Saul: A Picture of Salvation

— by David D. Herring

It struck me as odd that Jesus Himself came back to deal with Saul of Tarsus.  After all, Jesus had completed His mission on the cross, He had proven Himself resurrected to His followers, He had given them their instructions on what to do next as His disciples, and He had ascended into heaven right before their eyes.  So that’s a wrap, right?  Wrong.  Jesus returned again a short time later to confront Saul.  Why?

And why Saul?  Why not confront any of the other Pharisees who persecuted Jesus and His followers?  Indeed, why not confront the whole assembly all at once?  Or, if Saul was so important, why didn’t Jesus deal with him during His lifetime, or perhaps in the days after His resurrection?  Why go to the trouble of coming back specifically to confront Saul?  Was it merely an “I forgot” on Jesus’ to do list?

I doubt it.  I’ve learned that these types of “anomalies” are there to attract our attention.  There is a rhythm in the repeating patterns of the history recorded in The Bible and God uses the beat, and irregularities in the beat, to get our attention.  He wants us to prayerfully bring our questions to Him.  He uses stories like Saul’s to teach us.  Earlier, when I had been re-reading the story of King Saul and considering how my character was like his, God called another thought to mind:

There was another Saul.  Consider his story too.

By all the standards of his day, Saul was a fine and upstanding Israelite.  He had a good reputation, high status in society, and came from an affluent family.  He was among the best educated of the Pharisees, itself an elite class of scholars and spiritual leaders.  (The word “pharisee” comes from an Aramaic root word meaning “to divide and separate.”)  By all accounts, and by his own reckoning at the time, Saul was a true man of God.  Everything was going great for him.

Except for those pesky so-called “followers of the Way” — it was intolerable to Saul how they talked about Jesus as if He had been God in the flesh.  Everyone knew that when the Messiah came, He would build a new kingdom.  The Israelites expected the Messiah to topple Rome and set up Israel as the greatest kingdom on Earth.  But Jesus hadn’t done that so clearly He wasn’t the Messiah.  And so Saul set out in the name of God to destroy the burgeoning bunch of blasphemers.

See the irony?  You could reword that previous sentence to say: Saul set out in the name of Jesus to destroy Jesus.  It means the same thing.  If Jesus is who He says He is then Saul’s actions were illogical.  He thought he was doing right but he was acting out of ignorance.  He was spiritually blind.

Indeed, Jesus had confronted the Pharisees on this very point.  They had accused Jesus of breaking the law by healing a blind man on the Sabbath.  He called their attention to the fact that their intellectual fixation on the scriptures — letters of the law, as it were — had blinded them to God’s deeper, more important spiritual truths.  Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”  “What? Are we blind too?” they asked.  Jesus replied, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.” (John 13:39-41)  

Ironically, the Pharisees believed in the resurrection and the Messiah, but they didn’t believe in Jesus.  Little did they know at the time, Jesus would come back after He ascended into heaven to bridge the gap that “divided and separated” them from Him.       

Jesus came back to confront Saul, who had been arresting and killing His followers.  Saul was on the road to Damascus with papers from the chief priests in Jerusalem authorizing his persecution when a light from heaven flashed around him and he fell to the ground.  He heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.  “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” He replied.  “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” (Acts 9:2-6)

When Saul got up and opened his eyes, he was blind.  He would be blind for three days. (Acts 9:9)  The number three is always important in stories of The Bible.  To the Israelites, the number “3” signified a third value used to reconcile two opposing or contradictory values.  In other words, three brings stability — it mediates, connects, and strengthens the two.1  For example, Abraham’s journey to Mt. Moriah took three days; Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days; Jesus was in the tomb three days; etc.  In such contexts, the number three signifies a period of passage through death into life.  

