For several days he was with
the disciples at Damascus. And in the synagogues immediately he proclaimed
Jesus, saying, "He is the Son of God." And all who heard him were
amazed, and said, "Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of
those who called on this name? And he has recently come here for this purpose,
to bring them bound before the chief priests." But Saul increased all the
more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that
Jesus was the Christ.
In a Nutshell
Saul is converted to Jesus and immediately he makes a impact.
Questions
Imagine what this would mean to different groups in Damascus: to those who believed; to those who didn't; to those who were still making up their minds?
Saul was a Jew. The disciples in Damascus were Jews. Those who heard and were amazed were Jews. Why then does Luke write, "By proving Jesus was the Christ, Saul confounded the Jews of Damascus"? Why not "some Jews"? What is Luke saying here? It is an important question. We need to address it. If we can answer it aright then we might have a better grasp of why, to this day, there is an ongoing unease between Christians and Jews. This has been around for two thousand years. Luke tells us about the tensions that arose between Jews who did believe Jesus to be Christ, the Jewish Messiah, and those who did not.
With the coming of the Christ, and the baptism of God's Holy Spirit, the promises God had made long ago to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were fulfilled. The law and the prophets were now interpreted in a new way; they are the preparation for the coming of the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world, just as John the Baptist had taught. The apostles, former students in Jesus' school, believed that their Rabbi was the promised Son of Man, God's Prince, saviour of the world.
In Luke's account "the Jews" come to designate those who did not embrace Jesus as "the Christ", preferring to wait for another. They remain Jews. This is also why Luke's account of Philip in Samaria is so very important for how we understand what it means to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth now and to confess Him as Lord and Christ. Just as Jesus had refused the request of James and John to condemn the Samaritans for their custom of not giving hospitality to those travelling up to Jerusalem, even when that meant rejecting hospitality to God's own Son, so now we have to refuse to stop loving those who do not accept that the Messiah has come. Our response now is simply to obey Jesus' command and to love. That means we are to love our enemies. To say that some are our enemies, is to admit our own weakness and to face the fact that we are born into societies and cultures which inherit all kinds of enmity. But by participating in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, through our faith in Jesus Christ, we are called to overcome that enmity and to be agents of reconciliation with love to all our neighbours, whoever they may be. It is also the path that Saul was now on, after Jesus had stopped him so dramatically from carrying out his murderous mission. Saul the Pharisee was on the way to becoming Paul the Convert.