Martyrdom is not extinct. Neither is it new. It has been going on since the days of Stephen, the first man ever to die for the cause of Christ. But what of the killers? What of those who carry out the cruel and senseless executions of those whose only crime is that they love Jesus more than life? Do they get away with their crime against God and man? How does God deal with them? When does God deal with them? Why does He so often wait to avenge the deaths of His people?

Chet Bitterman, a Wycliffe bible translator in Bogata, Columbia, made this entry in his diary on September 13, 1978: "The situation in Nicaragua is getting worse. If Nicaragua falls, I guess the rest of Central America will too. Maybe this is just some kind of self-inflicted martyr complex, but I find this recurring thought that perhaps God will call me to be martyred for Him in His service in Columbia. I am willing." On January 19, 1981, seven armed terrorists burst into the Wycliffe bible translator’s office in Bogota and took Chet captive for seven weeks. Then they shot him in the head.

Eleanor Chestnut, a former medical missionary in China, showed the love of Christ to those around her. A beggar had come to the hospital badly burned, but no one was willing to donate skin for a graft. So the next morning the nurses were surprised to learn that the operation had been performed. Then they noticed that Dr. Chestnut was limping and realized that she had surgically removed some of her own skin to save the victim’s life. They were amazed at such a sacrifice. They couldn’t understand why she would do that for a total stranger. Later, during the Boxer uprising, Chestnut again impressed the Chinese people. As she was being led to prison, she saw a little boy who had been wounded. Immediately she broke away from her captors, knelt down beside the child, and bound up his wounds with pieces of cloth taken from her own clothing. A few hours later she was executed.

When North Korea fell to the communists, all the Christians in a small village were ordered to go at once to their church building. The place was plain and simple, and the people had placed a picture of Christ on the wall. When the soldiers walked in, they took it down and put it on the floor. All who did not want to be shot had to come forward and spit on the picture. The first four people did and were set free. Next came a young girl. She bent down and wiped the spittle from the picture. Then she embraced it tenderly and said, "Jesus, I love You!" She was taken outside, and shots rang out. She had given her life out of love for Christ.

Martyrdom is not extinct. Neither is it new. It has been going on since the days of Stephen, the first man to die for the cause of Christ.

But what of the killers? What of those who carry out the cruel and senseless executions of people whose only crime is that they love Jesus more than life? Do they get away with their crime against God and man? How does God deal with them? When does God deal with them? Why does He so often wait to avenge the deaths of His people?

The first Christian martyr was Stephen. His story is in Acts 7. The first Christian killer was Saul. Today I want to look with you at his story.

The young killer, Saul, was an upwardly mobile Cilician Jew from Tarsus. His brilliance and zeal had already distinguished him among the religious intelligencia of Judaism. A "Hebrew of Hebrews," according to Philippians 3:5, who "lived as a Pharisee according to the strictest sect of his religion," he would later say of himself in Acts 26:5. He viewed the fledgling religion of Christianity in his day as a hoax. He saw those who called themselves Christians as ignorant and misguided fools following an imposter Messiah. Once Christianity spilled over its Jerusalem banks into the surrounding regions of Judea and Samaria, he considered it a threat that must be stopped. So strong was Saul’s conviction against Jesus of Nazareth that he dedicated himself to systematic overthrow of His followers. Stephen, a young preacher from Jerusalem, was the first victim of many who would encounter the murderous fury of Saul of Tarsus.

Shortly after the Bible’s account of Stephen’s death we read these words in Acts 8:3: "But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house; and dragging off men and women, he put them in prison."

Of himself, killer Saul would later say in Acts 22:19 when he remembered these events:

Again in Acts 26:10-11, he recalled: "And this is just what I did in Jerusalem; not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death I cast my vote against them. And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities."

We have these detailed descriptions of Saul’s persecution of the early church in our New Testament because this killer was turned. That’s right—he actually became a disciple of Jesus himself! So thoroughly did he turn, I might add, that he became one of the most zealous Christian who ever lived. That same cold, laser gunsight zeal that once was trained on Christians was re-targeted on the first century world in the cause of promoting what the killer had once opposed.

In Isaiah 55:8, God says, "‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord." Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the case of Saul of Tarsus. When someone has done as much evil as Saul did, man thinks, "There can be no redemption. It has gone too far. The damage is too great." God, though, who thinks differently than man, not only forgave Saul, He also put him into His service. Former killer Saul became Apostle Paul, who wrote a good portion of our New Testament. His conversion to Christ stands, even today, two thousand years later, as a powerful testimony to what God can do in the life of a sincere man or women who turns away from sin and determines to serve God with a whole heart. Saul would ultimately be a martyr himself - beheaded for the faith he once persecuted.

