We have three different accounts of the conversion of Saul in the Gospel according to Luke (9:1-20; 22:6-16; 26:12-18). They differ in a few minor details, but essentially they are the same. In addition, Paul writes of his conversion in Galatians 1:11-16, and in 1 Corinthians 9:1 and 15:8-9, stating that at the time of his conversion on the road to Damascus, he saw the Lord. For Paul, that made him an apostle, equal to the twelve. An apostle, in Paul's thought, was one who had seen the risen Christ and had been sent to announce that good news. No mention is made of seeing the Lord in Luke's account, and for Luke, the only apostles were the twelve in Jerusalem who had been with the Lord during his life on earth. Luke always wanted to exalt the importance of the Jerusalem church.

 Despite these differences, both Luke and Paul himself record that in the vicinity of Damascus, Paul underwent a life-transforming experience, which changed him from Saul, the persecutor of the early Christians, to Paul, the Christian apostle to the Gentile world. The story in Luke stands in the middle of a series of conversion accounts of the Samaritans and of the Ethiopian eunuch in chapter 8 and of those converted by Peter in 9:32-42. The Spirit is moving mightily, out into the world. Certainly, however, the conversion of Saul is seen as the paradigmatic account.

 The story of Saul is the story of an enemy of Christ. Saul hated Christians. He hunted them down and had them flogged and expelled from the synagogue (contrary to Luke's notice that Saul delivered them to Jerusalem). And because Saul hated Christians, he also hated Christ. That's what Jesus is saying in Matthew 25:40: "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." Paul was a strict Pharisee, and according to the teaching of the law, anyone who hung on a tree was cursed by God (Deuteronomy 21:23). Yet Christians were proclaiming that the Messiah himself had been condemned by the law and crucified on a tree. Moreover, they were maintaining that the law had been fulfilled and was at an end. That was too much for Pharisee Saul.

 It has been the common stereotype to say that Saul was converted because he could not follow the law and that he finally realized that he could be saved only by grace. But that theory has no basis in fact. Paul himself states that as to righteousness, he was blameless under the law (Philippians 3:6). Paul could follow the law to the letter. It was not his own spiritual or psychological inner state that led to his conversion. We should give up that thought.

 Indeed, Paul's story shows us rather clearly that we do not convert ourselves. There is nothing that we can do to transform our own lives. As the prophet Jeremiah once stated, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). We cannot transform ourselves, because everything we do is tainted by our sin, and the more we rely only on ourselves, rather than on God, the farther we fall into sin.

 Rather, we are converted to faith and our lives are transformed solely by the grace of God, by his active intervention in our hearts and minds. And that is what happened to Saul. He had heard about Jesus. He was present at the stoning of Stephen, and he knew what Christians were preaching. But suddenly Jesus himself confronted Saul on that Damascus road. A great light flashed around Saul from the sky, and he heard a voice call his name, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" When Saul asked whose voice it was, Jesus identified himself, told Saul to get up, and to enter Damascus. But Saul was struck blind and had to be led by his companions.

 In short, Saul the zealot, a Hebrew of Hebrews, the Pharisaic fulfiller of the law, the active, energetic persecutor who could hunt down Christians to punish them -- that proud and vigorous man was suddenly helpless, needing to be led along like a little child and then unable to eat or drink for three days.

 I wonder if that is not what happens to us when we truly become Christians, that we lose all reliance on ourselves and become solely dependent on the guiding of God. We too are an energetic, goal-oriented people, aren't we? We set our plans and arrange our schedules and work hard to fulfill our own desires and to reach our own goals. And then the risen Lord Christ intervenes in our lives and somehow our plans and goals become secondary. And what we really desire is to further God's purpose of love and to serve his will in the world. As John the Baptist said, we decrease and Christ increases (John 3:30), and the Lord takes over our lives. And we find, as a converted Paul found, that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us (Galatians 3:20).

 That does not necessarily happen to us suddenly as it happened to Saul. We need not undergo a sudden conversion experience like Saul's to be taken into the Christian life. Some of us are raised in Christian homes, by truly devout parents, and we are nurtured and brought up in the faith, day by day and year by year, until our dependence on Christ becomes our way of life, and we become true servants of the Lord.

 One thing is certain, however. Christ does not redeem us from our old life and from our old self for no purpose. In our text, when Ananias hesitates to go to Saul and lay his hands upon him, Ananias is told by the Lord, "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel" (v. 15). Saul, who became Paul, was chosen by God for a task.

 That is the way with all of the servants of the Lord in the Bible. Elijah, in the Old Testament, hearing the still, small voice of God on Mount Horeb, was not allowed to bask in the experience. Instead he was commanded to return to his people and to start a revolution (1 Kings 19). And Peter, James, and John at the Transfiguration were not allowed to build booths on the mountain and to continue to enjoy the mystical vision. Instead, they had to go down and follow their Master to Jerusalem and to a cross.

 So it is too with us. God has not transformed our lives by his active Spirit and made us his disciples just so we can enjoy his fellowship all by ourselves. And surely he has not made us Christians so we, in our pride, can claim some sort of spiritual superiority to those around us. Heaven help us if we exchange our discipleship for self-glorification, For then we do not belong to Christ, and he is not our Lord. No, we are called to accomplish tasks for our Lord. Each one of us has a task.

 Yet, in fulfilling the purpose for which God converted us, we may even have to suffer. God says in our text that he "will show (Paul) how much he must suffer for the sake of (his) name" (v. 16). And Paul, in giving his litany of his past, tells how true that became. He says he was five times beaten with forty lashes, three times with rods; once stoned, three times shipwrecked, a night and a day adrift at sea, always on a journey and always in danger for the sake of his Lord (2 Corinthians 11:24-29). But he could also say, these slight momentary afflictions are "preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:17). And so he could advise his churches to "rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice" (Philippians 4:4). Our discipleship, our conversions by the grace of God, our service in his name, lead to glory, good Christians, and to rejoicing.