If you saw the meme that accompanied this blogpost, then I know you’re reading this having already gotten a chuckle in your day. It makes me laugh every time without fail. Especially considering how spot on it is.
But there is a reality to it that’s just as wild to think of. When you look at things from the apostles’s perspective, Paul’s conversion had to look alike a cruel joke. This was the guy who was trying to kill them and now he’s just as hungry for their work as they are. You can’t go from that big of polar opposites and not freak people out a little bit. Given the vehemence with which Paul had opposed Christians, I think it’s entirely understandable if the church leaders were a little freaked out by his conversion and his passion for the gospel.
Now, we know what did happen. Paul was embraced by the church leaders who, after making sure they were all on the same page concerning core beliefs, encouraged him to keep spreading the good news of Jesus. But what if things had gone differently? What if the disciples had rejected Paul out of their own hurt? And there was undeniable hurt.
In his old life, Paul had personally persecuted and seen to the deaths of the apostles friends. Right from the start when an angry mob lay their cloaks at his feet during the stoning of Stephen. These weren’t deaths the apostles heard about second hand of faceless names they’d never met. These were people dear to them, people they’d laughed and cried with and shared meals with. And Paul, the one who’d persecuted them was standing there wanting to be part of their work.
Now, could the apostles have stopped Paul from carrying out God’s work? No. Not unless they were ready to give Paul some real Saul treatment and we know they weren’t about to do that. Well, maybe the apostle I’ll-cut-your-ear-off Peter would have, but that’s beside the point. The point is, I’m not suggesting that Christianity hinged on this bit of forgiveness.
But what they could have done was hurt and hindered each other’s work, and as a result hurt the church. They had a choice to make. Do we accept Paul as one of us and embrace him as a brother? Or do we reject him for all the things he’s done and a splinter our young church? It was a big ask.
How do you accept someone into your life and your work who has hurt and terrorized you so badly? How do you look someone who was responsible for the death of people you loved in the eye and believe them when they say they’re sorry and beg your forgiveness?
An important note here. God cares about you deeply and hates how you’ve been hurt. He takes no delight in it, and it angers him that people have mistreated you. I am not at all advocating for you to be a doormat here. It is so important that Paul was coming to them as a completely changed man. Everything about him was different. He was never going back to his ways before he came to Christ. This was serious, genuine repentance. Not a “whoops” my bad. And even then, I can only imagine how hard it was for the apostles to accept him.
So how do we do the same? Two things come to mind (God is creative, I’m sure there’s plenty more) that we can do to embrace someone like Paul into our work, to accept the Sauls into Pauls and make them our brothers.
1. Trust the Holy Spirit and what he’s calling you into.
Following God means we stop following the world. Unfortunately, a lot of times the message doesn’t get all the way to our intuition or gut instincts. Those still want to follow the world, and the world says if someone hurts you, make sure they’re never allowed in a position where they could possibly do it again.
The problem is, that’s often counter to what God asks of us. So what do we do? We embrace listening to the Holy Spirit more than we listen to our gut. We let him become our gut instinct. If the gut is saying no, but the Holy Spirit is loudly and authoratatively telling us yes, we do the hard work to listen to him above all else.
The Holy Spirit is not a bully. The spirit is not going to send us into situations that stretch and challenge us and just leave us hanging. If the Holy Spirit is leading you to something, or someone, it’s going to see you through the whole thing completely, which is always going to be better for us than following our gut. The Holy Spirit knows the whole story and our ultimate outcome, our gut doesn’t.
When faced with the absolutely mind boggling transformation of another through Christ, especially when that person has a dark and hurtful past, the best thing we can do to get on board is trust the Holy Spirit in us who is the same Holy Spirit behind the work in them. He knows what he’s doing.
2. Recognize that the work was never just yours to begin with.
We’re naturally protective of our stuff. The problem here is when we become protective of stuff that isn’t actually ours. It’s so easy to fall into the trap that a project or a mission belongs to us and only us. Others can look but they can’t touch. We started this project, and we want the credit for the hard work. But God’s kingdom does not work that way.
The only one who gets start to finish glory and credit is God. We are meant to work together and for his glory. Spreading the gospel was never a solo mission, so we can’t guard it like it is. If the Holy Spirit is asking you to bring someone into the work you’re doing, that is not the time to get greedy about your mission. If the work you’re doing is for God, there is always room for others that he is calling to it.
The apostles did both these things with Paul, and so fully and beautifully. They trusted the Holy Spirit was leading them and Paul truly and that his repentance and conversion was genuine. And they set aside their own hurts, egos, and self importance to welcome a new brother into the work they were doing. These actions were a crucial part of the miraculous forgiveness of Paul. And we know how much work was done to God’s glory as a result.
May we be like the apostles in this, radically forgiving of those who seek our forgiveness and accepting of those the God brings to join in our work. Let’s forgive our Sauls and embrace our Pauls.
Let’s find some joy,
A
Avalon Robinson Author 