“As I came near Damascus” (Acts 22:6)
“As I came near Damascus” (Acts 22:6)
The persecutor of Christians was turned into the foremost preacher of Christ by a sudden confrontation with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul’s Damascus-road experience is described once by Luke (Acts 9:3-6), twice by Paul in Acts (Acts 22:6-11 and 26:12-15) and once by Paul in his epistles (Gal. 1:15-16). In addition to these clear descriptions, other allusions to this event are probably to be found in many places in Paul. 13Several scholars have suggested that the event and its implications played a basic role in the formation of much of Paul’s theology. 14Paul’s encounter with Christ was no merely psychological experience, nor was it even a divinely given vision. Paul’s companions saw the blaze of light, although they did not see Jesus himself (see Acts 9:7 with 22:9), and heard, but did not understand, the voice (cf. Acts 9:7 with 22:9). 15Moreover, Paul makes clear that this appearance to him of the resurrected Jesus was fully on a par with the appearances to Peter and the others in the days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension (1 Cor. 15:5-8; see also 9:1).
The "revelation” (αποκαλψξις [apokalypsis, G637]) of Christ to Paul came without any preparation. Paul gives no hint that before this point he was at all dissatisfied with his Jewish convictions or searching for a deeper experience of God. The texts that have sometimes been thought to indicate such a preparatory period are better interpreted otherwise. When Paul is warned by the heavenly voice that "it is hard for you to kick against the goads” (Acts 26:14), the meaning is not that Paul has been resisting the
Spirit’s wooing but that he should not now resist the will of God expressed in the revelation from heaven. 16Neither does Romans 7:14-25 refer to a preconversion psychological struggle. 17Rather, the descriptions of the experience in Acts, as well as Paul’s allusions to it in Philippians 3:3-11, suggest a sudden and dramatic turn from zealous Jew and persecutor of the church to a follower of Jesus.
The Damascus-road encounter turned Paul into more than a follower of Jesus: it turned him into a preacher of Jesus. Although the relationship between the two is not stated the same way in all the accounts, each one makes clear that Paul’s conversion was also a call to ministry (Acts 9:15; 22:15; 26:15-18 and Gal. 1:16). Indeed, some have gone so far as to argue that this revelation was properly a "call” experience and not a "conversion” experience at all. 18But whatever the continuity between Judaism and Christianity, the New Testament makes clear that the two are distinct, that only within Christianity is salvation found. The change from one to the other is, then, appropriately called a conversion. For Paul, however, conversion and call were bound up together. As Johannes Munck has emphasized, Paul viewed himself as a peculiar instrument in God’s hands, one who, like the Old Testament prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, would have an important role to play in salvation history. It is significant in this light that, whereas ministry to Jews is certainly included in Paul’s call (see Acts 9:15), Paul himself often emphasizes that his call was particularly a call to preach to Gentiles (Gal. 1:16; 1 Thess. 2:4; Rom. 1:1, 5; 15:15-16). The mission of carrying the gospel to the Gentiles was fundamental to Paul’s call and to his being chosen as a vessel for God’s use.