Acts 9

Acts 9:1-30

Subdivision 3. (Acts 9:1-30.)The Gospel of the Glory of Christ. In perfect order of development, we are now to see the conversion of the apostle of the Gentiles; who receives grace and apostleship front the ascended Lord. We have noticed already the connection between Stephen’s witness and that of Paul. In Stephen Israel has definitely rejected the Messiah, and thus put from her the blessing to be brought in by Him; the blessing for the earth at large being identified with that of the earthly people. But God has other and higher purposes, -the display of a fuller grace which shall both stoop lower and lift up higher. Man having been thoroughly shown out, not merely impotent and rebellions under law, but in the cross of Christ the mind of the flesh being manifested as enmity against God, He will now act for Himself, to display Himself; and since He is Love, it must be in love that He is displayed, -love in answer to enmity; which is, therefore, grace: of which the messenger is in himself also the perfect exponent. Saul has shared in the national sin of Christ’s rejection, is of the party that could be quoted as to an individual in opposition to Him (John 7:48), was in agreement with the murder of Stephen, and is only roused by it to greater violence; he is the apostle of Jewish malignity, pursuing the disciples even to strange cities, at the very time when he is smitten down by the light from an open heaven, and transformed from the persecutor of Christ into His most devoted follower, -ever afterwards the apostle of the grace that has transformed him.

Here, where there could:be no possible thought of claim, heaven, closed to man’s righteousness, opens to its central, infinite glory, to display in the midst of it, whence the light came, the One whom as yet Saul knew not, but who identified Himself with His suffering saints on earth. The gospel of the glory of Christ was henceforth his gospel. It is evident that here the meaning of Stephen’s radiant face is now made plain. Heaven is really opened, -a Man gone in there, but occupying a place that no mere man could occupy. Paul preaches Him from the first, that He is the Son of God (ver. 20). Yet he sees Him none the less the Representative of His people, and the bringing men to see and fill their place in Him is henceforth to be his effort, -that for which the Spirit of God has taken him up and uses him. We may not find it come fully out in the Acts, but the necessary first consequence is that Jew and Gentile have no more any separate standing. It is not a Christ after the flesh that he sees, but a Christ in heaven; and that is not the place of a Jew’s blessings, nor one from which, if grace bestow it, he can exclude the Gentile. The apostle of the Gentiles is here prepared.

1. Grace is the foundation of all, -free, sovereign grace. Of what use his privileges as a Jew to one taken red-handed on his mission of blood, as Saul is now! It is not a mere repentant sinner suing for and finding mercy. He is an enemy, when as such he is reconciled to God. Legality is an impossibility to one in his position.

