I am Jesus

“…I am Jesus of Nazareth…” (Acts 22:8b).

If it is embarrassing to be wrong, it is more so to be sincerely wrong.

Saul was a man of pure conscience (cf. Acts 23:1). If he believed something to be right, he pursued it to the furthest degree. He was what one popular television psychologist used to call, a “right fighter.” It was Saul’s practice to follow the truth wherever it led him.

But Saul’s encounter with Jesus proved to be his greatest challenge. If Jesus was true, everything about Saul’s life would have to change.

The process of finding truth usually takes time. It is like chipping away small fragments of a mountain with a pickaxe to find precious stones. But chipping away little by little and blasting massive sections of rock are very different things. When Saul encountered Jesus on the Damascus Road, his whole life – his education, his heritage, his accomplishments, his reputation – were simultaneously blasted apart.

McGarvey wrote:

“Up to this moment he had held Jesus to be an imposter cursed of God and man, and his followers blasphemers worthy of death; but now this hated being is suddenly revealed to him in a blaze of divine glory. The evidence of eyes and ears cannot be doubted. There he stands, with the light of heaven and the glory of God around him, and he says, ‘I am Jesus.’ Stephen then was right, and I have shed innocent blood” (New Commentary on Acts, p. 171).

Saul made no sudden decision. He went to the appointed destination and determined to fast and pray. Jesus gave him three days, then intervened with an opportunity for Saul to hear the gospel. Accepting it would mean changing every single thing about his life. Rejecting it would mean a return to the comforts he once enjoyed.

What did he do? Though he “suffered the loss of all things” (Philippians 3:8), he “was not disobedient to the heavenly vision” (Acts 26:19).

What about us?

Rick Kelley