Bible Bad Boys: Saul of Tarsus--Redemption Personified

Bible Bad Boys: Saul of Tarsus--Redemption Personified

Now Saul was consenting to [Stephen's] death.
Acts 8:1a

Recommended Reading
Acts 9:1-19

When we read the stories of bad men gone good--like the English slave trader, John Newton, or the New York street gang leader, Nicky Cruz, who both became champions for Christ--we are amazed. But we are amazed because we think bad men just decided to be good, that it was their idea, accomplished in their own strength. Nothing could be further from the truth--and one of the "baddest" boys in the Bible, Saul of Tarsus, proves the point.

Before he became the apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus had a warped sense of morality. He was an Old Testament scholar who thought that killing innocent people (followers of Jesus) was pleasing to God. Saul's life was changed over a three-day period following a radical confrontation with the same Jesus he was persecuting. Blind during that period, he spent 72 hours considering the fact that the Jesus he hated had just called him into His service (Acts 9:18-20). Saul was supernaturally redeemed, and it wasn't his idea.

You may not have led a life of crime before being saved, but the idea for your redemption came from the same source as John Newton's, Nicky Cruz's, and Saul's: It came from Jesus.

No creature that deserved redemption would need to be redeemed. They that are whole need not a physician.
C. S. Lewis