¹²“While so engaged as I was journeying to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, ¹³at midday, O King, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining all around me and those who were journeying with me. ¹⁴And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ ¹⁵And I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.’”

Arguing as one who once thought and acted like his accusers, Paul lays out the facts. He rests his case on a supernatural intervention of God. His pre-conversion theological thinking was unassailable in his mind. He was the smartest, most theologically astute individual among his contemporaries. As a young man, he was absolutely convinced of his righteousness in keeping the Law. He was just like the Jews who were now seeking his death because of his teachings.

However, he asserts, everything changes when God intervenes. Theological reasoning must give way to God’s direct revelation. Right thinking about God is not simply a mind exercise, rational thinking apart from reality. Paul’s theology was radically altered by an experience with the living God. We can see this way of thinking when he countered Jewish unbelief in the book of Romans:

. . . [the Jews] were entrusted with the oracles of God. What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it? May it never be! Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar . . . (Rom. 3:2–4a)

In his testimony before the Jews now at his trial, Paul’s point is that he must believe God over all that he used to believe! Martin Luther echoed this sentiment at his theological trial for heresy in the 16^th century, when he sought to reform the Catholic church through the rediscovery of justification by faith.  When asked to recant his teachings, he refused, asserting: “Here I stand; I can do no other. So help me God.” For the inspired apostle Paul, everything depended on this conversion event, his personal meeting with Christ. When he later wrote about the proof of Christ’s resurrection, he said that after His death, Jesus “appeared . . . to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also” (1 Cor. 15:7–8). Everything changes at the resurrection. Paul could do no other than obey.

Today, we don’t literally see Christ physically. But conversion involves a spiritual revelation of Christ to each believer. We come to know Him personally, as He makes Himself known to us. Here we stand!

Lord, thank You for making Yourself known to me! I stand confidently in You!