The enemy of faith isn’t doubt or reason. Sometimes, it’s certainty.  

Ezekiel 1:15-28

Acts 9:1-9

As a kid growing up in the church we often went to youth rallies and crusades where we heard testimonies of people who had come from horrific circumstances or terrible sins, found Jesus, and turned their lives around. Some of those stories were really fascinating—people with addictions, people who had some illicit sexual adventure, others who ran away from home and worked in the circus (or something like that). To a bunch of suburban church kids whose principle sin at the age of 13 or 14 was playing battleship on the backs of the attendance pads in the church balcony during worship, it was pretty heady stuff.

Every time I heard one of those testimonies, I used to think mine was really boring by comparison. I got saved in Vacation Bible School on matchstick cross day (when we burned the heads of matches and glued them to a piece of paneling to form a cross). I went to church every Sunday, youth group every Wednesday…about as square and religious as a teenager could be. I wished I had a better story to tell—and even harbored the thought a few times that I should go out and commit some heinous sin so I’d have something big to repent from—you know, maybe get some tats, do some time, or, at the very least, skipping out of church one Sunday when Mom wasn’t paying attention.

Over the years, though, I’ve come to realize that conversion isn’t something only reserved for the degenerate sinner who is far away from God. Indeed, sometimes it’s those of us who are secure in our faith that really need converting—maybe not from some heinous sinful lifestyle to a new life, but from the religious, Christianized life to something even better.

It’s interesting that the most oft-repeated conversion story in the Book of Acts isn’t about some pagan Gentile who persecuted the church, but rather about a Jew who was zealous for God, who kept the law, who did everything right and was determined to make sure that every other Jew did everything right, too. It’s a conversion from knowing everything about God, to knowing God face to face.

Luke introduces us to Saul during the story of the stoning of Stephen. We learn in Acts 7:58 that those who hurled stones at the first Christian martyr laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul, and when Stephen died with words of forgiveness on his lips, Luke tells us in 8:1 that Saul “approved of their killing him.” We don’t hear about Saul again until chapter 9, when he is “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” What Luke doesn’t tell us here is where this Saul came from and what made him so vindictive of these seemingly innocent people—people whom he will soon embrace.

A look at the rest of the New Testament helps us piece together a short biography of Saul. Acts 22:3 tells us that Paul was from Tarsus, a thriving town near the Mediterranean coast of southern Cilicia (present day Turkey). Tarsus was known as a prosperous center for trade, being at the crossroad between the eastern and western parts of the Roman empire, and the town had claimed its place in history as the spot where the Roman consul Marc Antony first met the exotic Cleopatra and began the affair that would lead to the Roman Civil War a few decades before the birth of Christ. Saul was likely part of a prosperous family in the town, given the fact that we learn later that he was a Roman citizen. Citizenship in Rome was attained either by birth, by purchase, or by military service, and we might infer that Saul’s father—not being an ethnic Roman—may have been wealthy enough to secure citizenship. Indeed, we also learn later that when Saul (then known as Paul) needs to take up a trade he engages in making tents. Tarsus was known for a special kind of wool felt that could be used in tent-making, and Jews in Tarsus were known to be part of the city’s textile trade. It could be that Paul was part of a Jewish family that purchased citizenship out of money made making tents for the Roman army.

At the same time, Tarsus was also known as a center for Stoic and Hellenistic Greek thought. Young Saul would have been exposed to this philosophy in the marketplace, even as he was grounded in the Judaism of his family. Many of his later letters reflected a working knowledge of the Greek method of rhetorical argument and it’s clear that Saul/Paul mastered the Greek language, even quoting the Greek version of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) in his letters.

In Acts 26:4 we learn that the young Saul was sent, at some point, to Jerusalem to study with the Jewish teacher Gamaliel. Scholars debate the historical veracity of this claim, since Paul never mentions this in any of his letters (even when it would have been convenient for him to do so). Still, we learn from Philippians that Saul/Paul become a Pharisee somewhere along the line—a Jew who was zealous for the religious tradition of his Hebrew ancestors. Listen to how he puts it in Philippians 3:5 – “circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” In other words, you could not be more Jewish than Saul was—he obeyed the religious law of the Hebrew Scriptures to the letter. He was a good Jewish boy who also knew a little about the pagan world—an intelligent, cosmopolitan, confident, religious young man who did everything right.

