Acts 9:1-2 (NIV)
Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
The heart of Saul had been set afire with hatred for Christians even while Stephen was being stoned. It is odd that such an event would lead to hatred rather than compassion, but it is actually the normal response of a sin-hardened, self-righteous heart.
Paul looked back on this time in his life with shame, as you can read in several of his letters. He admits that he did all that he could to completely eliminate the Christians and Christianity from the earth, and in this section of Acts, Luke was actually writing Paul’s own narrative of his mindset (“breathing our murderous threats”) as well as his actions.
Saul wasn’t simply content with driving the Christians out of Jerusalem or even all of Judea. He wanted to hunt them down as harmful heretics wherever they might be and drag them back to Jerusalem for trial and execution.
Damascus, the capital of Syria, was a long journey. But Saul had heard that a group of Christians had taken root there, so he petitioned the high priest for letters of authority directed to the Jewish leaders in the city, authorizing him to arrest any Christians he found among the Jews there. (Christianity was, at that point, still largely a sect of the Jewish faith.) They would then be taken back to Jerusalem for trial. And the high priest was glad to comply. After several long years of having to struggle against the followers of Jesus, it finally looked like they were making progress in stifling, or even eliminating, this dangerous movement.
Father, as Jeremiah noted, “the heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure” (17:9 NIV). And in Paul’s case, this is patently obvious. His heart had convinced him, deceived him, that it was Your will to wipe out the Christians, even if that meant false witnesses, harsh and inhumane treatment, and outright murder. But he wasn’t hearing from You at all, nor was he acting with any kind of faithfulness to Your law or the messages You had given through the prophets, all of which he professed to revere. The part that Jeremiah got wrong was his hopelessness over being able to cure our deceitful hearts. As the rest of Paul’s story shows, a genuine cure is possible, but only through Your power working in us. Thank you, Lord! Amen.
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