The Welcome Valley Reader
Enforcing the Enforcer
They didn’t really have
civilian police officers in ancient Palestine, but this man came pretty close.
He was educated in the law. He had ties to the highest national authorities. He
was intensely patriotic and burned with zeal for his nation and its law. He
didn’t merely do a professional job of arresting criminals. He actively sought
opportunities to attack them.
Now you need to
understand a few things about this man. The country in which he lived was
governed not by secular law, but by religious law. Since the country was Judea,
the law came from the true God. We might expect such an enforcement agent to be
true to that God, and, to the best of his ability, he was.
It is an unfortunate fact
of history that the original law God had given through Moses many years
previously had been corrupted. Well, actually, the law itself stood unchanged,
its text carefully guarded by professional scribes. The problem lay in the
secondary code that had grown up around this law. Experts, much like the man in
question, had pondered the best way of keeping the law. They had, over the
years, developed a new code to keep people from even coming close to violating
the sacred law of God. That this secondary set of rules sometimes violated the
very law it sought to enhance was lost on most of the legal experts. After all,
they were only human, and the changes usually served in their personal best
interests. The man we’re considering sincerely believed in the newer legal
precedents. He was a true-hearted and zealous young enforcer.
One particular challenge
faced this man--whose name, by the way, was Saul. Before Saul became involved in
government, a religious teacher had nearly turned the system on edge. Jesus of
Nazareth had possessed an unusual knowledge of the law. Jesus associated mostly
with common people, but His challenge to keep the law, not just outwardly but
from one’s inner being, came as an affront to the ruling elite. When they’d
tried to hide behind their more recent regulations and precedents, He’d exposed
the whole system as the self-serving dodge that it was.
The individuals who
formed the government hadn’t appreciated the expose, nor had they liked Jesus‘
ability to draw a huge following. Some people even suspected that He might be
the long-awaited Messiah. In short, this working-class teacher threatened to
shake up the whole corrupt system. Several influential people did recognize that
Jesus was right. But the ruling class as a whole managed to get Him framed and
executed.
Jesus’ followers claimed
He had risen from the dead only three days after He died. They soon held the
authorities responsible for their role in His death. They said that Jesus had
made a way for people to be right with God whether they had kept the law or not.
They even went so far as to preach that faith in Jesus was the only way
to be right with God. Jesus’ original followers performed enough supernatural
acts to give credence to these claims. A whole religious sect had grown up
around Jesus, and that sect was growing as if powered by a divine force. Of
course, its members claimed that such was the case.
Such talk disgusted a
loyalist from deep within the system, and Saul accepted responsibility for
silencing what he saw as an outlaw cult. In fact, his first mention in history
occurs at the execution of a lay minister from the Jesus sect. Saul accompanied
an enraged mob who forced the man out of town and killed him. Their method that
day had been an ancient means of execution called stoning. The crowd
literally threw stones at the preacher until he died. While Saul doesn’t seem to
have thrown any rocks personally, he did function as the security man for the
event. In other words, he might not have soiled his hands, but he supported
those who did.
It seems that the hasty
execution triggered Saul’s career. He went after members of the new religion
with passion. He didn’t just show up in their worship services. He pursued them
into their homes and drug them off to prison. While women tended to have a less
active role in that society, Saul arrested them too. He hated this dangerous,
subversive cult. He intended to stop it before it either defiled his country or
caused it to lose its unique identity.
We aren’t told that it
ever entered Saul’s mind, but there was a chance that this new cult was really
the only true religion in the world. If Jesus was who He’d claimed to be, Saul
wasn’t a conscientious patriot. He was, instead, an enemy of the highest, most
righteous government in the universe.
The members of the new
religion scattered. Till now, they’d hung out in the capital. But with Saul and
his friends throwing them in jail and seeking the death penalty, they did the
practical thing and left town. The divine power that had been so convincing in
Jerusalem went with them. Everywhere they went, they taught about Jesus.
Converts multiplied in distant cities. It was hardly the result Saul intended.
One trouble spot was
Damascus. Damascus lay on foreign soil, but under the Roman Empire, Saul’s
government could arrest its citizens beyond its own borders. Saul obtained the
necessary arrest warrants. Then he and his associates headed for Damascus.
Again, there is no clear
evidence that Saul ever doubted that he was on the right side. He was full of
threats and vengeance toward the members of the cult as he traveled on foot
through the desert toward Damascus.
About noon one day, the
totally unexpected happened. A brilliant light flashed into the sky. Brighter
than the sun, it instantly blinded Saul. Then, he heard a voice. “Saul, Saul,
why do you persecute me?” [Quotes are
not necessarily exact unless accompanied by a Scripture reference.]
Saul found himself
clueless. “Who are you, Lord?” Even in the confusion, the sheer power of this
blinding Presence commanded his respect.
“I am Jesus whom you
persecute.”
“I am Jesus.” All of a
sudden the hated, dead, back-country preacher wasn’t an executed criminal. “I am
Jesus.” All at once, Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t a stolen corpse, but a risen
Messiah. “I am Jesus.” All at once, Saul learned that he hadn’t been fighting a
false cult, but the living Son of God.
