Acts 9:19and he took food and was strengthened. And he was certain days with the disciples that were at Damascus. 20 And straightway in the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God. 21 And all that heard him were amazed, and said, Is not this he that in Jerusalem made havoc of them that called on this name? and he had come hither for this intent, that he might bring them bound before the chief priests. 22 But Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews that dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is the Christ.

23And when many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel together to kill him: 24 but their plot became known to Saul. And they watched the gates also day and night that they might kill him: 25 but his disciples took him by night, and let him down through the wall, lowering him in a basket.

26 And when he was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: and they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. 28 And he was with them going in and going out at Jerusalem, 29 preaching boldly in the name of the Lord: and he spake and disputed against the Grecian Jews; but they were seeking to kill him. 30 And when the brethren knew it, they brought him down to Caesarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus.

31 So the church throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria had peace, being edified; and, walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, was multiplied.

Many attempts have been made to “explain” Paul’s conversion, often in the form of rationalistic explanations, such as a thunderstorm outside Damascus, or an epileptic seizure, or psychogenic blindness as the result of repressed guilt. Others see Paul’s conversion as a total rational experience, a coming to awareness of the correctness of the Christian views. Others have sought for the factors that prepared him for his conversion—his coming to the end of his rope with the utter hopelessness of Pharisaic legal righteousness or his being steeped in Pharisaic apocalypticism. All such attempts to get into the mind of Paul are at base speculative, for Paul never provided us with such an analysis of his conversion, nor did Luke.

The picture is a radical conversion experience. Paul the persecutor was stopped dead in his tracks on the Damascus road. The risen Jesus showed himself to Paul; and with this confirmation that the Christian claims were indeed true, Paul was completely turned from persecutor to witness. Only one category describes Paul’s experience, a category not uncommon in Acts. It was a miracle, the result of direct divine action. When all is said and done, both Acts and Paul give strikingly similar pictures of his conversion.

For Paul and for Luke, a totally different man emerged from that vision of the risen Lord; and that is conversion.

Saul enjoyed his first taste of Christian fellowship as he took food and was strengthened. He remained for several days with the disciples who were at Damascus,
One sure mark of a transformed life is the desire to be with fellow Christians.

First John 3:14 reads, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death.” Believers are those who do “not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers” (Ps. 1:1). They can say with the psalmist, “I am a companion of all those who fear Thee, and of those who keep Thy precepts” (Ps. 119:63).

A professing Christian who prefers the company of the people of the world is probably still one of them.

Paul Starts Immediately

Immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” And all those hearing him continued to be amazed,

The Heart of Saul’s New Worldview

For several days he spends time with the disciples in Damascus (v. 19) and then, incredibly, he starts to preach and debate in the synagogues. And Luke tells us in two crisp statements what was at the heart of Saul’s new worldview. Jesus, the hated, rejected, crucified criminal, is the Son of God and the long hoped-for Messiah. Verse 20: “And in the synagogue immediately he proclaimed Jesus, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’ ” And verse 22: “But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ [which means Messiah, the anointed one, the fulfiller of all God’s promises to Israel].”

Isn’t it amazing that the last words we hear coming out of Saul’s mouth before his conversion are, “Who are you, Lord” (v. 5); and the first words we hear coming out of his mouth after his conversion are, “Jesus is the Son of God” (v. 20)? Surely Luke wants us to see that this is foundational to being a Christian and foundational to the rest of Paul’s life as the greatest missionary who ever lived. “Jesus is the Son of God.”

What Does It Mean That Jesus Is the Son of God?

Cult leaders often preach “another Jesus.” For instance, Reverend Sun Myung Moon teaches that Jesus was the second Adam who only partially succeeded at His mission; thus, Rev. Moon must complete it. Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist (aka Christian Science), wrote of Jesus as a divine being who only appeared to have a physical body. Victor Paul Wierwille, founder of The Way International, rejected the preexistence of Jesus and taught that Jesus was a man with a fallen nature, yet without sin. Charles Taze Russell, the architect of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (aka Jehovah’s Witnesses), taught that the preincarnate Jesus was the archangel Michael, the first of God’s creation. Mormonism teaches that Jesus was
the first and mightiest spirit son of God and the brother of all the other spirits who would eventually become humans on earth. Followers of the Word-Faith embrace a belief that Jesus was born again after His death and descent into hell. New Age gurus espouse a Jesus who was a great world teacher for His age, but they believe that a new world teacher is about to appear. To accept another Jesus is tantamount to receiving “another spirit” and “another gospel.” The authentic gospel is the free offer of salvation to all who believe. Philip R. Roberts, “
Whatever help or instruction he received at this time, Paul himself later insisted that he did not receive the gospel ‘from any human source, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 1:12).

Luke stresses that it was at once, that he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. According to Galatians 1:17, Saul ‘went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus’, but Luke says nothing about this period in Arabia. ‘After three years’ in Galatians 1:18 could allow for an initial period of preaching in Damascus (Acts 9:19b–22), followed by a stay in Arabia (the Nabatean kingdom on the eastern frontier of Syria), and further ministry in Damascus (Acts 9:23–25), before going up to Jerusalem.