He cannot dream of any of those half-gospels with which men delude themselves first, and then their hearers. He, at least, had not done his best, save to be lost. His Pharisaism tumbled in one rag-heap at his feet, his cry was now that he was “chief of sinners;” and under no legal system whatever could the chief of sinners possibly have hope. But he, met and conquered by divine love, was given no room to dishonor it by a single question. And “in me,” he says, “did Christ Jesus show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them that should hereafter believe on Him, to life everlasting.” (1 Timothy 1:16). Thus was Paul’s doctrine prepared for him at the start; and he also, even in his unconverted state, for it. “Concerning zeal, persecuting the Church,” was Paul’s own account afterwards of the state in which divine grace found him (Philippians 3:6). It did not alter his conviction that he was the chief of sinners; “the least of the apostles,” he says elsewhere, and “not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:9). A man’s religion may be the worst thing about him; and his sincerity in it will not hinder its effect upon him, but rather make it the more sure. In this case, how solemn to realize that Saul’s religion was zealous law-keeping; the law being that which God Himself had given: it was one of Moses, disciples, of whom they could rightly say, “We know that God spake by Moses,” who was in that character attacking Christ! “Touching the righteousness of the law, blameless;” this is another thing that, looking back at himself with full Christian enlightenment, he says of his unconverted state. That was what his conscience said: it did not condemn or accuse him; and that was undoubtedly what in his case made him the zealous persecutor that he was: he had a zeal for God and for that law under which he had fared so well, and deserved so well of Him who gave it! Thus all that seemed so favorable in Saul’s case was what was most against him: his own good character, his zeal for law, and, as he allows with regard to his nation at large, his zeal for God even (Acts 22:3); and that God was the true God, not a false one: whom yet he was bitterly against, and knew it not, and who was therefore, in so far, against him, even while He pursued in His love this zealous antagonist. What confusion is here! And this is the confusion which springs out of all self-justifying efforts: “for they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God “(Romans 10:3). Paul will tell us himself in his first epistle, how the scales fell from his eyes in this respect. At present it is with the consequences that God faces him; and on the road to Damascus he suddenly finds himself smitten down by the light of a glory shining in the face of Him against whom the full current of his legal prejudices, with his traditionalism and his strong passion for his nation, all combined to carry him. It is striking that, while we know from Paul’s own statements afterwards, and even from the words of Ananias to him in the present chapter, that Jesus Himself appeared to him, we hear in this first account only of the Light and of the Voice; light out of heaven, in which, certainly for the first time, he stood revealed to himself; a Voice along with it, which fastened his eyes upon himself, even then to raise with himself the question, rather than to accuse, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou ME?” There could, of course, be no answer. Under the power of that glory which had transfigured Stephen, the very throb of the heart must have been hushed, called to expectant stillness in the presence of God. No need for answer! Had he not helped to batter out that glory from a human face with stones? Now a Human Voice from the midst of that glory was appealing to him, claiming these persecuted ones as His own -Himself! Yet he is drawn, -not repelled. Even now he can seek from Him who is speaking the anticipated answer which condemns -but HE has not condemned -him: “Who art Thou, Lord?” And the Royal Voice answers, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.” Thus they come together -Lord and follower; never to be separated more! How grand and wonderful is the simplicity of it all! The chief of sinners and the Lord of saints come together in a manner which has cost how great a price to effect; and the grace shown is as implicit as it wakes up implicit confidence to receive it. Has not this smitten sinner been in the outshining glory of God, unsmitten? -in the radiance shining on Stephen himself? There are other accounts, but they do not alter this; one can only say, the grace of it is perfect: and when we learn that he is to be the teacher of grace to others, we realize how completely fitted for such a purpose is that of which the history is recorded here. But it is the same grace which meets all of us. We can see too, that the identification of Christ with His people is here, which is to be developed on two sides, as “ye in Me and I in you.” And in this Jew and Gentile disappear, and the way for the mystery of the Church is prepared. Heaven is opened: God has come out to men; and Man -how glorious a MAN! -has gone in to God. Who that knows what was committed to Paul to teach us, but must see how the Pauline truths begin to appear in Paul’s conversion? We must not expect to reach their development in the Acts; and it is not yet, therefore, the time to follow their development. We must wait for Romans, Ephesians, Corinthians, Hebrews, to have the working out. The words that follow, in the common version, this declaration of Himself upon the Lord’s part are borrowed from the other accounts of what is here. Luke gives us in this place only the direction to the new disciple to enter into the city, and there it shall he told him what he is to do. The men accompanying him stand speechless, hearing the sound of the voice, but nothing more; the significance is for Paul. He on the other hand remains blinded by the light, and has to be led by the hand into Damascus; in which condition he continues three days without food or drink. He needs this, doubtless, for the tempest aroused within him to subside, -for the review of the now terrible past, and the realization of the new beginning. The resurrection number may well have its significance here in the apprehension of the old things now for him passed away, and all things become new. Shut up in darkness, amid his now uncongenial associates, he is made to realize his entire dependence upon God to bring him forth, and to accomplish in him the purposes of His marvellous grace. 2. We have now a lovely picture of the free intimacy between our Lord and His disciples in those yet unclouded days of early freshness. Saul is to take his place among the followers of the Crucified in the lowly way of baptism at the hands of those who had preceded him as such. A disciple named Ananias (“Jah has shown grace”) is chosen by the Lord for the introduction of Saul. He is simply termed a “disciple,” and yet is chosen, not only for the administration of baptism, which is in keeping with all that we have elsewhere in relation to this, but also for that which at Samaria just now required a special visit of apostles from Jerusalem -the communication of the Spirit. We have not yet come to this, however, here; but simply to consider the choice of Ananias to minister in the way we see him do to one designed to be the special apostle of the Gentiles.

