Saul In Damascus
SAUL IN DAMASCUS
ACTS 9:19b-25
“Are you a converted Jew?” a Hebrew-Christian was once asked. “No,” he replied, “I am a completed Jew.” So Paul preached.
Verses 19b-25 show how seriously Paul took his new vocation as a man “saved to serve.” Mark the word “immediately” (9:20). Where does the record of Galatians 1:15ff. fit in to this period? The answer is supplied in 2 Corinthians 11:32. See below.
The preaching of the Christian apostle is set in the synagogue, which may be a little surprising. Yet Saul was a Jewish rabbi, albeit now converted to the Messiah, and entitled to address the assembled congregation at their worship. Saul’s first opportunities came in this way, during his first missionary tour (13:14ff.). The rift came at 18:4-7. Some idea of what Saul said in these messages is given in 9:20,22: Jesus as Son of God (in the sense of Psalm 2:7; the enthroned Messianic King, and Romans 1:3-4: a pre-Pauline confessional formula) and the true Messiah of Israel who fulfilled the prophecies.
9:23-25 describe the first of the many hazards to which his life was exposed. Perhaps we should insert before these verses a departure for “Arabia,” inhabited by the Nabatean Arabs. Their leader was Aretas, who heard something of his ministry in his kingdom as Saul preached to the Nabateans (Galatians 1:17). When he returned to Damascus, Aretas’ ethnarch was instructed to seize him with the help of evilly disposed Jews in the city (9:23). But Saul too had his helpers, called “his disciples,” since his powers of leadership were already being felt, who assisted his escape through a hole in the city wall (2 Corinthians 11:33).
Note 9:21: titles for early Christian believers are interesting. Those “who called on this Name” (cf. 9:14) means men and women devoted to the worship and service of Jesus as their God. The exact expression comes from the Old Testament—eg Genesis 21:33 –and lasted on into the Pauline church vocabulary (1 Corinthians 1:2). The title “saints” (9:13), meaning “dedicated to God’s service,” is mainly employed in describing the Jerusalem community (Romans 15:26).