Acts Chapter 9: The Worst Possible Choice

Saul of Tarsus was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. That is not a metaphor. Luke means it literally — violence had become as natural to this man as breathing. He went to the high priest and got letters to the synagogues in Damascus authorizing him to bring back any followers of the Way, men or women, bound to Jerusalem. He had one assignment and he was fully committed to it.

He was also, from a human perspective, exactly the wrong person to convert if you wanted the movement of Yeshua to look legitimate. Not a fringe figure. Not a confused young man. A Pharisee of Pharisees, trained under Gamaliel, the most respected rabbi in Jerusalem. Zealous for the Torah beyond his peers. A persecutor of the community by his own later description with a clean conscience before Yehovah. He was the movement’s most credible enemy and its most relentless one.

Yehovah chose him.

The Road to Damascus

Somewhere on the road between Jerusalem and Damascus — about a week’s journey, a hundred and fifty miles — a light from heaven flashed around Saul brighter than the midday sun. He fell to the ground. A voice said: Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?

The repetition of his name is worth sitting with. It echoes every theophany in the Tanakh where Yehovah calls a person by name twice — Abraham, Abraham, when the knife was raised over Isaac. Moses, Moses, from the burning bush. Samuel, Samuel, in the night. Each time the repetition signals that what is about to happen will change everything. Saul, Saul is Yehovah announcing: what comes next is not a message. It is a turning point.

Who are You, Lord? Saul asked. The word could mean simply sir, but the context suggests he knew he was on the ground before something divine. I am Yeshua, whom you are persecuting. That sentence collapsed Saul’s entire theological world in a moment. The man he had been hunting was not a dead blasphemer. He was alive, he was speaking from heaven, and he was identifying himself with the very people Saul had been dragging out of their homes. To persecute the believers was to persecute Yeshua. The community and their Lord were one.

Saul had no response to that. He was told to go into the city and wait. The men traveling with him heard the sound but saw no one. They led Saul into Damascus by the hand. He was blind. He did not eat or drink for three days.

The man who had arrived in Jerusalem with letters of authority, the one who had entered houses and dragged people out, was now sitting in the dark unable to feed himself, waiting to be told what to do. The reversal is complete. He who had been taking people captive was himself a captive — captive to the light he had seen and the voice he had heard and the question he could not answer.

Ananias

There was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. Yehovah spoke to him in a vision and told him to go to the street called Straight and find Saul of Tarsus.

Lord, Ananias said — I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he has done to Your people in Jerusalem. And he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name here.

That is an entirely reasonable objection. Saul’s reputation had traveled ahead of him. Every believer in Damascus knew why he was coming. Ananias was being told to walk into the house where the most dangerous man in the Jewish world was sitting and put his hands on him.

Yehovah’s answer was not a reassurance. It was a revelation: go, because this man is a chosen vessel for Me to carry My name before Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for My name.

Ananias went. He entered the house and laid his hands on Saul and called him brother. Brother Saul. That address — two words — is one of the most stunning moments in Acts. The man who had been hunting and imprisoning and consenting to the death of believers was called brother by the first believer who came to him. Immediately. Without conditions. Without a probationary period. Without a committee review. Brother.

Something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes and he received his sight. He rose and was baptized. He ate something and was strengthened.

He stayed several days with the disciples in Damascus. And immediately he began proclaiming in the synagogues that Yeshua was the Son of Yehovah.

From Hunter to Hunted

Everyone who heard him was astonished. Is this not the man who was destroying those who called on this name in Jerusalem? Did he not come here for that purpose, to bring them bound to the chief priests? But Saul kept increasing in strength and was confounding the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Yeshua was the Messiah.

The same mind that had been the movement’s greatest enemy became its most formidable advocate almost overnight. Saul knew the Tanakh the way a Pharisee trained under Gamaliel knew it — which is to say, he had likely memorized most of it. And now with the scales gone from his eyes he could see what had been there the whole time: Yeshua on every page. The suffering servant. The rejected cornerstone. The Prophet like Moses. The Son of Man. He could not stop talking about it.

The Jews of Damascus plotted to kill him. They watched the city gates day and night. The disciples took Saul by night and lowered him through an opening in the wall in a basket. The man who had come to Damascus with letters of authority left it hidden in a basket through a hole in the wall. Yehovah has a thorough way of reorganizing a person’s sense of their own importance.

He went to Jerusalem and tried to join the disciples there. They were afraid of him — understandably. They did not believe he was a disciple. Barnabas — the same man Luke had introduced at the end of chapter 4 as the Son of Encouragement — took him and brought him to the apostles and vouched for him. Barnabas’s role in the early community is consistently the same: he sees what others are afraid to see and puts his own credibility on the line for it. Without Barnabas, Saul might never have been received.

Saul spoke boldly in Jerusalem in the name of Yeshua and debated with the Greek-speaking Jews — the same group that had brought the false charges against Stephen. They tried to kill him. The brothers sent him to Caesarea and down to Tarsus, his hometown. And Luke records: then the community throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was built up, walking in the fear of Yehovah and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

The persecution that Saul had led was over. He was now one of the people he had been persecuting. The irony of that sentence is not something Luke labors over. He just states it and lets it breathe.

Peter in Lydda and Joppa

Luke shifts to Peter moving through the region and visiting the communities that had formed in the wake of the scattering. In Lydda he found a man named Aeneas who had been bedridden and paralyzed for eight years. Aeneas, Yeshua the Messiah heals you. Rise and make your bed. He rose immediately. Everyone in Lydda and the Sharon plain saw him and turned to Yehovah.

In Joppa a disciple named Tabitha — which in Greek is Dorcas — had died. She was known for good works and acts of charity, particularly for the widows she had served. The community sent urgent word to Peter: come without delay. When he arrived the widows were standing around weeping, showing him the tunics and garments Tabitha had made for them.

Peter put them all out of the room, knelt and prayed, turned to the body, and said: Tabitha, rise. She opened her eyes, saw Peter, and sat up. He gave her his hand and raised her up. He called the saints and widows in and presented her alive. The word spread through all of Joppa and many believed in Yehovah.

Two healings in two towns, both bearing fruit far beyond the individuals involved. Peter stayed in Joppa — at the house of a tanner named Simon. A tanner worked with animal hides and was considered ceremonially unclean under rabbinic tradition. Peter was lodging with him, comfortable enough to stay many days. Something is quietly shifting in Peter. The next chapter is going to make it explicit.

Next: Acts Chapter 10 — Clean and Unclean