KEY
VERSE: Marvel not; ye must be born again. (John 3:7)
Saul was a
Pharisee. As such, he knew the Law of God quite well. However, he had little
love in his heart. That is known because he hunted down, persecuted, and killed
the Jews, at least under his authority. The first thing to always examine in
scripture is what names mean. Saul means “Questioning.”
What did Saul
question? Whether Jesus is God in the flesh. Of course, his questioning was quickly
answered; Jesus was not God in his viewpoint. As such, he could kill
Christians with impunity because to him he saw heretics. God selected Saul for
a reason, and surely it was because Saul was a zealot – a religious fanatic. He
was a fan of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but not a fan for the Lord
of all!
Jesus used a
method he had used before, only partially opposite. Bartimaeus could see Jesus
because he was blind, likely from birth. [1] Bartimaeus
saw Jesus as the patriarchs saw him which was with his mind’s eye. He didn’t
need to actually see Jesus to believe. He saw the unseen! Bartimaeus did not need
to see Jesus’ flesh to know Jesus. On the other hand, Saul saw
Jesus but didn’t recognize him. What did Jesus do? Make Saul like blind Bartimaeus
for a few days:
And
now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing
the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness;
and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand. (Acts 19:11)
Why was Bartimaeus
given his sight? To better follow Jesus. Why was Saul blinded? So Jesus could
lead him! The blind man, in John’s account, gave a reason for sight being
given:
Whether
he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind,
now I see. Then said they to him again, What did he to thee? how opened he
thine eyes? He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear:
wherefore would ye hear it again? will ye also be his disciples? Then they
reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses' disciples. (John
9:25-28)
The crowd
around the blind man gave a distinction; the man was a disciple of Christ, but
they were disciples of Moses. Perhaps as disciples of Moses they were under the
leadership of Saul. Saul was a disciple of Moses but not one of Jesus. Saul needed
to be blind to see Jesus in the Mosaic Laws. (He came to fulfil the Law.)
Bartimaeus,
when he saw, responded as such:
Be
of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee. And he (Bartimaeus), casting away his
garment, rose, and came to Jesus. (Mark 10:49b-50)
On the other
hand, blinded Saul did not come to Jesus, but was led to Jesus by
Ananias, albeit willingly led because he was blind for three days. There
is no record of Saul being taught the truth. It can be assumed that truth
was revealed to him by Jesus himself in those three days. What Saul saw was that
the God of Moses is Jesus Christ. That was a hard thing to concede because Jews
considered that heretical. They had learned their lesson about false gods, and
they believed Jesus to be no more than a false prophet as they had experienced many
before and even in Jesus’s day.
The way God
works is to turn darkness into Light. Saul questioned the claim of
Jesus. After he saw the Light in darkness, Saul was born-again.
And
this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved
darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that
doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should
be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be
made manifest, that they are wrought in God. (John 3:19-21)
Saul was in
the dark because he didn’t understand the truth. He was comfortable in the darkness,
failing to recognize the truth when he heard it (that is Jesus’s “Ghost”
speaking with him.) It can be assumed that although Jesus was not there in the
flesh, that Saul saw his flesh when he was blinded. His deeds (persecutions)
were reproved, and when he saw Jesus from his mental tomb, his bad deeds were
shown to him. His persecutions were agitated in his mind because he finally
understood God.
Surely, Saul
came to understand what Numbers 21 was all about. Jesus used that situation to
explain what born again means (John 3:14). Saul understood that he had been focusing
on himself – killing all the “snakes” who followed Jesus. He came to understand
that the brazen serpent was the Serpent dead in his tree (Judas Iscariot who
Satan entered), and understood that the blood of Jesus was propitiated for the
Serpent to die!
With that
understanding and trust in Jesus for safety, Saul was born again. That implies
change. He went from trusting Moses to trusting Jesus, remembering that the
Hebrews generally cried out to Moses who interceded with God on their behalf.
Usually when the Hebrews cried out to God, it was in condemnation of their predicaments.
The saved Hebrews finally understood that it was not Moses who slew the Serpent,
but God Himself by shedding His own blood on their behalf. That finally
occurred to Saul, and he was safe from the evil one, although he then would be
persecuted for God’s Name sake!
Saul thereafter
followed Jesus, not Jesus in bodily form, but in Spirit. The Holy Ghost
revealed to him the meaning of life and the Way of Giver of life. It didn’t
stop there; Saul walked as Jesus walked. Saul changed. No longer did God see
him as “questioning,” but convinced. Brilliant Saul who knew all the Law
of God, so he thought, was humbled. Jesus renamed him “Paul” because of
his humility.
Hence, “born
again” is humbled. The meek shall inherit God’s Kingdom in heaven and in earth.
Saul knew that he could not save himself from persecution by powers, principalities,
and the Serpent; but God could. When he recognized his weakness, he was humbled.
His total dependence was focused on Jesus and what happened in Jesus’s three
days of darkness where his Holy Ghost deposited all the sins of mankind of all
ages, Saul’s inclusive, and deposited them on the shoulders of Judas’s “ghost”
in Hell.
Saul to Paul –
questioning God to humbled by him. Saul changed. All disciples of
Christ must change after being born again. Just as a baby is born with crowning
from the darkness, those born again are crowned with a new purpose and a new
Christian name. Just as babies mature into adult people, those born again
mature from babes in Christ to zealots for Jesus! The new life is all about
Jesus, as Paul’s was. Like Job before him, Satan and his demons persecuted Paul
for Jesus’s Name sake. The desire of Satan was for Paul to be Saul again, and
love the spiritual darkness in which he had walked before. Just as Job, Paul was
not remolded back to Saul because of his enduring faith through it all.
Jesus foretold
Paul’s death. Humble Paul lived up to his name. History indicates that Paul requested
to be crucified upside down so as not to dishonor Jesus who was crucified right
side up.
Paul’s death
was gain. He said that! He lived in Christ, and to die was gain for him. (Phil
1:21). Why was that? For he inherited God’s Kingdom as an adopted brother of
Jesus - Rom 8:15, wherein Paul indicates that the Father adopted him and His Son
gave him a new name corresponding to his new attitude! What’s your attitude? Do
you still depend on yourself, or do you trust Jesus to protect you from
perishing? It’s your choice. How blind will you be?
It is to be noted that partially blind Bartimaeus during the miracle saw "Men as trees walking" (Mark 8:24), and Saul saw Jesus as the Tree of Life talking!
[1]
There are stories of Jesus healing a blind man in all the gospels, The
assumption is that each account of versions of the same story. The stories
differ in many ways. Perhaps Jesus healed several blind men. The account in
John indicates that that blind man was blind from birth.
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