So what exactly do we know about Saul before his Damascus road experience? Let’s take a look at the biblical references to his worldview and lifestyle before that event.
This blog is simply a concatenation of the descriptions of Saul’s worldview and lifestyle before the events of his Damascus Road experience recorded in Acts 9, Acts 22, Acts 26 and Galatians chapters 1 and 2.
Saul was a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in Jerusalem, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of the Hebrew forefathers, being zealous for God as all of the contemporary Jews of his day were. Beginning from his youth among his own native Jews among those in Jerusalem, Saul’s manner of life was “known by all the Jews. The Jews had known for a long time that Saul was so extremely zealous for the traditions of the Jewish forefathers, that he had lived as a Pharisee according to the strictest Pharisaical regulations of the Jewish religion; and that he had been advancing in Judaism beyond many of his own age among the Jewish people. He was a Pharisee, and indeed the son of a Pharisee, who possessed an undying hope in the resurrection of the dead.
Saul himself was convinced that he personally ought to do whatever he could in opposition to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And he did so in Jerusalem. He intensely persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. He not only locked up many of the Christians in prison, but when they were put to death he cast his vote against them. Specifically, when the blood of Stephen was being shed, he himself was standing by and approving and watching over the garments of those who killed him.
And Saul punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them he persecuted them even to foreign cities. He was so vehemently breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, that he finally went to the high priest and asked for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
After receiving authority from the chief priests, he journeyed toward Damascus to take those who were there and bring them in bonds to Jerusalem to be punished. In one synagogue after another he imprisoned and beat those who believed. He persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women as the high priest and the whole council of elders can bear witness to his actions.
People had heard many reports about Saul, how much evil he had done to believers in Jesus at Jerusalem. And they knew that Saul had authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Jesus’ name. These people questioned, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?” People were afraid of him.
It is easy to see, from the scriptural tapestry above, that Saul is a man thoroughly entrenched in Jewish religious tradition and extremely zealous for not only keeping the law himself, but also for protecting it from outsiders, to the point of persecuting those who pose a threat to his Jewish form of life, even to the point of death. His staunch and fervent Judaic worldview and stringent law-abiding lifestyle are clearly displayed in those texts above.
To gain an overall perspective of the gospel message, it is vey important to understand the extreme polarity of shift in Saul’s worldview, from his feverish legalistic viewpoint to a more grace-oriented viewpoint as a result of his meeting with the resurrected Messiah face to face on the Damascus road. From the verses above, we see the height to which Saul rose in his religious pursuits, and the depth to which his commitment is rooted in his Judaic religious worldview. Both extremes are seen in the tenacity he exerted in his attempt to squelch any threat to that religious experience.
So now having a general grasp of the height and depth of Saul’s worldview and lifestyle, we can now move on to our second topic in this series.
Next, we will look at the biblical references to Saul’s Damascus-road-encounter with the resurrected Jesus and see how Saul comes to the realization that the “gospel” is “the power of salvation to all who believe, to (him) the Jew first and then the Gentile.”
In my next blog, we will see Saul the Man – His Calling on the Damascus Road
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