Saintly Formulation

How Saul must have felt.

Under an impression of being ‘right’ according to all his senses, was Saul confronted.

All he knew about life, himself, and the God of Abraham was reinforced in Saul.

Before that wondrous confrontation, Saul believed he was right.

In persecuting the Church and encouraging the killing of Christians, Saul was reinforcing his mind's religious ideas... and the ideas of men he honored.

He was also zealous for his interpretation of Scripture.

From Saul's perspective, yet another heresy had sprouted.

Another challenge to the Pharisaical order he reveled and gloried in.

Yet another imposter had instigated many to run after, as he likely perceived, a false teaching pointing to a false god.

Saul was determined to exterminate the lot of them, and bury forever any false notions.

How many of us have been like Saul at some point in our lives.

Whether in a religious sense, or a political sense, or simply as one human conflicting with another.

I was thinking about these things this morning as I walked a usual path.

I wondered what may have gone across Saul's heart and mind when he saw and heard something beyond his typical human experience.

I was previously thinking of an acquaintance that once shared a story of a vision he had.

While laying in a hospital bed the day before open heart surgery, he was pondering the real chance he may die the next day during the surgery.

As he laid there, with his wife by his side, a nun walks in and asks if she could pray for him and for the operation to go well.

He agrees.

He supposes no harm could come from it.

He, at the time, didn't believe in religion or God or anything of the sort.

Yet as she began to pray, a vision appeared above his hospital bed.

He saw an image of a man in a white robe emanating love and light (what his heart received), surrounded by the colors of the rainbow like a stained-glass window.

After he shared this story with me, and as he was wiping tears from his face, I shared with him that others have had a similar experience / vision... one such man was Ezekiel.

Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, 

and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. 

I saw that from what appeared to be His waist up He looked like glowing metal, 

as if full of fire, and that from there down He looked like fire; 

and brilliant light surrounded Him. 

Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, 

so was the radiance around Him. 

This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. 

When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the Voice of One speaking. 

- Ezekiel 1: 26-28

That led me to ponder how such an experience may profoundly change a person's life.

My friend knew he wasn't asleep, so it wasn't a dream (although people have had visions in their dreams unlike a typical dream).

Only he had the experience, the nun nor his wife saw nothing.

When telling me the story, he still struggled with the idea of God and His teachings (Church).

This friend's testimony was somewhat similar to Saul's vision, in that their experiences produced a certain outcome.

A 'change' that clarified previous contentions.

What was previously believed to be false, was true... and what was true, false.

For my friend, he came to know without doubt that God is real... and He is love and light.

I wondered what Saul must have felt inside.

What dazzled in Saul's mind when he heard the Voice speak to him.

What, I wonder, it felt like for Saul to have love and light instantly planted into his heart and make an eternal home.

Perhaps a flood of thoughts overwhelming his mind's processing.

I was wondering if one of those thoughts was his understanding of the Name he heard.

As he neared Damascus on his journey, 

suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 

He fell to the ground and heard a Voice say to him, 

“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” 

“Who are You, Lord?” Saul asked. 

“I Am Yeshua, whom you are persecuting,” He replied. - Acts 9: 3-5

I pondered that perhaps, as names and words hold meaning beyond their surface exchange in language, what one of those many thoughts of Saul may have been.

Perhaps Saul heard in this response something like 'I Am God's Salvation, whom you are persecuting'.

Saul had been equating the Name of Yeshua as an imposter's moniker, a man who had beguiled many and stirred up the Jewish people.

Yet the Name of Yeshua 'means' several things, related to being rescued, or delivered, or saved.

How in an instance so much was made clear to Saul.

So many previous ideas were retired as incorrect, dead-wrong, and full of religious hate.

Now Saul's judgment of that Name, that man, and all that he had heard about Him, was being corrected in a most sobering way.

Saul likely doubted the testimony that Yeshua had risen from the dead.

Now that testimony was actualized.

Saul was speaking with someone he perceived to have been dead and gone.

I would suspect Saul may have come close to having a heart attack... or an aneurysm... or may have likely died on the spot if it was not for God preventing such a physical and emotional response.

God sustains.

Saul's wider testimony is expressed throughout the book of Acts and further detailed in the several letters he wrote to the churches.

In them we find what makes a saint and how a saint is made.

Saul, whom God renamed Paul, depicts the many changes God produced in him.

Saints are not born (yet reborn), but made... and given life after death (on earth).

Saints are not made wholly by a single man's effort, but after being called by God.

Saints are fashioned by God's Right Hand.