But we’re at the beginning of it all in this message. I want us to look at Saul’s conversion in our ongoing study from Acts of the Apostles. You’ll find it described in four places in your New Testament: Acts 9, Acts 22, Acts 26, and Galatians 1. With that many descriptions, it is as though the Holy Spirit has said, "I want you to know about and understand the case of this man." That we shall do if God allows. We will look at Acts 9:1-9 in this message. I’ve called it "A Killer Comes to Christ." The story begins with:

That little word "still" in verse 1 echoes some of the events I have already described to you. With pit bull tenacity, Saul was not the kind of man to give up until he accomplished all of his murderous intent.

In this phase of his deadly work he received word that some of the Christians have fled Jerusalem and shown up in Damascus, a city about 135 miles northeast. Historians tell us that the city held a population of about forty thousand Jews and could have had as many as thirty or forty synagogues. Since the Christians would be trying to spread their teaching among their Jewish brethren, Saul must have reasoned that it would be worth the one-week trip north to put a stop to it. So he got letters of authority from the high priest which, in that day, would amount to open warrants of arrest for any that were suspected of being followers of Jesus. Both Julius and Augustus Caesar had granted the High Priest authority over Jews in foreign cities and now Saul had that authority in his hand on parchment. He departed Jerusalem, little knowing how different his life would be when he returned to the Holy City. Before he arrived in Damascus, he would experience:

Some people picture Saul traveling on horseback when they read this. Others think of him on a camel or in a chariot or perhaps on foot. The Bible isn’t specific about his mode of transportation. It does say that there were men traveling with him - probably members of the temple guard. A sudden flash of blinding light that was, as Paul says in Acts 26:13, "brighter than the sun," interrupted the monotony of their trip. Then a voice said, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?"

According to verse 5 those words were spoken by Jesus. Notice that the Savior takes it personally when someone persecutes His people. Saul was persecuting Christians but Jesus said the zealous Pharisee was persecuting Him. When God’s people suffer unjustly, don’t think it goes unnoticed. Don’t think that the suffering will not be avenged. Maybe now, maybe later, but you don’t persecute God’s people without persecuting Christ - and unless checked, that will someday meet serious consequences.

As you can imagine, Saul was quite confused at this point.

The instructions were to get up and go on into the city limits of Damascus and wait for further instruction. Let me stop there and ask a question. Was Saul now a Christian?

Some like to believe he was. They look at verse 5 and say, "Well, he called Jesus ‘Lord,’ didn’t he? So he must have been a Christian at that point." Thus they go on to talk about the "instantaneous conversion of Saul." But look at verse 5 again. It says, "Who art Thou, Lord?"

Saul didn’t even know who he was talking to! How could it be said he was a Christian?

The word translated "Lord" in this verse can just as accurately be translated "Sir." It isn’t used exclusively in the New Testament to refer to Jesus. In the New American Standard Version it is translated "Sir" 11 times. To our English speaking minds, the word "Sir" better reflects Saul’s distant relationship to this so-far-anonymous voice that spoke to him.

Of course, Jesus did reveal His identity after Saul’s question. He said, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting." But surely no one would assert that simply knowing Jesus’ identity is all that is necessary for salvation. The demons knew Jesus’ identity. They even confessed that He was the Son of God. Yet they are not saved. Listen to the demons speak in Matthew 8:29: "And behold, they cried out, saying, ‘What do we have to do with You, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?’"

Romans 10:14 poses a pertinent question: "And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard?" Indeed. That is my question for those who conclude that Saul was now a Christian. How could Saul place his faith (trust) in Jesus when, at this point he knew very little about Him except a bunch of distorted facts that he used to justify his persecution of Christians? Later in the passage, God would send a preacher, Ananias, to tell Saul about Jesus and hear the message of the gospel. It is then that he would make a decision to accept or reject salvation.

By the way, the reason I brought up this issue is that some are so insistent that Saul was a Christian instantaneously because they want to avoid the obvious implications of his baptism described later in this passage. When we get to verse 18 of this chapter, we’ll see that Saul was baptized. That bothers a lot of people who relegate the command to be baptized to the status of unimportant and unnecessary. If they cannot get Saul saved before his baptism they have a real difficulty explaining why Ananias, like Peter on Pentecost, connected baptism with the forgiveness of sins.

Tuck that away in your mind. We’ll get back to it later in the passage. For now we see Saul faced with:

Can you imagine the impact of these events on Saul’s mind? The One he thought was dead and buried had just spoken to him! He was now faced with what, for some, is a very difficult choice. Can you guess his thoughts?

"I’ve been wrong! I’ve killed these people! I’ve made them blaspheme! Stephen was right but I wouldn’t listen! I’m responsible for his death and the deaths of many others. They’re God’s children and not the heretics I thought..."

