'...the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose
name was Saul.'--ACTS vii. 58.
'...Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.'--PHILEMON
9.
A far greater difference than that which was measured by years
separated the young Saul from the aged Paul. By years, indeed, the
difference was, perhaps, not so great as the words might suggest, for
Jewish usage extended the term of youth farther than we do, and began
age sooner. No doubt, too, Paul's life had aged him fast, and probably
there were not thirty years between the two periods. But the difference
between him and himself at the beginning and the end of his career was
a gulf; and his life was not evolution, but revolution.
At the beginning you see a brilliant young Pharisee, Gamaliel's
promising pupil, advanced above many who were his equals in his own
religion, as he says himself; living after its straitest sect, and
eager to have the smallest part in what seemed to him the righteous
slaying of one of the followers of the blaspheming Nazarene. At the end
he was himself one of these followers. He had cast off, as folly, the
wisdom which took him so much pains to acquire. He had turned his back
upon all the brilliant prospects of distinction which were opening to
him. He had broken with countrymen and kindred. And what had he made of
it? He had been persecuted, hunted, assailed by every weapon that his
old companions could fashion or wield; he is a solitary man, laden with
many cares, and accustomed to look perils and death in the face; he is
a prisoner, and in a year or two more he will be a martyr. If he were
an apostate and a renegade, it was not for what he could get by it.
What made the change? The vision of Jesus Christ. If we think of the
transformation on Saul, its causes and its outcome, we shall get
lessons which I would fain press upon your hearts now. Do you wonder
that I would urge on you just such a life as that of this man as your
highest good?
I. I would note, then, first, that faith in Jesus Christ will transform
and ennoble any life.
It has been customary of late years, amongst people who do not like
miracles, and do not believe in sudden changes of character, to allege
that Paul's conversion was but the appearance, on the surface, of an
underground process that had been going on ever since he kept the
witnesses' clothes. Modern critics know a great deal more about the
history of Paul's conversion than Paul did. For to him there was no
consciousness of undermining, but the change was instantaneous. He left
Jerusalem a bitter persecutor, exceeding mad against the followers of
the Nazarene, thinking that Jesus was a blasphemer and an impostor, and
His disciples pestilent vermin, to be harried off the face of the
earth. He entered Damascus a lowly disciple of that Christ. His
conversion was not an underground process that had been silently
sapping the foundations of his life; it was an explosion. And what
caused it? What was it that came on that day on the Damascus road, amid
the blinding sunshine of an Eastern noontide? The vision of Jesus
Christ. An overwhelming conviction flooded his soul that He whom he had
taken to be an impostor, richly deserving the Cross that He endured,
was living in glory, and was revealing Himself to Saul then and there.
That truth crumbled his whole past into nothing; and he stood there
trembling and astonished, like a man the ruins of whose house have
fallen about his ears. He bowed himself to the vision. He surrendered
at discretion without a struggle. 'Immediately,' says he, 'I was not
disobedient to the heavenly vision,' and when he said 'Lord, Lord, what
wilt Thou have me to do?' he flung open the gates of the fortress for
the Conqueror to come in. The vision of Christ reversed his judgments,
transformed his character, revolutionised his life.
That initial impulse operated through all the rest of his career.
Hearken to him: 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. To me to
live is Christ. Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we
die, we die unto the Lord. Living or dying, we are the Lord's.' 'We
labour that whether present or absent, we may be accepted of Him.' The
transforming agency was the vision of Christ, and the bowing of the
man's whole nature before the seen Saviour.
Need I recall to you how noble a life issued from that fountain? I am
sure that I need do no more than mention in a word or two the wondrous
activity, flashing like a flame of fire from East to West, and
everywhere kindling answering flames, the noble self-oblivion, the
continual communion with God and the Unseen, and all the other great
virtues and nobleness which came from such sources as these. I need
only, I am sure, remind you of them, and draw this lesson, that the
secret of a transforming and noble life is to be found in faith in
Jesus Christ. The vision that changed Paul is as available for you and
me. For it is all a mistake to suppose that the essence of it is the
miraculous appearance that flashed upon the Apostle's eyes. He speaks
of it himself, in one of his letters, in other language, when he says,
'It pleased God to reveal His Son _in_ me.' And that revelation in all
its fulness, in all its sweetness, in all its transforming and
ennobling power, is offered to every one of us. For the eye of faith is
no less gifted with the power of direct and certain vision--yea! is
even more gifted with this--than is the eye of sense. 'If they hear not
Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose
from the dead.' Christ is revealed to each one of us as really, as
veritably, and the revelation may become as strong an impulse and
motive in our lives as ever it was to the Apostle on the Damascus road.
What is wanted is not revelation, but the bowed will--not the heavenly
vision, but obedience to the vision. I suppose that most of you think
that you believe all that about Jesus Christ, which transformed
Gamaliel's pupil into Christ's disciple. And what has it done for you?
In many cases, nothing. Be sure of this, dear young friends, that the
shortest way to a life adorned with all grace, with all nobility,
fragrant with all goodness, and permanent as that life which does the
will of God must clearly be, is this, to bow before the seen Christ,
seen in His word, and speaking to your hearts, and to take His yoke and
carry His burden. Then you will build upon what will stand, and make
your days noble and your lives stable. If you build on anything else,
the structure will come down with a crash some day, and bury you in its
ruins. Surely it is better to learn the worthlessness of a
non-Christian life, in the light of His merciful face, when there is
yet time to change our course, than to see it by the fierce light of
the great White Throne set for judgment. We must each of us learn it
here or there.