“What do you want me to
do?” Saul had been beaten, and he knew it.
“Go on into Damascus.
You’ll be told.”
So it was that Saul of
Tarsus entered Damascus. He’d started out as a power to be reckoned with. He
finished the journey with his helpers leading him as he shuffled along blind
from his encounter with the risen Messiah. He came, as it were, as a prisoner.
He’d been arrested by the King of Kings and sent to whatever fate that King had
selected for him.
Saul waited for three
days . He ate nothing. Physically speaking, he saw nothing. Spiritually, of
course, he was seeing things that had been unthinkable less than a week before.
He also prayed, prayed to the Father of the Jesus he had been fighting against.
On the third day, one of
the men he’d set out to arrest entered the room. Ananias was a Jewish Christian
from Damascus. He’d had his own spiritual struggle as God had led him to come
and help this enemy. But Ananias had already learned to take orders from Jesus
Christ. Empowered by God, he laid his hands on Saul. “Brother Saul, Jesus sent
me so you could receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” As if
coverings had dropped away, Saul could see. He faced a man he had counted a
criminal. Now that man called him “brother,” and he accepted the relationship.
Saul immediately and
publicly proclaimed himself a follower of Jesus Christ.
The enforcer, the man who
had captured and executed the servants of the Son of God, had been captured
himself. But Saul’s Captor had already taken the execution and returned from the
dead. His goal was to set a man trapped by his own commitment to an erroneous
viewpoint free. His goal was to free a man imprisoned by self-importance and
blinded by pride so he could see the deep truths of pure life. His goal was to
seize the enforcer and make him an agent of forgiveness and liberty. Since the
One doing the arresting that day was Jesus Christ, Saul didn’t get sent off to
rot in prison. He was transformed into a powerful friend of God. You normally
think of him as the Apostle Paul.
***
Each of us approaches
life with our own ideas. We all have our systems we trust, whether a specific
religion, a school of philosophy, the theories of science, or the values of our
cultures. Sometimes our ideas are good. Sometimes they’re in conflict with other
ideas, and we proudly insist that we are right.
The question we too often
force from our minds is the question of how our ideas line up with the teachings
of Jesus Christ. Jesus is bigger than the best system the world has ever known.
It is through Him, and only through Him that we can find the wisdom of God and
everlasting life.
Like Saul, we can be very
sincere and earnest. But if we‘re out of step with the Son of God, those
ideas we‘re so proud of will be our undoing. The route Saul was on would
eventually have destroyed him had Jesus not flashed into his sky and demanded a
choice. It was Saul’s way or Jesus. Most of us probably won’t be confronted by a
blinding light, but we still face the choice, “my way or Jesus.“ There is no
middle ground. Jesus will never be a respected Enemy. He won‘t quietly withdraw
so we can agree to disagree. As He did with Saul, Jesus demands our total
surrender.
Saul surrendered when
faced with the risen Son of God. In response to this faith, he found forgiveness
of sin and everlasting life. He also became a spiritual giant. Jesus is waiting
to forgive you and give you everlasting life. If you’ve already received
forgiveness and everlasting life, He’s still waiting, waiting for you to
surrender more fully to Him so He can make you something better than you could
ever hope to make yourself. Like Saul, you face a choice. Will it be Jesus in
all His glory or only your poor conceited self?
Have you surrendered to
the Son of God?
For I am not ashamed
of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one
that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. (Paul in Romans 1:16)
Behold, I stand at the
door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to
him, and will sup with him, and he with me. (Jesus in Revelation 3:20)
This story is in the
public domain and may be copied and distributed freely.
Surrendering to Jesus Christ requires that we put our faith in Him to forgive us and give us everlasting life. For more information on how to do this, please see How to Have a Relationship with God on this website. The same information is available in easy English at Jesus and You, which is also on this website.
This story is in the public domain and may be copied and distributed freely.
How to Have a Relationship with God
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A Father's Faith * A Man for an Impossible Situation * A Mother's Triumph * All they Did Was Show Up for Work * Angels in the Sky * Buried Alive * Challenging the Gods * Dealing with the Evidence * Enforcing the Enforcer * God's Man and the Devil's City * Magic Vs. Miracle * Reclaiming a Failure * Taking Away the Stone * The Beginning * The Decision * The Devoted One * The End of the Boy King * The Flood * The Good Samaritan * The King and the King of Kings * The Making of a Traitor * The Man Who Sold His Rights * The Man Whose Eyes Were Opened * The Outcast * The Secret Agent * The Stranger * The Testing * The View from the Cave * The Weak Commando * Two Men, Two Scandals, Two Results * When Actions Weren't Better than Words * Where Is the God of Elijah? * Willing to Pay the Price
Bridges to Burn * Come in Out of the Cold * Dropping Out * Dying Faith * Everything I Didn't Have * Failed Horizons * Failing for the Lord * Fire Danger * Living Water * Negligence * Sir * Spring or Rock Formation? * Stepping Toward God * Swimming with Piranhas * Tax Day * The Abandoned Skyscraper * The Beacon * The Cat in the Trash Can * Those New Antique Locomotives * The Road Through the Swamp * Tracks in the Woods * Trusting the Unseen