“Saul was one of the witnesses, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen. A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem; and all the believers except the apostles were scattered through the regions of Judea and Samaria. (Some devout men came and buried Stephen with great mourning.) But Saul was going everywhere to destroy the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into prison.”
I always want to be on the right side of history. We pause today on just this short passage of three verses to let the early story of Saul (who later is renamed Paul) sink in. Saul was there at the stoning of Stephen that we just covered in yesterday’s post. But he wasn’t just standing around spectating — he was in complete agreement with that violent death being the right decision. Remember, Stephen had primarily retold the stories in the Jewish Scriptures, focusing on examples of times God’s people refused to listen and went their own way. Stephen warns that the Jews are refusing the Holy Spirit. And Saul believed wholeheartedly that this message must be stopped. He wanted to be on the right side of history, but he was sorely mistaken.
As we read on, we see that Saul was “going everywhere to destroy the church.” He was a man on a mission. He believed zealously that the Jesus-following church was a danger to the Jewish tradition. I am struck by the graphic depiction of Saul literally dragging people from their homes to throw them into prison for believing in Jesus. A fate that later on as Paul he himself would experience.
Saul is noted as the person most violently opposed to the church that there ever was. Perhaps just to prove he could, God picked the worst possible candidate for the job of building up the church and turned him into the best. God is a heart-changer. He’s a life-alterer. He’s a direction-shifter. Whatever you are at your worst, God can use that weakness and turn it into your biggest asset. For Paul, it was his misdirected zeal. What is it for you?