• "Paul Did Not Choose Jesus ~ Jesus Chose Paul"
• Sermon for the Conversion of St. Paul
• January 25, 2004
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

Most saints days mark the day of the saint's death. The Conversion of St. Paul is unusual in that it celebrates an event in the life of Paul. The church instituted this feast day in the sixth century because Paul's conversion is so central to the Christian mission. St. Paul became the most prolific New Testament writer and through his ministry the gentile mission was established.

We can observe at least three things in the conversion of Paul that help us to understand our own experiences of conversion. First, the initiative in conversion is entirely with God. God chose Paul. As Jesus said to Ananias, "He is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel" (Acts 9:15 NKJV). Paul was not nobly reflecting in his mind upon the question of whether or not Jesus is the Messiah. Paul did not choose Jesus. Jesus chose Paul.

This follows the biblical pattern. God chose Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David and the prophets. And God chooses us. It is not so much that we are searching for God and come to find him. It is that God chooses us, in spite of ourselves, and gives us grace to see.

God chooses us and calls us through the Scriptures. As we read and hear the Word of God, the Holy Spirit directs the message towards our particular concerns. We are made aware that God is speaking personally to us. God calls us through the people we meet, through various life experiences and through the providential, even miraculous, ordering of events in our lives.

God chooses us and calls us through the sacraments. We come to the font of baptism as sinners alienated by nature from the life of God. God marks us, adopts us as his children and calls us to live in a new way. At the altar, the words of administration make us aware of God's choice: "The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee." Christ died for you, in particular, and Christ chooses you, personally, to redeem and call to a new way of life.

The second thing we can see in the conversion of Paul is that Christian faith is not about religion. The essence of Christian faith is a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. Before his conversion, Paul was a Pharisee who practiced his religion according to the strictest traditions of Judaism. But his religion did not save him.

Religion, per se, is a morally neutral thing. It can be bad or good depending upon its source and focus. I often meet people who try to avoid the claims of Jesus on their soul by saying that they are already religious or spiritual, that they already try to follow the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule or that they pray often. Saul, the Pharisee, followed the Ten Commandments and the religious traditions of Israel and prayed often, but his religion was misdirected until he came to know Jesus Christ.

Being religious will not save us. It may even keep us from being saved if our religion is not rooted in and directed towards Jesus. All the religious things we do: the celebration of Holy Communion, the daily prayers, the tithing, the use of our gifts in good works and service to God are rightly done only as our response to the person of Jesus Christ and the grace of God.

The third thing we can see in Paul's conversion is that there are no "likely candidates" for conversion. Many people have the wrong idea that certain kinds of folk are likely to come to faith and certain others are so far from God that we ought not to expect them to experience conversion. From time to time, I suggest to people that a non-believer they know ought to be prayed for or invited to an evangelistic event. Often such a suggestion is met with a response that says, "You might as well not even consider such a one as a candidate for faith."

This is a singularly unfortunate attitude. Saul, the Pharisee, was a committed opponent of faith in Christ, a person thoroughly dedicated to the destruction of the Christian mission. And he was the one Christ chose. He was converted and came to see and believe.

We see in Paul an important spiritual principle. Evil is a perversion of good. The energy that is directed against Jesus and towards evil can be redirected by grace to what is good. Those who are most zealously committed to wrong things and unbelief are the most likely candidates, by conversion, to become zealously committed to the right things and faith. The least likely candidates for profound change are the indifferent-those who do not care much about anything. For those who do not have much passion for their current interests, be they good or bad, are least likely to have much passion for Christ.

Above all, the conversion of Paul teaches us that Christian faith is all about change. Saul, the Pharisee, who was on the way to Damascus to persecute the Christians, was changed into Paul, the apostle, who went to Damascus to be baptized and to preach that Jesus is the Messiah. Saul, the angry religious zealot, became Paul, the apostle of forgiveness and grace. Saul, the man who trusted in his own religious observance, became Paul, the Christian who was keenly aware of his unworthiness and dependence upon God.

In 1 Corinthians St. Paul describes his transformation in this way: "I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me" (15:9-10 NKJV).

This is a pattern for us. Christ has revealed himself to each of us as we were about our own, self-centered, perhaps even evil, business. He continues to reveal himself to us in word and sacrament and in his sovereign ordering of our lives. Christ chooses us and calls us to a new way of life, witness and service. The point is not what we have done in the past, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The point is how we will respond to the grace and revelation that God has given us.

As Paul himself says in Ephesians, "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light" (5:8).