And Go From There
He is the Son of God.
— Acts 9
The conversion of Saul is one of those moments when God seems to reach directly into history and change its course.
Saul was not searching for a new faith. Quite the opposite. He was actively persecuting the followers of Jesus when, on the road to Damascus, everything changed. Within days, the man who had been trying to silence the Gospel was proclaiming it himself.
I've always wondered why God chose to intervene so dramatically.
The Gospel was already spreading. The Holy Spirit was already at work. Peter and the other apostles were preaching. New believers were being added. Why was Saul needed?
Perhaps the growing Church needed someone uniquely equipped to carry the message beyond its beginnings in Jerusalem and Judea. Perhaps Saul's background, education, Roman citizenship, knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, and eventual ability to move between Jewish and Gentile worlds made him particularly suited for what was coming.
Or perhaps God simply looked at this fierce opponent of the Church and saw an apostle.
I don't know.
There are questions about God's involvement in human events that I have become less inclined to answer confidently as I've grown older. Does God carefully arrange every development beforehand? Does He sometimes respond to what human beings do? How often does He intervene directly, and how often does He allow events to unfold through ordinary human choices?
Someday perhaps we'll understand more than we do now.
For the moment, Acts tells us something much simpler.
God chose Saul.
And Saul responded.
What especially interests me is what happened next. After the extraordinary experience on the Damascus road, the blindness, the visit from Ananias, the restoration of his sight and his baptism, Saul began preaching.
And Acts tells us what he proclaimed:
“He is the Son of God.”
That's it.
There would eventually be much more. Paul would spend years preaching, teaching, traveling, arguing, writing letters, establishing churches and wrestling with some of the deepest questions of the Christian faith.
But this is where he began.
Jesus is the Son of God.
There is something wonderfully clarifying about that.
Christians sometimes become intimidated by the thought of explaining our faith. We imagine that we need an answer for every objection, command of every doctrine, knowledge of biblical languages, or a carefully developed argument before we're qualified to say anything at all.
Saul had plenty yet to learn himself.
But he knew this.
Jesus is the Son of God.
The spotless Son whom God raised from the dead. The promised Messiah. The One through whom God is reconciling His people and bringing His Kingdom.
That's enough to begin.
Perhaps there are times when our witnessing—and even our preaching—has become more complicated than it needs to be. When we are at a loss for words, we can begin where Saul began.
“Jesus is the Son of God.”
And go from there.
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