THE LIVING CHURCH
Meditations in the Acts of the Apostles
Acts 26:1-15

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IN his trial before King Agrippa Paul is led by God to speak of his conversion. He uses his conversion firstly to show Agrippa that Christ was the Messiah of the Jews, and secondly to explain that all Paul had done had been by the call and command of Christ, the Messiah.

The most important few words in these first 15 verses is Paul's question to Jesus in verse 15. Paul asks 'Who are you, LORD'. Although he still needed to be made clear that it was Jesus speaking to him, Paul knew he was speaking to his Lord and God and gave him such appropriate honour and allegiance in his humble question.

A great and tremendous change had already come over Paul already in his conversion experience, before he asked this question. His religion before this had nurtured a proud and confident man, who was quite sure he was able to meet all God's demands and so win merit and acceptance. Here in a moment he is bending before the Lord in humility and surrender. Here is the essence of conversion.

Before anything else conversion is a personal encounter with Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Conversion is not simply a change of opinions or beliefs. We are not converted to doctrine but to God. We believe the truth as it is in Jesus, and that means our faith is in Jesus our Lord, who has done so great things for us. We may not at first entirely comprehend the wonder and depth of all that Christ has achieved for us in his life and death, but we know he is the Saviour, and our trust is placed in him as God and Saviour.

Then it is the essence of Paul's experience here that his faith was first and foremost in Jesus as is Lord and God. His faith amounted to reverence, worship, allegiance and obedience. It is not true to say that we can accept Christ as Saviour and then later in life crown him as Lord. When Jesus meets with us in salvation, he makes himself known to us as Lord, as he did to Paul, and calls us to follow him. Conversion is conversion to Christ, and Christianity is acknowledging Christ as God and Saviour, and then living in obedience to his will.

Then in verse 6 Paul gives another view of what it is to be a Christian. Christianity is hope in the promise which God has made all down the history recorded in the Bible. It is hope in the eternal promise of God to us in Christ. It is important to understand what the bible means by hope. In the English language if I say 'I hope ...’ it means that I look forward to something and expect it to happen or be true, but there is still an element of uncertainty. What is hoped for may fail to come true. Hope, in the bible, is something sure and certainty. It is something possessed but not yet fully entered into.

So the hope of which Paul spoke was of the salvation God promises in Jesus Christ, where, by faith in Jesus, we are made children of God and heirs of the Kingdom of heaven. We possess eternal life, though we have not entered into the fullness of it. We have been saved from our sin so that before God we are counted righteous forever, but until we leave this world we are still troubled by sin in our mortal and corrupt flesh. What we hope for will most certainly take place for us because it is founded on the immutable promise of God, and the perfect work of Jesus when he lived and died for us on this earth.

Following from this Paul expresses in verse 9 the fact that the hope of the Gospel is the cancelling of death. The Jews had hope in the promise of God as the foundation of their faith for centuries, but they had never appreciated it or really understood it. If they had they would have seen that at its heart was the rescinding of the penalty of sin, which is death, and the removal of death by the Messiah. Paul points out in verse 9 that the Jew should not have been surprised at the resurrection of Christ, because in the promise of God was the promise of being rescued from death, and being raised from death, which is the penalty for sin being removed. By faith in Jesus, who conquered death by dying in our place, we have eternal life. The Christian knows that he or she can never die, and that physical death is but a process to the fullness of life, because by it this sinful flesh is removed and we enter the fullness of life with God.

From this we have to say with Paul that to deny that Christ is both God and Saviour is to blaspheme. This is the implication of Paul's confession in verse 9. Before he had been converted to Christ, Paul had sought to make believers deny Christ as their God, and so blaspheme. This must have been mind blowing to the Jew who spoke in the Gospels of Christ blaspheming because he told them he was God. In fact it was not Christ that blasphemed but them, and all who deny Christ and reject him as their Lord and God.

So we become one with Christ by faith in salvation. We are one family with him by grace and love. This is why Paul heard Jesus ask him the question in verse 14 - Saul, why do you persecute me? Paul persecuted Christians and by doing so persecuted Christ. Let us who believe rejoice in this hope in the promise of God, and in the wondrous blessing of life and fellowship with God it brings us into.