There is a lesson here to be learned. Let me pose it as a question: Is sincerity alone enough to get you to heaven? If so, then Saul was qualified to go to heaven without Christ because he was very sincere in what he believed. But what he believed was false. What we believe is important. There is truth and there is error. Sincerely believing a lie won’t get you to heaven.

In our day people don’t like to believe that truth is absolute. They balk at Jesus’ warning about the "narrow gate" in Matthew 7:13. They want to believe truth is relative and that it encompasses the beliefs of all well-meaning people. Their "big tent" ideas require that there be no one, absolute reality. To them truth is what you want to believe as long as you are sincere. Consequently, they believe no one has the right to say that another is wrong. Ever heard that before?

You won’t find a more sincere man than Saul of Tarsus. But he was sincerely wrong!

Listen to the way Saul put it later when he was Paul the Apostle. He is referring to the sincerity of his Jewish brethren in Romans 10:1-3 when he said: "Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God."

Many of the Jewish people, like Saul, were sincere in their religion. But they were sincerely wrong. It does make a difference what we believe. The means we should be serious about learning and understanding the issues of our faith.

The second part of the sincerity lesson I want to point out is this: When sincere people learn they are wrong, they change.

Saul’s conversion would mean starting over. He would have to denounce the belief system he had grown up with. If we are sincere in what we believe and we discover new truth that disproves what we have held before, if we do not embrace the new truth, we cease to be sincere. We become hypocrites. Saul of Tarsus knew this. I say that because later in his letter to the Philippians, chapter 3, verse 8, he would say: "More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ…." He left it all behind for Christ!

Sometimes people are heard to say, "I understand what you are telling me and I see it in the Bible, but I have too many years invested in what I have been taught. I can’t change."

Such reluctance is sometimes related to feelings of loyalty to parents.

A man who operated a general store had a yardstick nailed on his counter top. Here he measured his rope, cloth, and other goods as they were sold. After his death his son took over the store. One day an employee of the Department of Weights and Measures came by and examined his yardstick. He found it to be a full inch less than a yard in length. All those years the old gentleman running the store had honestly thought his measure was accurate, but it wasn’t. His son now faced what, for some, is a tough decision. He could refuse to admit his father was wrong and thus, be wrong himself, or he could say, "My father honestly thought he was right. I now know something he didn’t know. If I don’t live up to that knowledge I will not be as honest as my father was."

Strange as it may seem many people today, when it comes to religion, reason according to the first choice this young man had. They "learn the Word of God more accurately" than their parents, but refuse to change because they fear any change from the faith of their parents would be an unfavorable reflection on mom and dad. Such persons need to consider this: If mom and dad were as honest as it is believed and they had been confronted with truth they had not seen before, would they have accepted it? If not, they were less than honest. If so, the best way to be true to the legacy of their honesty is to do likewise.

Truth isn’t adjustable. Yes, we all believe we’re entitled to our opinions, but the privilege to think for ourselves doesn’t change error into truth.

Do you suppose some of these thoughts must have gone through Saul’s mind? He had three days to think about it before he learned what he needed to do.

One who skips his meals for three days is a troubled man! Don’t think that times of turmoil when you have to rethink your position should be despised, though. They can be valuable times in your life.

Though Jesus had personally confronted Saul on the road, the killer heard nothing more for three days. He didn’t know but that his death was eminent as punishment for the way he had been treating God’s people.

Saul had yet to learn about God’s mercy, a mercy that would not only be shown to him but is also available to people living today. This mercy is referred to in the Bible as grace. Grace is a favor that someone does for you when you don’t deserve it.

Someone has offered this penetrating comparison of the difference between revenge, justice, and grace. If someone brutally murders your son and you take things into your own hands, that’s revenge. If you’re content to allow the law and the courts to arrest and punish the offender, that’s justice. But if you pardon the murderer, adopt him, and take him home to live with you as your son, that’s grace!

That is what God would ultimately do for Saul of Tarsus.

We’ll have to finish this story later. Before we leave this passage though, let me read you Saul’s comments made later about the grace and mercy that God offered to him and offers to all people today as well. These words are found in 1 Timothy 1:12-15:

If God can reach out and offer mercy and salvation to a violent killer of Christians when he turns, He can offer it to you and me as well. And He does! That is the good news. That is the message of the gospel.

When Ben Franklin wrote, "God helps those who help themselves," in Poor Richard’s Almanac, he couldn’t have known that it would still be used 200 years later. As helpful as those words may seem though, they are not, as many suppose, in the Bible. Perhaps a closer Biblical rendition might be "God helps those who can’t help themselves." That is certainly what he did for Saul and that is certainly what he can do for you and me. God helps those who cannot help themselves.

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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