"For you heard my former way of life in the Judaism, that according to excess I was persecuting the assembly of God and I was destroying it...’
-Prior to receiving the revelation of Jesus, Paul was on a mission to destroy Jesus. Or at least the Church, the ones who were following Jesus and who were spreading supposed lies with regard to Him, filling Jerusalem with His teaching. Paul was not merely intent on stopping the spread of the Church, he was hell-bent on eradicating it entirely. This Jesus-thing was a virus, a plague - it needed to be stopped, wiped out, and by-God (or by himself if necessary) he was going to do it.
-To this end, he does not hesitate to admit here and elsewhere that he was a persecutor of God’s people (Act 22.4-5, 26.9-11; 1Cor 15.9), and that excessively so. Paul definitely did nothing halfway. He was perhaps a bit late to the game - in fact he missed kickoff (as far as we can tell he was not present when they crucified Jesus), but by the time the church actually got cranked up and began to fill Jerusalem with signs and wonders and teaching about Jesus, Paul - then Saul - was all in for the final solution. When the Jewish leaders finally began persecuting and even killing Christians (i.e. Stephen was the first), Paul was right there with them (Act 7.58-59, 8.1, 8.3, 9.1-2)(he was likely one of the men who first confronted Stephen and then had him arrested - Act 6.8-13 - as Paul was himself from Cilicia, Act 22.3). And to that end - the end of the church - he dedicated himself with great abandon. To persecute literally means to pursue, doggedly so, and this Paul did, pursuing those who followed Jesus to put them in prison, pursuing them all the way to foreign cities. Damascus was more than twice the distance of Nazareth from Jerusalem, so, more than a few days journey, yet Paul did not hesitate to pursue as far as there.
-Everybody pursues something. Even those who purport to be pursuing nothing at all are pursuing just that. And to that end, some pursue mediocrity. Others pursue success, however they have defined it (or how others have defined it for them) - wealth and riches, fame, career advancement, knowledge and academic achievement, beauty, romance, pleasure, fitness, leisure and recreation, the fountain of youth - you name it, the list is endless... Even those who pursue nothing, are they not in fact pursuing comfort and ease, or freedom? Some pursuits are mere dalliances, diversions at best, others are more consuming, more obsessive. But in the end, everybody pursues something, and we do so because we are ultimately looking for the satisfaction which we believe will accompany the catch. The question is, when I catch it, will it really satisfy? Will it really fill that knawing, nagging hole in my heart? It's like the sheriff on Dukes of Hazzard, always in "hot pursuit" of those Duke boys. Had he ever managed to catch them, would it have brought him true satisfaction for more than a Hollywood minute? Does not experience inform us that life and these pursuits are much like cotton candy? Had Paul been able to succeed in completely wiping out the early church, would he have actually found a lasting contentment and inner peace? Would he have been able to rest? How about the rest of us - have we yet found what we’re looking for?
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