In Paul we see, as he himself declares to us, any Jewish thought of succession from the original twelve broken through. Paul is an “apostle, not of men, nor through man;” and on this account confers not with flesh and blood, nor even goes up to Jerusalem in the first place, to those who were apostles before him, but to Arabia, to the “backside of the desert” (Galatians 1:16-17). The living and abiding Spirit is to be Himself the Source of supply; and the warrant for what is said is, first of all, the truth of it, intertwining with, confirmed by and confirming, all that is truth elsewhere. Ananias is therefore, as a simple disciple, all the more suited to be sent to Saul; and the Lord accordingly appears to him in a vision, bidding him go and seek in the house of Judas this man who has seen him in a vision, in answer to his prayer, laying his hands upon him, that he may receive his sight. Thus he who is to be in such a large and blessed way, the minister to others is to learn himself, first of all, his own need of ministry, and to receive it. How suited a messenger must this Ananias, with his significant name have seemed to the thankful and humbled man! “Grace” was, indeed, his new found joy. But Saul’s reputation has gone before him, and Ananias shrinks from his task, and ventures even to remonstrate with his Lord. Do we, who perhaps wonder at his foolish faint-heartedness, never imitate it, and reason with Omniscient Love as to His ways with us? But the Lord replies by letting him know that Saul was a chosen vessel unto Him, to bear His Name in testimony of the widest range, -to Gentiles and to Jews both; but the Gentiles here come before the Jews. That which he is to suffer also is proportioned to the breadth of his testimony; to bear the Name of Jesus implies suffering; witness and martyr are to be the same word. 3. There can be no more demur, but Ananias departs upon his errand; and entering the house, lays his hands upon Saul, acquainting him with his commission. It is remarkable that Ananias here joins his being filled with the Spirit as that for which he is sent, while yet it is not mentioned when, or in connection with what, Saul receives the Spirit. With Jews, as having openly rejected Christ, the order elsewhere was that they owned him in baptism, by which they received public remission of their sins, and then they received the gift of the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost nothing is said of the laying on of hands for this, which is first recorded as done in Samaria; but at Ephesus also John’s disciples are first baptized, and then they still wait for the Spirit until Paul’s hands are laid upon them. In the case of Cornelius and his friends, there is no previous baptism, and no laying on of hands at all.

Was there any laying on of hands for this by Ananias? Two things would argue for it, -the words of Ananias himself, and the case of John’s disciples. On the other hand, on the imposition of hands all we hear of as following is the healing of Saul’s blindness; there is nothing said of the Spirit being given at that time; nor of any imposition of hands at a later time. The insistence upon baptism first in the case of the Jew seems likewise against it though the apostle of the Gentiles is so exceptional a case, and seems so to reflect the gospel that he carries, and the change in regard to the Gentile is so marked, that one is inclined to read his saying, “Christ sent me not to baptize,” back into his own history here. In this unsatisfactory way, it seems, we have to leave it. “Filled with the Holy Spirit,” however, he is indeed; immediately preaching in the synagogues to which his letters of authorization are addressed that very Jesus, whose followers he is commissioned to destroy. He preaches Him also as yet the twelve, as far as the history goes, have not done, in the very character in which Israel had rejected Him, as Son of God. This is the fullest reversal of his own mad unbelief, and the completest challenge of that of Israel. The missionary of their own enmity is suddenly become the very champion of the “Way” he persecuted. Astonishment, which for the moment must have been dismay, falls upon those who hear him and know that which has wrought this change; to which his companions on the road could but bear witness as far as that strange interruption of their journey was realized by them. And Saul increased more and more in strength, and confounded the Jews dwelling at Damascus, proving that the One whom he confessed was indeed the Christ. The preaching of Jesus as the Son of God we should naturally have expected to have heard in the first place from the lips of John, whose writings are, as we know, so full of this. In Paul’s epistles, if Hebrews is, as I doubt not, to be included among these; we have the Lord spoken of in this character twenty-nine times; but in John’s epistles (of only seven chapters) there are twenty-three occurrences. In one passage alone in the rest of the General Epistles, where Peter quotes the Voice from the “excellent glory” (2 Peter 1:17), do we find this title; this, although Peter is in the Gospels the first of the inspired writers to own Christ openly in this way. The kinship between Paul and John is thus plainly declared. The connection with Paul’s doctrines we must consider later, as we take up his epistles. 4. The visit to Arabia, of which the epistle to the Galatians speaks, takes place evidently during those “many days” at the end of which the persecution breaks out, in which first Saul has to taste of the same cup of which he had been compelling others to drink in the dark days forever ended. At first the wonder of his conversion had discomfited the adversaries; but this naturally terminates in a violent reaction on the part of those who have not been brought by it to God; and now they join together in a plot to slay him: but He who in so extraordinary a way had brought him to Himself had no intention of leaving him in the hands of his enemies. The plot became known to Saul; and the gates being watched day and night, the disciples let him down in a basket through a window in the wall by night, and he escapes their hands. So ends Saul’s testimony at Damascus; nor is he rescued by a miracle from the death designed for him, but escapes in a lowly manner enough, more suited to the way of the Cross which he had begun to tread. It is but the beginning of those many sufferings which the Lord had said that He would show him that he was to endure for His sake. The Glory which was henceforth his guiding star did not light up the earth for him, but drew him out of it. His was to be in a peculiar sense a heavenly testimony, and the power of it that by which the world was crucified to him, and he unto the world. Driven from Damascus, Saul goes up to Jerusalem, according to his own statement to see Peter (Galatians 1:18); for what purpose we are not told; but he abode there only fifteen days. Although three years had elapsed from the time of his conversion, the report of it which had reached the disciples there had yet found no credit in the scene of his former “ravages” upon the flock of Christ. In Arabia he had been for some time probably away from observation, and his recent testimony again in Damascus seems not to have been known. Thus when he essayed to join himself to those whom he had helped to scatter, and who had, no doubt, many of them, vivid remembrances of those unhappy days, there was a general recoil. “They were all afraid of him, not believing him to be a disciple.” At this juncture the future companion of his labors,Barnabas, appears as mediator. He took and brought him to the apostles; that is, as Paul himself tells us, to Peter and James, the Lord’s brother, and represents to them the whole matter. The cloud is cleared away, and Saul remains with them going in and out at Jerusalem, and speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. He takes up now the work of the first martyr, disputing with the Hellenistic Jews, who go to work to give him Stephen’s portion; but in an ecstasy (Acts 22:17-18) the Lord appears to him, and bids him depart from the city, assuring him that they will not hear his testimony, and that he is to be sent far off to the Gentiles. The brethren thereupon bring him down to Caesarea on the sea-coast, and send him forth to Tarsus, his native city. There for awhile we leave him.

