Saul 1 - Acts 9:1-2

We have already had two introductions to Saul, first was that the men who bludgeoned Stephen to death with big frickin rocks, “laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul.” Was Saul 15 years old when this happened? No, the IM comments, “the Greek word used identifies a man who is younger than forty years of age.” So Saul at this time is very much a grown man. Our second meeting of Saul comes in the days following the martyrdom when “he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison.” We now see Saul again as he comes to the chief priests in Jerusalem “and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way (Christianity), whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.”

Saul has ramped up his efforts to get the Christian “dissenters” back in line after Stephen’s death by representing the Jewish leadership and going to Damascus to arrest and extradite the Christian leaders there. The IM tells us just why Damascus was the next natural target, saying, “Damascus was a wealthy city located at a prosperous crossroad 150 miles northeast of Jerusalem. If Christianity were allowed to become entrenched there, it could more easily spread to surrounding areas. Saul was sent to Damascus to thwart Christianity’s progress.”
From an article about “Ancient Damascus” on endtimepilgrim.orgDamascus is described as “a key way station on the trade routes linking the cradle of civilization in the Fertile Crescent with Egypt. The caravans would pass through Damascus on their way from Assyrian, Babylonian, or Persian Empires of the Euphrates Valley on their way southwards into Egypt.” The position of this ancient city would have been incredibly strategically advantageous because the gospel could be taught to those traveling through the city and spread that way, or the preachers of the gospel could easily move through the known world from that point and disappear, unable to be tracked by Jewish authorities. It kind of feels like there was a rush to control the spread of the gospel before it could reach a point of no return for the Jewish leadership.
Saul’s story has always bothered me, so we are going to cover the various questions that I had as we go throughout the account. The first two questions are:
1. Q - Where did Saul come from? What was his background?
A – Saul was a Jew born in a gentile city to Pharisee parents. He was also a Roman citizen from his father. Saul was a rabbinical trained Pharisee and spoke several languages.
There are two major questions that I wanted to address yesterday that I didn’t get to finish. The first question was “why Saul?” Out of all the people who were actively fighting against the church, what made Jesus call him specifically to the cause? The answer has several factors, the first being that Saul had been foreordained to the apostleship in the pre-mortal world and regardless of his position here, he was given the opportunity to accept that call. Another factor was his personality, he was strong willed, dedicated, and zealous in his beliefs. It just so happened that Saul’s first beliefs about the church were wrong. He believed Christianity to be an apostate arm of Judaism and felt it was his personal duty to bring the people back to the God of their fathers. After corrected, Saul put just as much effort into preaching the gospel as he had attacking it. His heart was dedicated to God’s law and he truly desired and worked to fulfill what he believed to be God’s will, he just needed to be corrected.
The third thing that factored into Saul’s unique qualifications for the apostolic call was his ability to straddle both the worlds of Judaism and Gentile. He was born to devout Jewish parents in a gentile city. He was taught by moral and just rabbis including Gamaliel in Jerusalem, but did so as a Roman citizen. As a Pharisee, Saul would have had an extensive knowledge and understanding about the Torah and the law of Moses, so as he retroactively studied the life of Christ, he would have a unique insight into just how Jesus fulfilled the law of Moses. Peter and John and the rest of the apostles understood in a rudimentary was that the law was fulfilled by Christ, but for a detailed and comprehensive explanation, hopefully we can learn that from Saul. The article from the Ensign quoted yesterday notes, “no one of that day has given us a more extensive discussion of the mission of Jesus Christ in fulfilling the law of Moses and in being the savior of all nations and peoples.” 
The IM gives background saying, “Saul was born in Tarsus, a Greek city in Cilicia. He was a Roman citizen by birth and spoke a “Hebrew tongue (probably Aramaic) and Greek. He was a Jew from the lineage of Benjamin and a devout Pharisee, who zealously pursued and tormented Jesus Christ’s followers. He was later known by his Latin name, Paul. On one occasion, the Prophet Joseph Smith described Paul’s physical appearance: ‘He (the Apostle Paul) is about five feet high; very dark hair; dark complexion; dark skin; large Roman nose; sharp face; small black eyes, penetrating as eternity; round shoulders; a whining voice, except when elevated, and then it almost resembles the roaring of a lion. He was a good orator.’” So it’s possible that Saul had a “little man” complex going on as well. 
