Grace for Saul

Telling Alena, my youngest daughter, Saul’s conversion a few consecutive nights ago had me realizing why Paul, Saul’s former name, wrote the things he wrote about grace.

If there’s anyone who should have been on probation after conversion, or to be suspected of true profession of faith, or should have been trusted to be preaching Jesus, it should have been Saul.

But also, if there’s anyone that experienced the unforced, unmerited, unexpected, and unforeseen grace of God, it would have been Saul.

He was so zealous of the mosaic way of life, full of good works according to the laws of Moses, a rising star in the ways of Jewish traditions—probably perfect in his execution of that religious order—that he felt all the righteousness of morality and lawfulness. In fact prior to Jesus meeting him he had been the most fierce enemy of the Gospel because of his moral and mosaic understanding.

Yet, in a moment, in an instant, without having to “get right” or publicly repenting of his treatment of the followers of the Way, Jesus anoints and appoints him to be the preacher of the Gospel.

No fanfare. No probationary period. No prolonged season. As per Acts, while in Damascus, within the week of Ananias baptizing him (that’s the same day he and Ananias met, just three days after Jesus met him on the Straight Street), he already preached that Jesus was the Son of God.

I was blown away at the thought of it. That’s why Paul wrote about the amazing, life changing, mission shaping grace of God, one that shouldn’t have received such reception was given acceptance without restriction, immediately without works or proof.

Paul wrote his thesis on grace in his letter to Rome and his other letters to saints in that ancient world. He wanted them and us to know about this grace that he received.

To Paul there’s no one else as needing grace as he, at the same token, if there’s someone that could have worked for it, it would have been he yet he didn’t need to. Paul extends to every believer that if God can be so gracious to him, then there is no one that is too far from the grace of God. And no matter how righteous one may be, that righteousness is not enough to not need the grace of God.

We are admonished by Paul’s life and writing that God is gracious—that grace is not only sufficient but it is overflowing and overwhelming our need for it.