Paul’s Conversion and the Revelation of Grace

Commentary on Acts No 17

Acts Ch 9: 31-42

The fact that there are three accounts of Paul's conversion in Acts: the first here in chapter 9 and two more in Paul's defenses in chapters 22 and 26 indicates that Luke thought that it was of major importance in the development of the early Church. Acts 9 was one of those hinge‑points in the entire Christian story — the moment when the early Jesus movement stopped being a small, persecuted sect in Jerusalem and began to turn outward to the wider world. 

As Acts 9:1-23; 22:6-21; 26:9-18 tell us, sometime between the years 31 and 36  A.D., Paul had a conversion experience on the way to Damascus where he intended to persecute the followers of Jesus. Up to that time he studied the law and tried to keep it.  In Phil 3:5 he said, "as for legalistic righteousness, I was faultless." Clearly, he had attempted to be put at rights with God by means of his good works. Before his conversion he was convinced that, unlike the mass of the Jewish people and the Gentiles, he was not under a curse like them (cf. Deut 27:26) because he had kept the law. But his views changed radically as a result of his encounter with the Risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Three things were revealed to him,

·       Firstly, that Jesus was the promised messiah and the divine Son of God.

·       Secondly, that the risen Jesus lived, by his Spirit, in the believers, who were members of his body on earth.

·       Thirdly, he was in right relationship with God not because of anything he did, after all he had committed the sins of rejecting Jesus and persecuting his followers, but solely because of the free gift of God's grace which he had neither merited, earned or deserved.  After all, he hadn't repented before his conversion by admitting his errors and seeking to change his attitudes and behavior. Instead, God intervened suddenly and unexpectedly, and it was the revelation of Jesus' presence that changed Paul's thinking about the Messiah, his followers, and the way in which we are put at rights with God. Justification is the result of what God does and not what we do ourselves. Paul could sing with John Newton, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see." Paul's doctrine of salvation was rooted in his conversion experience.

In his excellent book, The Central Message of the New Testament (London: Fortress Press, 1981), Joachim Jeremias made the important observation that, “It was Paul's greatness that he understood the message of Jesus as no other New Testament writer did. He was the faithful interpreter of Jesus. This is particularly true of his doctrine of justification. It was not of his own making but in substance conveys the central message of Jesus, as it is condensed in the first beatitude, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God? (Lk 6:20)."  Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, makes a similar point when he says that when St. Paul talks about justification it is a theological equivalent of Jesus talking about the coming of the kingdom. St. Paul himself acknowledged that his Gospel was derived from that of Jesus. In 1 Cor 15:3 he stated, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance.“

We are told that when Paul was baptised by Ananias, the scales that had blinded him, fell from his eyes. While this may literally have happened, surely it was symbolical of a deeper enlightenment, a seeing with the eyes of the heart. In Mt 6:22 Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” A “good” or “single” eye means an undivided, clear, generous, God‑focused inner life. When your inner vision is rightly oriented, your whole self is illuminated with truth and moral clarity. Years later St Paul may have had this aspect of his conversion experience in mind when he wrote in Eph 1:18, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.”