Paul was born of Jewish Pharisee parents in Tarsus, a gentile city. His parents sent him to Jerusalem as a youth to become a rabbi. He was well acquainted with Jewish and gentile customs and beliefs. His father was a citizen of the Roman Empire; how he acquired this is not known, but Paul inherited this citizenship from his father, which was a great aid to preaching in Roman areas. Paul spoke and wrote in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, which gave him an indispensable cultural advantage living and teaching in the Mediterranean areas. He knew the Old Testament thoroughly, having learned it not only as a child at home and in the synagogue school at Tarsus, but also at the feet of Gamaliel in Jerusalem as a rabbinical trainee. Paul was by disposition a strong-willed individual, who, once he knew what he wanted to do, was determined in his motives and principles. This caused him, as a young man, to relentlessly persecute the early Church. But that same vigor of mind and will also helped him to be stalwart in the Church.”  
Saul was specifically suited to the task of taking the gospel to the entire world, surely having been groomed by God himself as preparation. In a September 1987 Ensign article entitled, “Saul of Tarsus” Robert J. Matthews commented “a person was needed who could bear the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to the gentiles in non-Jewish lands, who could withstand the criticism of his own countrymen (even in the Church), and who had the knowledge and training to teach both Jew and gentiles of all social levels throughout the Roman empire what the gospel of Jesus Christ really is and what man’s responsibility is concerning it. There were many who could do some of these, but Paul could do them all magnificently well.
2. Q - Why did he so vehemently oppose Christianity?
A – As a Pharisee, Saul saw Christianity as an apostate branch of Judaism. Saul strove to ensure God’s law was clear and obeyed. He was not after money or power, and instead wanted his fellow Jews to obey God. 
The story of Saul/Paul always bothered me because I assumed that Saul was persecuting Christians for the same reasons that all the other Jewish leadership was, to retain his own power and wealth. I didn’t for one second consider that Saul’s mission to destroy Christianity sprang from any other motive than greed and corruption. As both a Roman and a Pharisee, Saul was probably used to wielding authority, but why exactly was he so opposed to Christianity? Was it because he saw the Savior as a threat to his own personal power? Did he believe so vehemently that Jesus was a false Christ, but why? And if Saul was so wicked and corrupt, then why did Jesus choose him to be a great missionary? How did he go from hate filled wickedness to staunch believer in just a few minutes?
In an article on a Jehovah’s Witness website, the author explains Saul’s possible motive for his actions saying, “since at the outset all Christians were Jews or Jewish proselytes, Saul apparently understood Christianity to be an apostate movement within Judaism, and he considered it the business of official Judaism to set its adherents straight. ‘It is not likely,’ says scholar Arland J. Hultgren, ‘that Paul the persecutor would have opposed Christianity because he saw it as a religion outside of Judaism, a competitor. The Christian movement would have been seen by him and others as subject yet to Jewish authority.’ His intention then was to force wayward Jews to recant and return to orthodoxy, using all available means.”
If Saul wasn’t out to destroy Christianity because he didn’t want to lose his status as a religious leader, then his zeal and fierceness for the cause would have been appropriate, although misplaced. Saul wasn’t corrupted by greed, but pushed forward with a desire to obey God’s laws and ensure that others do the same. With that understanding, we can see that his efforts were wrong, but his intentions pure. Let’s also consider that we know that he studied under Gamaliel, who was moderate and compassionate and surely that would have transferred into who Saul was as a religious leader. He wasn’t an evil or wicked man who needed to change his whole person in order to be a servant of God. He was a misguided spiritual rock that needed to be repositioned. Honestly, if he was hard hearted and corrupt, then Jesus himself couldn’t have persuaded him to repent, because that’s what happened to so many of the people that personally rejected Jesus. Saul was able to be redirected by the Lord because he was already willing to do so, just in a very destructive way.