Saul’s blindness represented his failure to see the truth, and it represented the inevitable consequence: death.  The Hebrew spelling of his name has two meanings:  pronounced sha’ul it means “asked for; prayed for” but pronounced sheol it means “grave; pit; or abode of the dead.”  Jesus was sending Saul into a situation in which he would have to die, spiritually speaking, and then be born again.  He would transition from a state of relying upon his own wisdom to a state of relying upon Jesus’.  Jesus had previously explained this point to the Pharisees: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless they are born again.” (John 3:3)  Jesus had told them, now He would show them.  He had literally died and risen again; would they still doubt He is the Messiah?              

There’s no doubt Jesus has a sense of humor.  The next scene is steeped in dramatic irony.  Get this: Jesus blinded Saul then sent him down Straight Street, to the House of Judas where he was to meet a man named Ananias — whose name means “the Lord is gracious” — whom Saul had been going to blind or kill.  Consider the scene also from Ananias’ perspective: Jesus appeared and told him to go to the House of Judas (whose name had become synonymous with betrayal) to meet Saul (abode of the dead), who Ananias knows has been arresting and killing Jesus’ followers.  Jesus called both men to walk by faith and come together.  What could go wrong, right?  The stage is set... Dante himself couldn’t have penned a more divine comedy!   

Ananias went and found Saul, who had been praying and waiting for three days in the House of Judas.  He put his hands on him and called him brother.  Ananias said, “Brother Saul, the Lord — Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here — has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”  Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again.  He got up and was baptized. (Acts 9:17-18)  After spending several days with Jesus’ disciples in Damascus, he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God — the long-awaited Messiah!    

Later, in accordance with his change of character, Saul changed his name to Paul.  I looked up the Hebrew meaning of “Paul” and found… nothing.  The term has no meaning in Hebrew, but in Latin the name Paul means “small” or “humble.”  His name change represented two important things: (i) Paul surrendered and humbled himself before Jesus to walk in His Way, and (ii) Paul fulfilled what Jesus foretold to Ananias: “This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings…” (Acts 9:15)  Indeed, Paul became the most prolific of all New Testament authors.  

Also note the repeating pattern in the events recounted in Acts, Chapter 13: Paul traveled to the island of Cyprus where he encountered a jewish sorcerer — a false prophet — who styled himself “Bar-Jesus” (literally translated “son of Jesus,” or “son of God who saves”).  Interestingly, this is where The Bible records Saul’s name change to Paul.  Paul rebuked the false prophet: “You are full of subtlety and mischief, you son of the devil, you enemy of righteousness.  Will you not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?  And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you and you shall be blind, not seeing the sun for a season.”  Immediately the false prophet was plunged into darkness.  

Talk about turnabout!  We don’t know how the false prophet’s story played out but we see clearly that Jesus was working through Paul now that he’d been born again.  And we see the influence of Jesus again later, when Paul was arrested and tried by the Pharisees in Jerusalem.  Paul was accused of blaspheming against God and defiling the Holy Temple by bringing gentiles in to be purified and to worship God. (Acts 21:25-26)  This leads to the scene that may best portray the purposes and outcomes of Saul’s transformation.  Paul told the story of his transformation to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, causing an uproarious debate among them.  The assembly was divided in its beliefs — the Sadducees did not believe in the concept of resurrection, nor in angels, nor in spirits, but the Pharisees believed in all of the above.  Some of the Pharisees shouted: “We find no evil in this man: but if a spirit or angel has spoken to him, let us not fight against God.” (Acts 23:9; KJV)  

Now the circle was complete.  Whereas Saul had been a Pharisee, with all the cultural and social trappings that go along with it, he no longer valued those things.  He said: “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. …I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.  I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.” (Philippians 3:7-8)

The New Testament Saul had become a counter-balancing mirror opposite of the Old Testament Saul.  Whereas King Saul was a picture of sin, Saul-who-became-Paul was a picture of salvation.    

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Discussion Questions:

1. Why do you think Jesus Himself came back to deal with Saul?  

2. Do you ever experience periods in which you feel “spiritually blind”?  What does The Bible teach us to do in such times of darkness?

3. Do you think Jesus purposely used the stories of the two Sauls to teach us about their contrasting character types?  Which of the two Sauls is most like you?