The most influential missionary in Christian history began his career hunting Christians. Not disliking them. Hunting them. Saul of Tarsus went house to house dragging believers to prison, approved the stoning of Stephen while holding the coats, and was traveling to Damascus with arrest warrants when the story turned. If you have ever wondered whether God can use somebody with real damage in their past, Paul is the case that settles it.
The Road to Damascus
"As Saul drew near to Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?' 'Who are You, Lord?' Saul asked. 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' He replied." (Acts 9:3-5).
Two details in that sentence carry more theology than most books. First: why do you persecute ME? Saul had never met Jesus of Nazareth; he was arresting ordinary believers. But Jesus so identifies with His people that harming them is harming Him. Whatever is done to the least of His, He takes personally. Second: the voice does not open with a list of charges. It opens with a question and a name, twice, the way you wake somebody you intend to keep. Grace was in the vocative case before Saul was off the ground!
The Résumé He Tore Up
Understand what Saul was before, because he was not a thug. He was the elite of the elite: trained under the best teachers, blameless by the strictest standard of the law, zealous beyond his peers. Everything a religious achiever could stack up, he had stacked. Then he met Christ, and did the accounting: "But whatever was gain to me I count as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord... I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ." (Philippians 3:7-8).
Rubbish! The Greek is stronger than that; your pastor knows the word. This is a man who discovered that a lifetime of religious achievement had been currency from a bankrupt bank, and traded all of it for one asset: knowing Christ. Have you done that math on your own stack of credentials? It is the most freeing calculation in the faith.
The Thorn He Kept
Paul's later life was not a victory parade: shipwrecks, beatings, prisons, and a chronic affliction he calls his thorn in the flesh. He asked three times for it to be removed. The answer he received instead has carried more sufferers than any healing story: "But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me." (2 Corinthians 12:9).
God said no to Paul. To Paul! And the no came wrapped in a better yes. The apostle learned to read his own weakness as the exact place where Christ's power sat down. If your thorn has survived three prayers and more, you are in the best company the New Testament offers.
What the Chains Produced
Here is a fact that should reorganize how we think about limitations: a large share of the New Testament was written from custody. Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon: prison mail. Paul the traveling church-planter was God's plan for a season; Paul the prisoner, with nothing to do but write and pray, turned out to be God's plan for twenty centuries. The chains did not interrupt the ministry. They changed its format, from a voice that could reach one city at a time to letters that have reached every generation since!
Paul saw it himself, telling the Philippians that his imprisonment had actually served to advance the gospel. So hold your own confinement up to that light. The bed, the small town, the season of caregiving, the job that keeps you off the platform you wanted: the format of your usefulness is God's to choose, and His track record with formats nobody would pick is remarkable. What might your chains be for?
He Never Got Over It
Here is the thing I love most about Paul: decades in, planted churches across the world, half the New Testament flowing from his pen, and the grace still astonished him. Near the end he writes: "This is a trustworthy saying, worthy of full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst." (1 Timothy 1:15). Present tense! Not "of whom I was the worst, before my impressive ministry." The old persecutor never upgraded himself to peer. He remained, in his own accounting, exhibit A of what mercy can do, and that ongoing astonishment was the engine of everything he built. The moment grace becomes unremarkable to us, we have stopped understanding it.
Damascus Roads Are Still in Service
Paul's life makes two demands on ours. First: stop disqualifying yourself by your past. The church's greatest missionary had believers' blood on his record; the Lord who met him on the road specializes in enemies. Second: stop disqualifying others. Somewhere in your world is a Saul: hostile, arrogant, seemingly the least likely convert in the county. The early church was terrified of him right up until he was preaching in their pulpits! Pray for your Saul by name. Damascus roads are still in service.