Acts 9 explained: The Persecutor Who Changed Sides

Saul sets out to arrest (vv. 1-2)

Saul, a strict Pharisee who had studied Jewish law in Jerusalem, had already helped attack Jesus' followers after an early believer named Stephen was stoned to death. 'The Way' was an early name for the movement, and the high priest's letters let Saul arrest its members, women included, in the synagogues of Damascus, about 130 miles northeast.

Stopped on the road (vv. 3-9)

A blinding light and a voice bring Saul to the ground, and Jesus tells him that by attacking his followers, Saul is attacking him. Saul is left blind and does not eat or drink for three days, and later in this book he retells the story twice.

Ananias is sent (vv. 10-19)

In a vision the Lord sends Ananias, a local believer, who protests that Saul came to arrest people like him. The Lord tells Ananias that Saul is chosen to carry his name to non-Jewish peoples, their kings and the people of Israel, and will suffer for it, so Ananias goes, calls him brother, and Saul sees again and is baptized.

Hunter becomes hunted (vv. 19-31)

Saul now argues in the synagogues that Jesus is the Messiah, the king Israel had hoped for, and when opponents plot to kill him, friends lower him through the city wall in a basket. In Jerusalem the believers are afraid of him and doubt he is really one of them until Barnabas vouches for him, and when new threats arise they send him home to Tarsus.

Peter heals Aeneas (vv. 32-35)

Peter visits believers in Lydda, near the coast, and tells a man who had been paralyzed for eight years that Jesus Christ is healing him. By naming Jesus, Peter makes clear that the power is not his own.

Tabitha raised in Joppa (vv. 36-43)

The grieving widows, who often had no one to support them, show Peter the clothes Tabitha made, and many readers notice that Peter's command to her to get up echoes Jesus raising a dead girl. Peter then stays with a tanner, a trade many Jews avoided because it handled dead animals, which quietly sets up the next chapter.

Key verse: Acts 9:15

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether Saul's experience is best understood as a conversion from one religion to another or as a prophet-like calling within his Jewish faith to take its message to the nations.

Something to think about

Have you ever seen someone change so completely that the people around them struggled to trust it, and what made the change believable or not?