The turnaround
This week is on Acts 26:9-21:
I saw a police car execute a perfect 180 degree turn in traffic last week. People were like "What is he doing?" but it turned out he'd gotten a call on the radio instructing him to be someplace that was in the opposite direction to where he was going. So he had to make a sudden adjustment, which looked like madness to people who don't understand police cars, radios, or the random nature of emergencies. It was like a giant unseen hand just grabbed the car and spun it around.
In this week's verses, Paul is talking to the king who has him in prison, arguing his case. He starts by talking about where he came from, doing wrong that everyone thought was right, and ends where he ended up, doing right that everyone thought was wrong. He doesn't try to candy-coat things. He just lays it out. Jesus had interrupted his leisurely drive down the devil's path, and sent him speeding in the other direction. People weren't prepared to understand that, so they condemned him.
Until he saw the light, Paul was obsessed with doing wrong. He went out of his way to go deeper and deeper into persecuting Christians, because he didn't know any better. People naturally descend into evil under certain circumstances, like when they're given lots of power, or are convinced of their inerrant righteousness, and there are some fascinating books on the topic. Paul was on that Stanford Prison Experiment, Nazi Prison Camp, Yugoslavian Death Squad path. He was wrong, and he was evil, but was he irredeemable?
Without Jesus, I believe he would have been. If God hadn't blasted him on his way to doing more evil, interrupting him and sending him in the opposite direction, from genocide to genesis, I believe he would have died a war criminal and had an irredeemable debt to pay when he faced God's judgment. Even Paul, who has every motivation to candy-coat his life's story, admits so. It's only Jesus who called him back. Nothing else would have prevented him from continuing into the night, lost forever.
But in settling scores with God, Paul enraged those who were continuing in their evil. His genocide was good for them. It kept them in power and justified their lifestyle. It glorified them as having things figured out. When Paul stopped his evil, exposed it to the world, and turned against it, they were betrayed. Their kingdom was proven to be less than Jesus's kingdom. They were a fraud.
Paul preached that repentance is both possible and necessary. Having turned 180 degrees in the middle of the street, he called others to join him not just in word but in deed. It's one thing to say "Good for you," or "Yeah, I probably should do that." It's quite another to squeal your tires and flash your lights in a desperate scramble to get where you need to be. People will despise you for it. They don't know what it is to be called.
Nobody wants to do the expensive, public thing. They'd rather just continue on in anonymity, part of the herd shuffling to the slaughter. Or maybe they want to find a convenient side street and turn around there, arriving at the scene too late but with their dignity intact. True repentance, the expensive genuine article, comes in a blaze of light brighter than the sun. It can't be hidden or faked. Paul was convinced. His companions and former friends refused to be.
If you get the call to change, listen to Paul's story. Allow yourself to be as convinced as he was, and to treat it as urgently as he did. The condemnation he deserved had no more power over him. Why else would you publicly tell the authorities that you were a mass murderer? It no longer held him. If you turn around, you get to escape death and condemnation, and even help others to do so. The human condemnation you get for escaping eternal condemnation doesn't matter in comparison.
“I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the Lord’s people in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities.
“On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. About noon, King Agrippa, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’
“Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’
“‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’
“So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and then to the Gentiles, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and demonstrate their repentance by their deeds. That is why some Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me.
I saw a police car execute a perfect 180 degree turn in traffic last week. People were like "What is he doing?" but it turned out he'd gotten a call on the radio instructing him to be someplace that was in the opposite direction to where he was going. So he had to make a sudden adjustment, which looked like madness to people who don't understand police cars, radios, or the random nature of emergencies. It was like a giant unseen hand just grabbed the car and spun it around.
In this week's verses, Paul is talking to the king who has him in prison, arguing his case. He starts by talking about where he came from, doing wrong that everyone thought was right, and ends where he ended up, doing right that everyone thought was wrong. He doesn't try to candy-coat things. He just lays it out. Jesus had interrupted his leisurely drive down the devil's path, and sent him speeding in the other direction. People weren't prepared to understand that, so they condemned him.
Until he saw the light, Paul was obsessed with doing wrong. He went out of his way to go deeper and deeper into persecuting Christians, because he didn't know any better. People naturally descend into evil under certain circumstances, like when they're given lots of power, or are convinced of their inerrant righteousness, and there are some fascinating books on the topic. Paul was on that Stanford Prison Experiment, Nazi Prison Camp, Yugoslavian Death Squad path. He was wrong, and he was evil, but was he irredeemable?
Without Jesus, I believe he would have been. If God hadn't blasted him on his way to doing more evil, interrupting him and sending him in the opposite direction, from genocide to genesis, I believe he would have died a war criminal and had an irredeemable debt to pay when he faced God's judgment. Even Paul, who has every motivation to candy-coat his life's story, admits so. It's only Jesus who called him back. Nothing else would have prevented him from continuing into the night, lost forever.
But in settling scores with God, Paul enraged those who were continuing in their evil. His genocide was good for them. It kept them in power and justified their lifestyle. It glorified them as having things figured out. When Paul stopped his evil, exposed it to the world, and turned against it, they were betrayed. Their kingdom was proven to be less than Jesus's kingdom. They were a fraud.
Paul preached that repentance is both possible and necessary. Having turned 180 degrees in the middle of the street, he called others to join him not just in word but in deed. It's one thing to say "Good for you," or "Yeah, I probably should do that." It's quite another to squeal your tires and flash your lights in a desperate scramble to get where you need to be. People will despise you for it. They don't know what it is to be called.
Nobody wants to do the expensive, public thing. They'd rather just continue on in anonymity, part of the herd shuffling to the slaughter. Or maybe they want to find a convenient side street and turn around there, arriving at the scene too late but with their dignity intact. True repentance, the expensive genuine article, comes in a blaze of light brighter than the sun. It can't be hidden or faked. Paul was convinced. His companions and former friends refused to be.
If you get the call to change, listen to Paul's story. Allow yourself to be as convinced as he was, and to treat it as urgently as he did. The condemnation he deserved had no more power over him. Why else would you publicly tell the authorities that you were a mass murderer? It no longer held him. If you turn around, you get to escape death and condemnation, and even help others to do so. The human condemnation you get for escaping eternal condemnation doesn't matter in comparison.
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