Acts 9:31-43

Subdivision 4. (Acts 9:31-43.)Remnant mercy in Israel. Israel is thus casting out the messengers sent to her, and filling full for herself the cup of wrath, which at a later time we know that she drank to the uttermost. But God is slow to anger, and of great mercy; and while the threatened judgment lingers, His long suffering is salvation to a remnant, in whom may be seen the promise yet abiding of final blessing to Israel as a whole. This remnant is as the sap of a cut down tree, in which is the hope of revival for the tree. The history of the development of the divine ways in the Church pauses for awhile here; to give us such an intimation of the faithfulness of a Saviour God.

1. We have first, as the result of the dealing of God with the chief persecutor, peace to the assembly throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria; -the whole extent, as far as yet enjoyed, of Israel’s land. It is but a remnant, this assembly, as already said, and the mass are rejecting; and so it will be even in the last days: a remnant will become the nation; God having to purge out the obstinate rejectors from among the people, as prophecy shows abundantly. Here it is only a hint of what will be; yet we see in it Judea and Jerusalem maintained in their central place; Samaria owning it, in Galilee of the Gentiles God’s heart towards His scattered ones. Outwardly there is peace; inwardly the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. How blessed to realize when for Israel at last all this shall be fulfilled! Let us notice what are here put together for us: first of all, not the comfort, but the fear of the Lord, -hearts in subjection to the Ruler of His people. With Him, if grace reigns, as it does, the reign is not less absolute, but more. When grace has not for its effect the fear of the Lord, in the same proportion is grace really unknown, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit will be unenjoyed. The Spirit is here to glorify Christ; and, as the Holy Spirit, refuses absolutely all touch of evil; legality and license are both in uttermost extreme from Him, and further by far than they are from one another. The slave may at times make up for his slavery by license; the child’s happy service needs no compensation for its offering of love. Here in a soil like this the seed of divine truth will fructify; for it is love that edifieth; and the assembly walking in such a spirit will be surely multiplied. Where an opposite spirit exists, multiplication will be but a multiplication of the evil; it is a good law that forbids such unhappy growths to go on, whose sap, against nature, is poisonous to themselves.
2. We now follow Peter, who with the growth of the work is no more confined to Jerusalem, but is passing through the land. He comes down to the saints who dwell at Lydda, a still existing town in the plain of Sharon, and finds there a certain man, who from the description and the apostle’s words to him seems not yet to be a disciple; named Aeneas, eight years paralyzed. Immediately, upon Peter’s declaration, “Jesus the Christ healeth thee, arise, and make thy bed,” he is healed and rises up; and “all that dwelt in Lydda and the Sharon” (the Plain, stretching from Joppa to Caesarea on the sea-coast), “saw him, and turned to the Lord.” Conversion so widespread shows indeed that God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew (Romans 11:1); and Lydda well fulfills its name, as the “birthplace” of so many souls. We naturally ask ourselves, Is this all that we are intended to find in it? or is there here, as in so many other cases, a hidden meaning? If the Lord is assuring us in this of what the apostle declares that Israel’s remnant according to election preaches to us, would it be strange to find in it a further assurance as to God’s purposes towards His ancient people? Here too, would be the very place in which we might expect to find this: here, where we are just at the point at which, the natural branches being broken off for unbelief, the Gentiles are being graffed into the olive. Certainly all is in harmony in this way. Aeneas means “praise”; and in the case of Israel, a paralysis of praise is truly come upon her.

