Turning Enemies into Friends

“though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1Tim 1:13)

I need you to use your imagination for a moment. And I need you to crank it up to 11. Picture the number one enemy of the Christian faith suddenly switching sides and becoming a spokesperson for the Son of God. Try to wrap your brain around the idea of an enemy like Osama bin Laden unexpectedly spreading the love of Jesus across the planet instead of trying to wipe His followers from the face of the earth. Hard to imagine, right?

That’s EXACTLY the kind of guy that Jesus chose not only use to spread His Gospel throughout the Roman Empire but write most of the New Testament. In a letter to Timothy, Paul reflects on his wrap sheet. “Though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (v13). The apostle knows without a doubt he didn’t make a mistake. He realizes he wasn’t simply misguided. He didn’t just say “my bad.” He was a rebel with a cause against Christ. Despite all of that, Jesus overwhelmed His enemy in His amazing mercy. What a great reminder that our Savior loves to qualify the disqualified. That means me. That means you.

It’s easy to loose sight of Paul’s background when we see him at this point in his life. He’s Christ’s handpicked apostle to non-Jews everywhere. When he’s not in jail for upsetting local authorities with the Gospel, he’s always on the road telling everyone who will listen that the resurrected Jesus is the Hero sent straight from heaven to save the world. But before he was Paul, he was Saul. Before he was an apostle, he was an assassin. Before he was a missionary, he was a murderer. Before he was Jesus’ biggest proponent, he was Jesus’ biggest opponent. It’s a great reminder of the turnarounds our Savior loves to pull. He’s not looking to make good people better. The Son of God didn’t just water in to wine. You've heard of frenemies. Jesus loves turning His enemies into His friends.

Paul has nothing to hide from his spiritual son. He’s left Tim in Ephesus to pastor the growing megachurch there while he heads off the Macedonia (1Tim 1:3). The apostle gives his protege specific instructions to shut down a team of false teachers who are stirring up trouble (1Tim 1:3-7). The man from Tarsus knows all about what it means to be against the Gospel. He devoted himself to that cause for years. At the time, he sincerely believed he was doing the right thing. He was sincerely wrong. What did it get him? The realization that he was “blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” (v13) of God. Just in case you were wondering, God beats His enemies. Every. Single. Time. The Generals have a better chance against the Globetrotters.

The apostle readily admits that he once was a “blasphemer (Gr. blasphemos)” (v13). This is a person who defames another in general and someone who speaks against God more specifically. But this is the idea of someone who openly insults another. A slanderer who trashes your reputation. In today’s culture, we call it hate speech. It’s literally someone who hurts another with their words. Now you can’t really injure Almighty God with what you say. The truth is the only person you’re really hurting is yourself. 

Paul also transparently tells Tim that he was a “persecutor” (v13) in the past. He uses a Greek term (Gr. dioktes) that paints portrait of a person preoccupied with causing others to pain (say THAT three times fast!). It comes from a verb that means to chase swiftly or hunt down. The book of Acts doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to Paul’s relentless pursuit of Jesus’ followers. He led house-to-house raids (Acts 8:3; 9:1). He mercilessly tortured many right in the synagogue (Acts 26:11). He had martyrs’ blood on his hands as well (Acts 22:4; 26:10). Paul comes clean to the Galatians about how he “persecuted the church God violently” (Gal 1:13). The apostle doesn’t shy away from his days as a Christian hunter.

If that doesn’t make your skin crawl, the apostle formerly known as Saul lays his cards on the table as a former “insolent opponent” (v13). This describes someone who is a violent aggressor. But it’s even worse than that. There’s arrogance and superiority involved. It’s someone with a superior attitude who mistreats others out of their own rebellion against God’s truth. Think hate groups like the KKK who intentionally look down on their enemies and do what they can to wipe them off the map. Before Jesus saved him, Paul saw little to no value in anyone below him in the religious pecking order. 

Oh, how times and hearts have changed. The jaw-dropping turnaround started a few years back when this Hebrew up-and-comer was on one of his patented search-and-destroy missions to Damascus. That’s when the resurrected Christ made it clear to Saul that when he persecutes His church, he persecutes Jesus personally (Acts 9:4-5; 22:7-8; 26:14-15). Once God shined his holy light of truth on Paul’s life, he saw his sin for what it really was. He saw himself for who he really was.

