3. Saul’s conversion (9:1-31)

Since the persecution of Christians in Jerusalem spread the “disease” to other Jewish communities, Saul undertakes to stop the spread (vv.1-2). The Way as a title for the Christian movement is probably another reflection of the manner in which Jewish Christians structured their community on the model of the Jewish holiness movement. At the heart of the Pharisaic quest for a life of priestly holiness was the “traditions of the elders,” the whole structure of oral tradition which shaped daily life. The operative portion of the tradition for a life of holiness was the Halakah, “the walkings” or “the Way”! Is it any wonder that Saul, the zealous Pharisee who could honestly claim, “as to righteousness under the Law, blameless” (Php 3:6), was incensed to murderous rage against those who claimed to be the Way?

Damascus was the largest Jewish population center next to Jerusalem. It was also a center of trade and movement of people; these would facilitate further spread of the Christian witness. Saul must have realized the threat; for later, as Paul, he focused his witness on the two major centers of movement in the eastern Mediterranean—Corinth and Ephesus.

Saul’s encounter with the risen Christ must have been a profound trauma (9:3-9; 22:6-11; 26:12-18). The blindness, healed through a Christian, would have been an enacted parable of Saul’s blindness to the reality of the Christian claims and experience. During the three days of fasting and blindness Saul certainly must have wrestled with his blindness and emptiness toward the presence and power of God, which had been at work before his eyes.

The unsung hero and the real miracle in Saul’s conversion is Ananias (vv.10-19). Ananias is obviously open and obedient to the Lord, but sometimes the Lord seems to demand the impossible. It is doubtful whether anyone could fault Ananias for questioning the Lord, and most would probably absolve him had he failed to obey. Just the idea of going to Saul, the murderous persecutor, would give one pause. But to be told that this man is God’s chosen one to carry the Gospel to Gentiles must have given Ananias real cause to question. Nevertheless, he obeyed, and from the simple but difficult act of obedience came the apostle to the Gentiles. The obedience of an otherwise unknown disciple transformed the nature of the Christian outreach.

Somewhere between 9:19b and 9:26, Saul, by his own account (Gal 1:15-18), spent time in Arabia and did not return to Jerusalem until three years after his encounter with the risen Christ. It seems likely that the time in Arabia comes between 9:19 and 20. After several days with the disciples in Damascus, Saul goes into Arabia, most likely to process his experience and to work through his understanding of what God had done in Christ. Upon returning to Damascus, at once he began to preach Jesus in the synagogues. Who could better prove to Jews that Jesus was the Messiah than a zealous Pharisee rigorously trained in the Scriptures? The best witnesses are always those who return to those from whom they came, to tell them about new life in Christ. They best know the ethos, the subtle nuances of the subculture, the idioms of communication. An outsider who tries to bring an unwanted paradigm shift of perception can simply be dismissed; an insider cannot be so easily discounted. The Jews seek to kill Saul (vv.23-25).

But now Saul, who is outcast by the Jews and anathema to the Christians in Jerusalem, is a person without a community (v.26). Like Ananias, Barnabas takes his life in his own hands to introduce Saul to the leadership of the Jerusalem Christians (v.27). After all, the whole thing could have been a cleverly developed plot by Saul to infiltrate the Christian community.

Saul quickly finds himself in trouble with his own group, the Hellenists (vv.28-29). These were the Jews who came from the Roman-Hellenistic diaspora, bringing with them their adaptations to the Hellenistic culture (see on 6:1-7). This is the group from which the opposition to Stephen (a Christian Hellenist, 6:5) arose (see 6:9, “the synagogue” of those from Asia, Cyrene, Alexandria, and Cilicia—of which Tarsus, Saul’s home, was a major city). It seems that Saul returned to his own group of Jews and sought to convince them of the truth of the Christian claim. Again Saul has to flee for his life, this time back home to Tarsus.

Luke uses the conversion of Saul to bring to a close the Christian mission to the Jews. The Jewish Saul’s rejection of Christianity and Judaism’s rejection of Saul the Christian Jew brings to a close the purely Jewish mission of Jerusalem Christians. Luke concludes this major section (3:1-9:31) with a summary statement (v.31) indicating the fullness of the church throughout the Jewish homeland—Judea, Galilee, and Samaria. In the next section, the Christian movement takes its first step across the outer boundary of Judaism.