She is a reproach instead of praise, but is yet to be a people formed for Himself, to show forth His praise. Aeneas is thus yet to be healed, and as it were in a moment, by Jesus the Christ; and Lydda may well speak of a new “birth” by which this will be effected. Nothing else will accomplish it; for the nature of man is fallen, and the Lydda of natural birth is in the “plain,” -the common level of humanity. Christ alone can renew it; so that in the end Sharon shall be a fold of flocks (Isaiah 65:10), a type of which this remarkable ingathering of converts there may speak. For when Israel is that praise to God which she never yet has been, then will the time have come for such a turning to God as the earth has not yet witnessed. Israel’s eighth year will have come, -her new covenant time. 3. If this, then, be the deeper view of the healing of Aeneas, the raising up of Dorcas must, one would say, be in the same line of application, and have its own story to tell, different, yet connected. And here one thing is plain: Aeneas presents to us the healing of a sinner Dorcas, on the other hand, the resurrection of a saint. If both of these speak of Israel, it must be in these contrasted ways: and in both ways it is clear that Israel may be spoken of, or her history would be a very different one from what we know it to be. Israel as astray from God is how the centuries long have known her, the enemy of Christ and of His cause, and for many this has almost blotted out the remembrance of the long debt we owe her, and of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles that have sprung from her. But God does not forget: “I remember thee,” He says, “the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.

Israel was holiness unto the Lord, and the firstfruits of His increase: all that devour him shall offend evil shall come upon them, saith the Lord (Jeremiah 2:2-3). And for us, how is it possible to forget that from Israel we have obtained, through the mercy of God, almost the whole of the precious volume of inspiration, out of which we have; so to speak, been fed and clothed, not for centuries merely, but for the life that is to come? Here as a picture of Israel, this woman full of good works and alms-deeds is surely no unfitting one. The more we consider, the more we shall realize its perfect appropriateness. It is in Joppa, anciently Japho, that we find her. -a name which means, as I take it, “fair to Him.” (See notes on Joshua 19:46.) This agrees entirely with that view of Israel which is presented to us here. Tabitha’s name is given us in two languages, as if there were importance in it, and means “beauty,” in Daniel (Daniel 11:16; Daniel 11:41), twice applied to the land of Israel, “the glorious land.” Its secondary meaning, in which we are to take it here; is “gazelle,” so named from its beauty, one of the clean animals of Scripture; both chewing the cud and dividing the hoof (Leviticus 11:1-47 see the notes). If we realize the typical meaning of these, we shall understand its application to one who “ruminates” upon the Word, the walk corresponding to this. Israel as represented by the psalmists, and especially the writer of the 119th psalm, answers fully to the name and in this character they were suited to be vessels of inspiration, as in fact they were. The double name gets in this way its significance for these two languages, Hebrew and Greek, were those of the Old and New Testaments, for both of which we are indebted to the Jew. Tabitha is dead, and there is no human hope of recovery for her. We may weep and lament, but she is gone from us; yet those possessed with the spirit of Peter may still pray, not without hope, for Israel’s resurrection. It will surely come, as it did in the case before us here, and Israel live in far more than all the glory of her past. The effect too, as in the healing of Aeneas, will be the bringing many more to faith. Joppa or Japho will again fulfill its name; and “the Lord of hosts shall be for a crown of glory and for a diadem of beauty unto the residue of His people” (Isaiah 28:5). How fitting and comforting an assurance with which to turn to see the incoming of the Gentile, as we find it now in the pouring out of the Spirit on Cornelius and his company at Caesarea!