That’s what being a Pharisee was all about, you see. The Pharisees believed that the way that God’s kingdom would come only when true Jews began to obey the law of Moses. The reason God had not yet returned to Zion was because there were some Jews out there who were fudging on the law and even re-interpreting it. This renegade sect of Jews claiming Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah was one of those outlier groups, and the only way to prepare the way of the kingdom was to get them back in line with the law—by force if necessary. Saul was so zealous that he was willing to be a kind of Hebrew hit-man, hauling these people back to Jerusalem where they could get re-educated or, if not, eliminated as threats to the pure way of Judaism. Such a mission was well within the law of Moses, and Saul set out on the road to Damascus to stop people like Stephen from continuing to profane God’s will and way.

Now, one of the Pharisaic traditions in Jesus day was to meditate on a passage of Scripture as they moved from place to place (you see this even today when you walk around Jerusalem, as Orthodox Jews will not only meditate at the Wailing Wall, but everywhere, even on the flight to and from Israel, rocking to and fro as they do so).

One of the more famous passages for Pharisees to mediate on in the first century was the first chapter of Ezekiel, where the prophet sees this vision of something like a great chariot in the sky with whirling wheels and flashing lights—“wheels within wheels” (for you classic rock fans, this passage was the indirect inspiration for the Journey song, “Wheel in the Sky.” Dare you to keep that out of your head for the next 15 minutes).

After describing the wheels full of eyes and the four-faced angels carrying the chariot, Ezekiel then describes the larger scene—a dome above, a rainbow, a throne like a great jewel. And the idea for some Jews in Jesus’ day was to focus their meditation on this throne-chariot to see if, by prayer and fasting, keeping the law and focusing on the image, that they might see this vision become a reality, especially the climax of the vision in verses 26-28. Let me read those again:

“And above the dome over their heads there was something like a throne, in appearance like sapphire and seated above the likeness of a throne was something that seemed like a human form. Upwards from what appeared like the loins I saw something like gleaming amber, something that looked like fire enclosed all round; and downwards from what looked like the loins I saw something that looked like fire, and there was a splendour all round. Like the bow in a cloud on a rainy day, such was the appearance of the splendour all round. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.

When I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of someone speaking.

Notice that Ezekiel doesn’t say that he saw the Lord, but rather he saw the “splendor” (light) all around.” And yet there is a hope in this passage that one might actually get a glimpse of God’s glory, to see God face to face on the throne, even if doing so would put their faces on the ground. They were looking for God to return, to reveal himself again, and they prayed and, like Saul, worked to bring that vision to reality.

Some scholars have wondered whether that’s what Saul was meditating about as he traveled to Damascus with warrants for these renegade Jews. “He was on his way to act for the glory of God, the glory of which he believed was being besmirched by these crazy followers of Jesus. He needed to keep that glory firmly before his eyes, to make sure his zeal was properly fired up and rightly directed.”

And then, suddenly, it happened. The blinding light actually appeared, the figure of a human likeness, the splendor of the glory of the Lord, and then a voice that put him on his knees. He saw the glory of God—but the face and the voice was that of Jesus of Nazareth!

It’s often been said that the real enemy of faith isn’t doubt, nor is it reason. The real enemy of faith may, in fact, be certainty. When we’re sure we have it all figured out, then there’s really no room for God to work in our lives, to shake and change us, to introduce us to a new vision of God and God’s plan for the whole creation. Saul was certain—zealously so—as he headed toward Damascus. In one blinding moment, however, his faith was no longer sight. He was blinded, cut off from all that he previously knew by the voice of the very one whose followers he had sought to eliminate. He was struck in that moment that Jesus was actually God, and if that was true then it changed everything. Somehow, these men and women that Saul had been dragging off to prison were Jesus’ people and now, his people. It’s hard to imagine the shock to his system. Indeed, Luke tells us that he had to be led into the city and that he didn’t eat or drink anything for three days. His whole world, his whole belief system, was shaken. The God he and his Pharisee companions had been waiting for, the God who had promised to come and rescue his people had done so in person—in the person of Jesus!