That was the very moment when Paul “obtained mercy” (v13) from His Savior. He uses a verb (Gr. ele’eo) that is less about a judicial ruling in his favor but receiving compassion or pity. Over and over, it’s what people tossed aside by society would plead Christ for. Two visually impaired men chased after Jesus and shouted, “Have mercy (Gr. ele’eo) on us, Son of David” (Mt 9:27). You and I would probably put this torturer and terrorist at the top of the most wanted list, NOT God’s mercy list. But in a letter to the Roman church, Paul reminds believers of what God said to Moses. “I will have mercy on (Gr. ele’eo) whom I have mercy (Gr. ele’eo)…So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy (Gr. ele’eo)” (Rom 9:15, 16). We need to remember that God showers His compassion on those He chooses. We don’t earn it. We can’t earn it. Our man Paul knows that better than most.

Saul/Paul quite simply did not understand who Jesus was and what He had done, or in his words, “because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (v13). As a member of the Pharisees, he believed it was up to him to save himself by building up a religious resume so impressive that God had to accept him (Phil 3:4-7). His admission of ignorance is not an excuse or an attempt to rationalize all he had done. Until Jesus blindsided him on the highway outside Damascus, this rising Jewish rock star was defending his religion against these whacky radicals. 

Like so many people around the world today, he mistakenly believed HE was on a mission from God. He was convinced this movement called the Way was clearly headed the wrong way. But the confrontation with Christ flipped on the light switch. Paul then realized that the only thing that matters is a personal relationship with Jesus and everything else was nothing more than a big steaming pile (Phil 3:7-9).

So what can we take from these words written from a mentor to his protege more than 2,000 years ago? What can we learn from this verse? Don’t miss the fact that Paul confessed. Throughout the New Testament, we see that he confessed early and often. Once Jesus shines His holy light on his life, the apostle understood exactly who he was and what he had done. Then he said it out loud. His sin was all out in the open.    

Confession brings our sin out from hiding. Funny thing. What seems so scary and mean in the dark becomes kinda wimpy when we drag it into the light. Horror movies are so horrible in the daytime. When we keep our sin secret, we carry it alone. Jesus’ little brother James knew the importance of confessing our sins to our closest spiritual brothers and sisters (James 5:16). Find a trusted crew of believers and open up. Reveal your mess. Disclose your dirt. Divulge your darkness. Stop carrying your secret crap all alone. Owning up to our sin also puts the focus on Jesus and His goodness…as it should be. In case you forgot, it’s not about you. Don’t impress. Confess. It’s what happens when Jesus turns us from one of His enemies into a friend.

Paul's Religious Resume Part Two

“As to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6).

If you’ve ever been involved in the hiring process, you know to look for red flags on a resume. The candidate was apparently out of work for more than a year. That will get your attention. Hey, look there. Why did they work at that job for just a few months? Unless you’re Osama bin Laden, rarely do you include your years as a terrorist in your job history. Here in the third chapter of Philippians, Paul looks back on his days as Saul and refers to a copy of his religious resume. The first half of it is incredibly impressive (Phil 3:5). Have you ever laid your eyes on a more mind-blowing Jewish background? He was among the best and brightest of young Jews. We’re not just talking about a first round draft pick, but the number one pick overall. That’s when we move to the second half of his resume. “As to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (v6). Church persecutor?!? Yeah, that gets the warning lights flashing down at quality control! 

Paul wants his readers to know he can not only disarm the arguments of those who can earn their way into heaven but also those who think their too bad for God to save. The first half of this religious resume is all about the apostle’s unrighteous goodness. He tried to pile up enough stats to impress God. He did all the right things for all the wrong reasons. The second half focuses on his unrighteous badness. And when I say “badness,” I’m NOT talking about breaking the speed limit by five miles an hour down the interstate. We’re talking terrorism. We’re talking murder. The man from Tarsus wants us to know when it comes to sin, you’ve got nothing on him. But here’s the deal. You can’t out-sin our Savior.

