Lessons from Saul’s Conversion
by Terry Wane Benton
Saul would become the saved apostle Paul, and his conversion from being totally against Jesus and his disciples to becoming a disciple of Jesus, from being a persecutor to being persecuted, is a remarkable account of what is involved in the process of conversion to Christ. Read Acts 9 and then later Paul’s own personal account of what happened in Acts 22. From these records we learn:
He was not saved “by grace alone through faith alone.”
Those who teach that are deceived and are deceiving others. He was not saved by grace through faith without baptism, as many today teach. In reading Acts 9:5-6,9, we find that even though he believed in Jesus after Jesus confronted him, Acts 9:9 shows he was still not yet a saved man. Someone in the city would tell him what he “must do” (Acts 9:6), and in the meantime, as he waits in “faith alone,” he waits in the darkness of his blindness, “neither eating nor drinking” (Acts 9:9), and this goes on for “three days.” Does this sound like a man who is saved? He has “faith alone,” and neither “grace alone nor faith alone” has brought him any peace of mind that he is forgiven and saved. Ananias will come and tell him to “arise and be baptized and wash away your sins” (Acts 22:16). For three days, Saul was miserable, lost, and still in his sins. If he still needs his sins washed away, then he is certainly not already “saved by grace alone through faith alone.”. That doctrine is proven false by the evidence of Saul’s conversion.
Truth changed his life and his mission (Acts 9:20).
He would learn to suffer for Christ rather than cause others to suffer for serving Christ. He would have a mission for bringing light to the spiritually blind.
The truth changed the way he handled the scriptures (Acts 9:22).
His eyes of understanding were enlightened. He would convert from a spiritually blind person who was not seeing Jesus at all in the prophetic word to a person who could see Jesus everywhere in the prophetic word, so much so that the Morning Star of prophecy could dawn in his heart (II Peter 1:19f). He would have his eyes opened about Jesus. He would move from being spiritually blind to seeing the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He would have a treasure within that would give him light through every dark moment he would face (II Corinthians 4). He now would gladly suffer for Jesus and became not one whit behind the more noteworthy apostles. He went on to preach Jesus in three amazing missionary journeys recorded in Acts and wrote 13 of the books of the New Testament. He gladly suffered for Jesus as he knew Jesus loved and suffered for him. These are three great lessons we can learn from the case study of Saul’s conversion. We need to learn the treasures that Saul held in his heart.