In Galatians, Paul took pains to emphasize in the face of his Judaizing opponents that his apostleship to the Gentiles was a direct call from God and in no way was dependent on or subservient to the Jerusalem apostolate. Acts would certainly verify that picture. Luke did not mention the Arabian period, it is true. Perhaps he was unaware of it. Perhaps he chose not to deal with it in order to concentrate on the Jewish opposition to Paul and the persecution that resulted.

Vv. 26, 27. Three years after his conversion (Gal. 1:18), Paul went for the first time back to Jerusalem. Driven from Damascus, the apostle very naturally and wisely directed his steps to the mother-church in Jerusalem, in order to enter into connection with the older apostles, particularly with Peter

Doubtless Saul had ‘gone to some trouble to inform himself concerning the erroneous teaching which he took it upon himself to stamp out. The appearances of Jesus proved at once that Jesus was alive and (since God had vindicated him)

So Paul’s whole worldview collapsed in Damascus. And was rebuilt with the great, unshakable, stone pillars of truth about Jesus.

Paul Preaches that Jesus is the Son of God

It means that he is God.

Paul said in Colossians 2:9, “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (cf. 1:13, 19. He said in Philippians 2:6, “Though he was in the form of God he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself.” Hebrews 1:2–3 says, “In these last days God has
spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power.” Hebrews 1:8–9 says, “Of the Son [God] he says, “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” And John writes, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God … and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14).

When Paul said that Jesus is the Son of God, we understand him to mean that Jesus is God. He is not a mere man or a high-ranking angel in human form. He is truly man and truly God.

When we call him Son of God, we mean that he is of the same nature as God. Fathers create things unlike themselves, but they beget sons like themselves. C. S. Lewis puts it like this:

When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers, and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds. But when you make (or create), you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, and man makes a computer.

So when we say that Jesus is the Son of God, we mean that God has begotten his Son in his very same divine nature, nothing less, from all eternity. Begetting is a metaphor, a picture, that tries to hold two truths together: (1) God the Father is not God the Son and God the Son is not God the Father; they are distinct persons, distinct centers of consciousness, and can relate to each other. But (2) the Father and the Son are one God not two Gods, one essence, one divine nature. From all eternity, without any beginning, the Father has always had a perfect image of himself and a divine reflection or radiance equal to himself, namely, the Son.

So the first thing we mean when we say, “Jesus is the Son of God,” is that he is God.

Truths about the Son of God

1 John 5:12 says, “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son of God has not life.”

1 John 2:23 says, “No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also.” So to have a relationship with God the Father and to have eternal life you have to confess Jesus as the Son of God and “have” Jesus as the Son of God—that is, be in fellowship with him (1:3, 1 Corinthians 1:9).

Galatians 4:4–5 gives the foundation of all this hope: “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son … to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” The Father sent his one and only divine Son so that he might have many human sons by adoption. “We were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10).

Finally, Galatians 2:20 says that we “live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.”

So it was the coming and the dying of the Son that gave us the gift of adoption. So if you confess the Son, you have the Father also—have him as Father. And if you have the Son and the Father, then you have everlasting life. And not only for the ages to come, but right now the Son of God works for us so that our lives should be described as living by faith in the Son of God.

So it is not surprising that Saul and Luke would put this truth at the very beginning of Paul’s missionary preaching: “Jesus is the Son of God.”

Understanding That Jesus is God Should be at the Front of Our Lives as Well.

It needs to be right at the front end of our Christian lives too. It needs to be one of the central pillars in our understanding of reality. Jesus is the Son of God.

Practically that means that Jesus is the starting point of every decision that we make.

Those transformed by the saving grace of God cannot stop speaking about it, and Saul was no exception. After a few days of fellowship with the saints, he immediately began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues. To the shocked Christians, surprised by his conversion, can be added the shocked Jews, who were expecting him to take Christians prisoner, not preach Jesus Christ in their synagogues. From the beginning he felt that courageous compulsion that later caused him to exclaim, “Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16).

Far from wilting under the pressure of confusion turning into hostility, Saul kept increasing in strength and confounding the Jews who lived at Damascus by proving that this Jesus is the Christ. He met the Jews in open debate about the deity and messiahship of Jesus. Saving faith “comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17).

That Saul was confounding the Jews in this dialogue should surprise no one. Once he understood who Jesus was, he had the key that unlocked the whole Old Testament. He was then able to use his vast knowledge of those Scriptures and his Spirit-controlled brilliance, as well as the truth of Jesus’ miracles, words, death, and resurrection, to prove that this Jesus was indeed the long-awaited Messiah.

Persecuted For Speaking the Truth of Jesus

V23 And when many days had elapsed, the Jews plotted together to do away with him, but their plot became known to Saul.

