Conversion

This was part of a paper that I was required to write for a graduate class I am taking now. It helps to enlighten what conversion really looks like.

"Saul was up to his usual persecution when on the road to Damascus one day heaven itself opened up and He saw Jesus. Jesus asked him, “Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me?” Saul being confused as he was asked, “Who are you Lord?” Christ’s reply was, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." Paul was blinded at that moment and stayed so for three days. The travelers that were there with him were shocked. It is almost for sure that the believers their heard the voice so that they would be able to testify to the accounts that had happened to him there on that day. Later God sent Ananias to him to remove His blindness and have him baptized. This experience was paradigm shifting for Paul that only very few could ever comprehend. This experience crumbled his world in different ways, mainly in his understanding and God.

Before this experience Paul was trying everything that he could to please God. He was not a nominal Jew. He was a leading Pharisee that was advancing greatly in Judaism. He was learning under the best teachers of the Jewish faith. It can be for sure that there were very few Jews that would have ever have question his election. He was not only a good Jew but he was full of zeal for God, or so he thought. He was doing everything that there was so that he would please God and bring prosperity to Israel. He was persecuting Christians because for him this was a service to God. With the persecution he believed that he was doing the will of God and cleansing the Jews so that they would benefit from prosperity and freedom from the Romans. He actually believed that he was among the most faithful men in all Israel that cared for the will of God above all other things. Paul was doing everything that he could to seek God, and not totally blind, he was following the law (the divine Word of God) to the letter as well. Then to have this experience had to have blown his mind. There is little doubt that this experience was like that of Isaiah in Isaiah 6, where he calls himself lost because he has seen the Lord. The entire ordeal must have been so terribly frightening that he was expecting fire to come from heaven and incinerate him. This is what happens when one sees God. So his entire idea of how people are saved was turned upside down. He was convinced that there was nothing that could be done to get salvation on the behalf of a non-believer. He tried everything and found himself worse then lost, he was a murderer of the people of God. So his ideas about election had astronomical changes. He was then convinced that there was not a single thing that man could do to get God’s favor. Even those who’s intentions were an attempt to get God’s favor were totally lost unless God revealed the mystery to them.

Election being the first thing that changed drastically in his mind is coupled with the second. The second is grace. There is little doubt that Paul was an extreme legalist before the Damascus road experience. He though that the covenant was kept by ‘good’ works and doing the Law of the Lord. After this experience he came to realize that his understanding of the Law was grossly wrong. He had considered the Law as a way that people were kept by God, saved by election and kept by Law. This idea changed and he realized that the Law was so overbearing that it could do nothing but to kill the people that were under it. For him there was no longer life in the Law, it was all dried up. Only death and destruction lie at the source of what he considered able to maintain salvation. Similar to this is the idea of grace. Think about how much his paradigm had to change when he saw Jesus that day. He was literally, at that moment in time, dragging Christians off to imprisonment and eventually their death! He saw the Lord. He should have been destroyed in the blink on an eye. Fire and all hell should have come to swallow him for the sin that he was committing at that very minute. Instead what happened, he was shown grace by God. He was forgiven. He must have not been able to speak for days, because he realized there was no good inside him at all. He was now convinced, for sure that he was nothing but condemnation in everything he had ever done. One can barley imagine what his understanding of grace had to be from that time forward in life. It had to be inexpressible for him. He was truly the worst of sinners, and not just in his mind, but literally, still God chose him and gave him grace and salvation.

His outlook on God changed more drastically in one day than is likely for us to have happen in a decade. God was now A) Christ, B) giver of grace (because man is incapable of good), and C) the one to call people elect. The entire attitude of Paul changed that day in such a way that there was no going back. God impressed the truth on his heart that day and there was no more turning back to the way things were, Paul’s vision was sufficient. He was saved by grace, he had to have been speechless for those three days (of blindness), amazed and in awe. The evidence of a life changed by that experience is found in his words of the New Testament. He was sold out from that point forward, that God called people, saved them by grace, and protected them all the years of their lives."