Scripture Daily

Context No. 2955 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 26:9-14: in context

9“I myself most certainly thought that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10I also did this in Jerusalem. I both shut up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death I gave my vote against them. 11Punishing them often in all the synagogues, I tried to make them blaspheme. Being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities. 12“Whereupon as I traveled to Damascus with the authority and commission from the chief priests, 13at noon, O king, I saw on the way a light from the sky, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who traveled with me. 14When we had all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’

Standing before King Agrippa, Paul does not hide his past. I was convinced, he says, that I ought to oppose the name of Jesus. I locked up many believers, cast my vote for their deaths, tried to force them to blaspheme, and in raging fury pursued them even to foreign cities. Then, on the Damascus road at noon, a light brighter than the sun, and a voice: Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.

Two things stand out. Paul is unsparingly honest about who he was, a violent persecutor, so that the grace which turned him would shine all the brighter against it. And the risen Christ's question, why are you persecuting me, reveals that in attacking the church, Saul was attacking Christ himself; the Lord counts what is done to his people as done to him. And the image of kicking against the goads pictures Saul's futile resistance to a God who had already been prodding his conscience.

Is God prodding my conscience toward something I keep kicking against, and do I see that how I treat his people is how I treat him?

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