In Acts 9, Luke easily could’ve been written, “Saul eagerly desired to threaten the Lord’s disciples,” or “Saul pursued the Lord’s disciples with murderous intent,” but to hear that he was breathing out these murderous threats—it’s more part of who he is. And this is important when it comes to what we’re going to see about conversion, because this is who Paul was: the very breath he breathed was sinful. But look at what else we see at the end of verse one and into verse 2. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way—whether men or women—he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
What’s striking about this is that Saul, for someone who was legit, was someone who was not a criminal. He was working with the authorities—and not just the authorities, but the religious authorities. He went to the high priest, the top guy in the Jewish religious structure, and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus. He wanted to work with the most supreme authorities and the holiest types of people in order to use their authority to take Christians to prison in Jerusalem.
So, what we notice here is that this is a religious, respected, and by-the-book kind of guy. He’s not a crazy man, a serial killer, or a man who is unhinged somehow. This is a methodical, thought-through, respected, religious, and, to all intents and purposes, holy man. It’s relevant to note that it’s the high priest who Saul asks for letters from, because that means he has authority from those who know the Bible. That’s another striking thing about Saul—he was someone who knew the Bible well and spent time with people who knew the Bible well. He would have known vast swathes, if not the whole of the Old Testament, off by heart, having learned it by rote.
So, this is an extraordinary individual with more religious zeal than probably all of us in this room combined—an impressive individual with commitment and sacrifice to his cause. But we’re mentioning these things because we’re talking about Saul’s conversion. And we need to see that this is not what changed Saul. It was not something inside him that changed him. It wasn’t that he looked deeper inside himself and that transformed him. It wasn’t his religious connections that changed him. It wasn’t his holiness that changed him. It wasn’t his passion for religion that changed him. It wasn’t his knowledge of the Bible that changed him. These are all things worth noting.
