Saul the Bigot

Anywhere you travel in America or the world, you will soon come face-to-face with overt or covert forms of racial prejudice. You will find volatile situations of racial and ethnic tensions just waiting for the right incident to set off conflict and violence. And not surprisingly, much of the world’s racism is religiously motivated. That’s why only spiritual transformation can lead to authentic social transformation.

It was that kind of radical spiritual transformation that happened to Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road when he met the risen Christ. Before that encounter, Saul was a caustic, bigoted true-blue Jew through and through. He was motivated by spiritual, racial, and cultural pride (Philippians 3:3–6). Like so many of us, Saul’s world was neatly segregated between us and them.

But God temporarily blinded him in order to

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make him see. He was blinded by light—the light of God’s revelation through Jesus Christ! In the process, he temporarily lost his sight, but gained new insight that forever changed him spiritually, racially, socially, and culturally. As a result, he later wrote: “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:16–17).

So, it was only radical spiritual conversion that caused Saul to no longer see people from a human perspective or from a worldly point of view. And the one thing that killed the apartheid in his life was to see who Jesus really was: God’s Messiah and Savior of the world.

Before then, Saul had seen Jesus through the blinded eyes of spiritual pride and prejudice. To him, Jesus was nothing more than a deceived Jewish fanatic with a messianic complex. Jesus’ blasphemy in claiming to be God incarnate got Him just what He deserved—crucifixion as an imposter!

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But, when Saul saw and heard the resurrected Christ, he cried out “Lord!” That spiritual insight into the nature of Christ forever changed his perception of every human as a potential “new creation” in Christ Jesus. Forever thereafter, Saul saw people through the eyes of Christ.

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