In an instance does a sinner become a saint, regardless of age or length of life.

From one moment to the next does His Spirit enliven those He destined for heaven.

It is a process for the sinner to realize their sainthood, the calling, what God has done from beginning to end.

The things of this world are utilized in fashioning a saint... out of lumps of clay is a saint formed.

Part of the effort of those called is their obedience and submission and trust in God.

A saint is someone who openly confesses their humanity.

It isn't that a saint ceases to sin (yet that is the hope).

A saint continues to repent and thank God for His forgiveness and love despite the humanity.

God brings saints to this point... in realizing how righteous God is, and how it is God who has made them righteous.

The saint comes to recognize their sin and their thorns.

Many are proclaimed by others to have been 'saints', or 'holy people', or 'good', but do you find their humanity also being attested?

Do such saints have a testimonial revealing their sins, sharing their humanity?

Or do you read religious people justifying their sins as 'necessary' or 'God-willed' or never mentioning sin / transgression / anything less than perfection?

I've read some religious texts that completely ignore a person's humanity, messaging that they have never sinned in their entire lives.

What works of fiction.

Many people have been proclaimed to have been 'great', or 'praiseworthy', and that they've done supernatural feats... yet their sins are often obscured or ignored or denied by their followers.

Typical religious zealotry.

Saul was following the 'law' as he understood it... yet the New Covenant, and how the Old Covenant was fulfilled, was lost on him prior to that confrontation.

Have you noticed how mere human beings are lifted up and worshipped by other human beings?

I speak to groups within Christendom and also groups beyond that culture.

Some religious adherents may not openly say they 'worship' someone, but in the way they speak of them, the manner they regard anything less than praiseworthy said about that person being blasphemous and grounds for death... are clues to this kind of idol worship.

But true saints are not afraid to express there sins, their failures, in order to praise He who is only worthy of praise - the Lord God Almighty.

Those believes in the Lord are clear about how they can honor someone's legacy, while recognizing them as another sinner sanctified (made a saint) by God.

I'm sure this may have been one notion Saul was holding in his heart when contemplating the news of Yeshua being proclaimed as Messiah.

I'm sure Saul also perceived calling a man born of a woman 'the Lord thy God' to be, as it is on its face, a blaspheme against God.

The thought of saying a man is 'God' is blasphemous without further understanding, and the understanding is partially found in the manner 'Messiah' is mentioned in the prophecies.

Understanding, also, is a gift of God.

I'm sure it was made clear in Saul's heart and mind the moment Saul heard God speak to him in that vision.

When faith was gifted, I'm sure light and love entered Saul's heart... as it did my friend.

Sin is unbelief.

Faith is not believing something blindly.

Faith is, in one way, how love convinces your heart to also love.

Despite things being slightly unreal (like a miraculous vision or miraculous occurrence).

Despite experiencing things unbelievable.

The call to love people seemingly intolerable.

It is a miracle what happened to my friend and to Saul.

No one can tell those two men anything different than what they experienced first-hand.

The same is how the gift of faith allows the heart and mind to believe how God appeared on earth.

He appeared in the flesh, and after that flesh was killed, He rose to life once again in the flesh.

It is a miracle, and God can do as He pleases.

Who can tell God what is impossible for Him to do?

Only a religious fanatic would dare to do such... a sinner blinded by their own zealotry.

Mankind's sin is ever before them, and very few openly acknowledge it.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. 

Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight; 

so You are right in Your verdict and justified when You judge. 

- Psalm 51: 3-4

The saint battles their carnal nature... and can openly say 'my sin is ever before me'.

The saint identifies the way in which they sin... no matter what may come.

The saint is able to reveal, into the light, their sin.

Doing so reveals there is a battling with God's gift... inside.

It is inside where spiritual struggles start and end.

Men, religious and / or arrogant, fight on the outside, against flesh and blood, and are lost in a sea of sin.

As if God needs someone to kill for Him now that death has been vanquished... now that the resurrection has been proclaimed the world over.

Such people are religious zealots, believing they are correct in all they know... like Saul was.

Such men justify their hatred, their arrogance, their pomp, their dress and their dogma.

If only God would shine a light from heaven over all such men.

If only God would spark faith in their hearts as He did in Saul.

If only God would change their names to a righteous name, not names they choose for themselves or repeat in honoring murderers, imposters, and pompous unrepentant sinners.

Saints are repentant sinners.

Sinners are called to give glory to God so they may become saints.

Confessing your sins and confessing Yeshua as Lord is glorifying God.