has called him, personally, to be the messenger of that news to the entire Roman world.
Paul is first introduced in Luke’s tale in 8:1-3 as an accomplice to the murder of Stephen. Stephen has furiously indicted the religious authorities in a lengthy and angry historical address to the Jewish council, mainly denouncing them in the death of Jesus, even though, as Stephen claims, “You are the ones who received the Torah as commandments from angels, yet you did not keep it” (Acts 7:53). Of course, in the face of such appalling comments, accusing them of rejecting their own Torah and killing Jesus, the Jewish leaders are enraged, and throw Stephen out of Jerusalem, and proceed to stone him to death. One of those witnessing this bloody scene was Saul, at whose feet Stephen’s clothing is laid (Acts 7:58). Luke then says, “Saul agreed with his being killed. And on that day there began a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem.” Meanwhile, “Saul continued to inflict outrage against the church. He went into one house after another. He dragged out both women and men. He handed them over to prison” (Acts 8:1-3). The image of the marauding Saul, personally knocking on doors, brutally dragging screaming women and men from their houses, and handing them over for incarceration in Roman prisons, is stark and quite unforgettable. One can only imagine how these scenes were repeated in horrific tones throughout the Jerusalem church.
Our text begins, “Now Saul was still breathing threat and murder against the Lord’s disciples” (Acts 9:1). The adverb “still” makes the direct connection between Luke’s earlier introduction of Saul to the reader and his recounting of the astonishing conversion of this man to be a follower of Jesus. Jerusalem persecution was plainly not enough for this zealot for Rome, because he went to the chief priest, demanding letters be sent to synagogues in Damascus, where Saul was headed to continue his unrelenting persecution of anyone “following the Way, whether man or woman,” intent on binding them and leading them back to the Jerusalem prisons.
And then it happened. In a scene portrayed in uncountable paintings by masters of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the High Romantic Ages, along with untold numbers of modern painters, “a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground. He heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ He answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the voice said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.’” In the three accounts of the scene in Acts itself there are distinct differences in detail. Here in Acts 9, those with Saul hear the voice but see nothing, while in 22:9 it is the exact opposite; Saul’s companions see the light but hear nothing! In 26:13 the light falls on everyone on the road, but only Saul adds, “I heard the voice.” Also, in that account all fall to the ground while here only Saul does so. An event so central to the witness of the early church is bound to have differences in the telling, but those differences pale in the light of the true significance of what has happened to Saul.
The dark agent of the chief priest in Jerusalem has been directly confronted by the one he has given his life to destroy, and he has been profoundly and completely changed. This transformation of Saul to Paul, now the boldest advocate for Jesus Messiah, is for the church the clearest sign that Jesus is without doubt the Messiah, and is proof positive that the Christian movement has been instituted by God. When Saul becomes Paul on that Damascus road, the energy of the church, its sharpest motivation, has begun. Notice how little is made of Paul’s personality or his reasons for his sudden conversion. What is crucial for Luke’s telling is the very fact of the direct intervention of Jesus in history, and the fact that Paul’s call on that road is finally the call of a prophet. Like Moses and Elijah before him, Paul has experienced the direct call of a prophet, and like them his life is made absolutely new.
The commanding voice immediately demands that Saul, soon to be Paul, “get up! Go into the city. You will be told what it is you must do” (Acts 9:6). Saul is no longer his own person; he has been changed into an agent of the Messiah, the messenger of the most Holy God. Each time he recounts this story, he is announcing that he was amazingly chosen by God, he the hater and reviler and murderer of Christians, to be the greatest missionary for Christianity that the world has ever seen. Little wonder that whenever this tale is told, a shiver wanders up our spines as we witness a monster of hate become a purveyor of the love of God to the entire world. God is indeed no respecter of persons, using and choosing whomever God will to effect God’s work in the world. Saul/Paul on that Damascus road becomes our model; it is never too late to become someone God can choose to further the divine will.