Luke’s phrase when many days had elapsed marked out a time period that is more specifically defined in the statement of Galatians 1:17–18: “Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus. Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days.” In actuality, three years elapsed between verses 22 and 23.

It is implied that Saul spent those years learning from the Lord in the kingdom of Nabatean Arabia. (This is an area located from nearby Damascus south to the Sinai peninsula. Some
historians say that a colony of Nabateans lived in Damascus.) He returned and began preaching in Damascus more powerfully than ever, thoroughly exasperating the Jews who plotted together to do away with him. In God’s providence, their plot became known to Saul. He noted in 2 Corinthians 11:32 that “in Damascus a ruler under Aretas the king was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize me.” Apparently the Jews were not the only ones Saul had irritated. During his three years in Nabatean Arabia, he had thoroughly preached the gospel and had worn out his welcome with both the Jews and the Arabs.

The Christians, however, found another way out. One of them evidently had access to a house on the city wall, so Saul’s disciples took him by night, and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a large basket.

V26 Having made good his escape, Saul went immediately to Jerusalem, and began trying to associate with the disciples. They, understandably, were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. Saul must have seemed to them to be the quintessential wolf in sheep’s clothing, now trying to destroy from within what he had previously tried to destroy from without.

How long this impasse lasted is unknown, but the imperfect tense of the verb translated was trying suggests that repeated attempts by Saul to join the fellowship were rebuffed. Finally, Barnabas (called “Son of Encouragement” in Acts 4:36) took hold of him and brought him to the apostles and described to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that He had talked to him, and how at Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus. With the highly regarded Barnabas to vouch for him, Saul was finally accepted.

Having at last gained acceptance, Saul began moving about freely in Jerusalem, speaking out boldly in the name of the Lord. Picking up where Stephen had left off, he was talking and arguing with the Hellenistic Jews. Because of the intolerant attitude that he himself had done so much to initiate (cf. Acts 8:1), they turned on him immediately and began attempting to put him to death. The ways in which they attempted this action are not stated.

The church soon discovered that it was almost as bad having Saul with them as against them. He quickly stirred up a hornet’s nest, and, no doubt in the minds of some, as much for their own good as his, they decided to send him home. According to Galatians 1:18, his stay lasted a mere fifteen days. The brethren learned of the Hellenists’ plot, probably from Saul’s own vision recorded in Acts 22:17–21:

And it came about when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I fell into a trance, and I saw Him saying to me, “Make haste, and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about Me.” And I said, “Lord, they themselves understand that in one synagogue after another I used to imprison and beat those who believed in Thee. And when the blood of Thy witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing by approving,
and watching out for the cloaks of those who were slaying him.” And He said to me, “Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles.”

For his own safety, they brought Saul down to Caesarea (the seaport on the Mediterranean) and sent him away to Tarsus, his hometown in Cilicia.

Thus did Saul disappear from the scene for a few years. During that period, however, he was far from idle. Between this time and the time when Barnabas found him in Tarsus and brought him to Antioch (11:25–26), he was aggressively doing what the Lord had called him to do. According to Galatians 1:21, he “went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia.” At least some of the churches of that region mentioned in Acts 15:23 must have been founded by him in those years.

‘With Saul the firebrand gone from the scene, both as the persecutor of the church and the chief target of the Christ-haters, things quieted down in Palestine. Luke again summarizes the progress of the church by stating that the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up; and, going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued to increase. Besides Saul’s departure, political changes contributed to the church’s temporary respite. The ouster of the compliant Pilate as governor, coupled with the expansion of Herod Agrippa’s authority, restricted the Jews’ freedom of action. They were thus less able to carry out drastic measures against the church.

As a result of Saul’s conversion, the 31st verse says, “the churches had rest.” The word “churches,” however, must be changed into “church.” The translation of church in the plural is founded upon later manuscripts. There were many local churches or assemblies in Judea, but it was but one church, as there is but one church to-day. The church then had rest. The believers walked in the fear of the Lord and comfort of the Holy Spirit. Increase marked this happy condition.

Peter Continues His Ministry

And it came to pass, as Peter passed “throughout all quarters, he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda. And there he found a certain man named Aeneas, which had kept his bed eight years, and was sick of the palsy. And Peter said unto him, Aeneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole: arise, and make thy bed. And he arose immediately. And all that dwelt at Lydda and Saron saw him, and turned to the Lord.
Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did. And it came to pass in those days, that she was sick, and died: whom when they had washed, they laid her in an upper chamber. And forasmuch as Lydda was nigh to Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter Verses 31–43.)

The ninth chapter closes with further acts of the Apostle Peter. It seems Peter made a kind of visitation, going from place to place. Two miracles happened in this connection. The healing of Aeneas and the raising up of Tabitha, who had died. The significant fact in connection with one
of these miracles is that it was an answer to prayer. The one was healing and restoration, the other resurrection from the dead. Both miracles are of deep symbolical meaning. The Gospel was about to go forth to the Gentiles.