A lot of people seem to believe that before Jesus saved him, Saul was simply a passionate but misguided soul. He rounded up a few of Christ’s followers and tossed them in jail but he never REALLY didn’t hurt anyone, right? Not even close. Before he became Jesus’ handpicked spokesman to the non-Jewish world, Saul was a one-man wrecking crew against His church. Here he makes an incredibly powerful admission of his very dark history. “As to zeal, a persecutor of the church” (v6). Check out the original language and it gets even darker! He had “zeal” (Gr. zelos), which paints a picture of excitement, passion, and ferocity. According to MacArthur, this sort of zeal is the highest single virtue for a Jew. It combines both a powerful love and hate. Since Saul had such a passion for Judaism, he burned with hatred for anything and everything that might threaten it. And if you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, we’re talking about the church of Jesus here.

What stokes your fire? What do you love to do? What are your hobbies? For this Jewish up-and-comer, it was being a “persecutor of the church” (v6). Here we see the Greek word dioko. It means to drive away, make something or someone run, chase swiftly, hunt down, or pursue with the purpose to harass. There’s incredibly intensity and focus. Picture the Terminator unrelenting in its pursuit of John and Sarah Connor. No matter what you might do or where you tried to go as a first century believer, Saul would chase after you with intent to do great harm. You might run but you can’t hide.

In case you’re not buying this idea of the Apostle Paul was the Terrorist Saul, let’s check some other places in the New Testament. Saul was so much in favor of Stephen’s stoning that he ran the coat check table at the execution (Acts 7:58-8:1). It was just after the murder of this first martyr that the young man from Tarsus got busy. “Saul was ravaging the church, entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison” (Acts 8:3). Ravaging. Did you catch that? Just a little later, Dr. Luke finds the future apostle taking his act on the road. “But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:1). It was just outside the city limits that everything changed. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Just after being taken into protective custody by Roman authorities, Paul tells an angry mob about his bloody background. “I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women” (Acts 22:4). Later the apostle tells King Agrippa how he blatantly opposed the name of Jesus (Acts 26:9-11). This is an incredibly scary description of the sort of religious terrorism campaign he once oversaw. He not only tossed Christ’s followers in the slammer but went on the road to arrest and kill even more of them. He cast his vote to execute these believers every chance he got. He personally tortured those he suspected of trusting in Jesus in order to force them to blaspheme. And in his letter to the churches of Galatia, he confesses his crimes against Christ. “For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it” (Gal 1:13).

Don’t make the mistake of thinking Saul of Tarsus is just like those folks we read about in the Old Testament who trusted in God and His goodness but simply didn’t know about Jesus. This dude was a lost legalist. With apologies to Mike Tyson, he was the baddest man on the planet. Well, at least until Jesus ambushed him just outside Damascus before Saul’s next black ops mission to terrorize His church (Acts 9:1-19). Paul wants everyone to know even though he had murder and terrorism on his resume, he still couldn’t out-sin our Savior.

The apostle wraps up his job history, “as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (v6). Nobody who watched Saul could find anything fault with him. He was squeaky clean. Did all the right things. Said all the right things. He put on a perfect performance. Spotless reputation. Long before Andre Agassi, Saul believed image was everything. But that’s not the whole story. There was a problem. A BIG problem. The outside may look great but there’s a hot mess in his heart. His heart was full of hate. Is that you? Are you all about keeping up appearances? Are you all about your image? Is there a steaming cauldron of anger and hatred bubbling deep inside you? Well, Paul would love to chat with you if you’ve got a moment. He knows a Guy.

When you take a closer look at Saul before Paul, he’s certainly no angel. No, he’s a thug. A bully. A terrorist. He spent his time chasing down Jesus’ followers to kill them. It was open season. I don’t know about you, but Saul is NOT at the top of my list when it comes to candidates who will take the Good News to a lost and dying world. Seems like someone we would want God to strike with some of His patented fire and brimstone, don’t you think? Jesus thought otherwise. Instead Christ came to Saul’s rescue. I like to think that He knocked this hit man off his horse with a blast of His amazing grace. Saul may have been a major league sinner, but Jesus is a Hall of Fame Savior. 

How ‘bout you? Think you’re too far gone for God to save? Is there stuff in your rearview mirror you believe disqualifies you from the love of Jesus? Maybe you’ve stolen or embezzled. Possibly an affair. Or an abortion. Is your heart full of hate? Paul’s got news for you. Some VERY Good News! No matter what you’ve done, no matter had bad you’ve been, Jesus is ready and willing to come to your rescue. You may be great sinner, but you can’t out-sin our Savior!!