The one who had done everything religiously right, according to the laws of Moses, now had to wrestle with the fact that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was also the God revealed in Jesus Christ. The one who had been crucified was actually Lord. The one whom his followers had claimed had risen from the dead had actually done so. You can almost imagine Saul spinning back through the scrolls and Scriptures he had memorized, marveling at how all the pieces came together. He hadn’t been converted to another faith, he just finally began to understand the fullness of the one he had. His limited faith was now a world-changing one!

But Saul is not the only one who gets converted here. Notice what happens next. A faithful Christ-follower named Ananias has a dream where he is told to go to Straight Street in Damascus and look for Saul of Tarsus, where he is to lay his hands on him and heal his blindness. Ananias has his own paradigm. Saul is the enemy of everything Ananias now believes in. He is certain that Saul will kill him if he gets the chance. So Ananias tells Jesus the problem (verse 13): “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” Jesus’ response? “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel. I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

Ananias obeys and several days later there is Saul, preaching Jesus in the synagogue and, soon after, finding himself a target of a plot by his former friends to kill him. Not only is his faith shifted, his identity is changed completely. He moved from certainty to faith, from regulations to relationship, from waiting for God’s glory to working under its bright light.

You know, one of the major problems I think we have in the church universal today is that our certainty—be it theological or political—often blinds us to what God is really up to in the world. There’s little room for God to surprise us, to see visions, to dream dreams, to have our world rocked by the presence of the risen Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. We like to hear conversion stories, but we fail to realize that conversion to the way of Christ isn’t just something that happens in a moment, it takes a lifetime of constant engagement and following Christ.

Paul’s “conversion” was merely the beginning. His letters and his missionary journeys will reveal that he was constantly learning, constantly trying to find new ways to communicate the gospel to people of different cultures and backgrounds. Indeed, Paul always considered himself to be in process. Look at Philippians 3:7, where Paul says that he considered his former life—his perfect religious life—“rubbish” (actually the word is stronger than that, more suited to the privy than the pulpit). Instead, he says, he is focused on “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (3:8). Then in verse 12, “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Paul believed that his conversion was still in process.

We can get so caught up in thinking about thinking back to the moment of conversion that we forget that God never stops working on us, wanting to surprise us, calling us to new places of vocation and into relationships with people who themselves are in need of a new experience of God’s grace and new life. It’s not about the strength of our past testimony, but about the faithful movement of following Christ into the places and vocations into which he wants to send us right now. Paul was tapped because of his unique ability to speak to both the Jewish and Gentile worlds. Ananias was tapped to be the one who overcame fear in order to reach out to a former enemy. If we’re truly Christ followers, we will allow ourselves to be surprised by the vision God wants to implant in us and what he will tap us to do.

This Scripture is a good one for us to meditate on, much like those Pharisees meditated on Ezekiel. It can teach us that no one is too far afield from Christ. It can teach us that God can use us for his glory, taking the experience and equipping we have and putting us in the right place at the right time. It can teach us that God isn’t as concerned about our certainty as he is our openness to encountering him in unexpected ways. It can teach us that even those we consider to be our enemies are people who can be used by God for his purposes.

No, we may never have that great conversion story, but the story Jesus invites us into is a far better one anyway—the story that Jesus is inviting us into right now. Paul was blinded by the light and when his eyes opened, he saw a whole new world with new possibilities because he had encountered Jesus. It was a vision that send him on the road to preach the Gospel. How is your vision of Christ’s work in you? Does it put you on your knees? If not, maybe it’s time we got converted again!

Source:

Acts for Everyone (Vol. 1), N.T. Wright