Alive - by Dave Smith

1. A TRANSFORMED MOTIVATION
Saul’s life could be described as a journey from unhealthy drivenness
to living the rest of his life with a healthy drive and a new motivation.
This was enabled by his being drawn to and transformed by the risen
Jesus.
Born to Jewish parents in around AD 5 in the city of Tarsus in Cilicia
(in modern-day Turkey), Saul possessed the coveted privilege of
being a Roman citizen. In about AD 10, Saul moved with his family to
Jerusalem and sometime between AD 15–20 he began an in-depth
study of the Hebrew Scriptures under the famous Rabbi Gamaliel.
By the time we first hear about Saul in the New Testament (Acts 7),
much had taken place. His contemporary, Jesus of Nazareth, had
been crucified in around AD 33. Yet within a year or two, thousands
of people had begun to gather in Jerusalem convinced of Jesus’
resurrection and worshipping him as Lord. As a result, they were
persecuted: some of them were imprisoned, and one of their number,
Stephen, was stoned to death. As Stephen was being killed, we read
how ‘witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named
Saul’ (Acts 7:58). The account continues: ‘And Saul approved of their
killing him. On that day a great persecution broke out against the
church…Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to
house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison’
(Acts 8:1,3). At the start of chapter 9 we read that Paul was still
intent on carrying out his threats (vv1–2). The reason for his
obsession seems clear: this new ‘sect’, which claimed that Jesus was
the Messiah and had been raised from the dead, was seen as a
direct threat to the faith of the Jewish forefathers. Put simply, Saul
was someone with a fanatical but misguided sense of purpose.
It seems, however, that Saul was not entirely comfortable with what