But Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name." But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel."
Go on a thought experiment with me. You show up to work on Monday, and your boss calls you into their office. You walk in, and sitting there is your childhood bully who made your middle school years just awful. Your boss says, “Say hello to our new hire!” You, obviously, take your boss aside and tell them all about what this person did to you, and how they treated your friends. But your boss says, “That was the past, and this is now. They are completely new.” It’s kind of hard to believe something like that, isn’t it?
That’s exactly what happened when Saul was called into the service of the Kingdom by God, and this is (of course to a much less serious degree in many ways!) exactly the response that Ananias had when God told him about welcoming Saul, soon to be Paul, into the Church. It can be hard to accept the redemption offered by God because we can’t see with the eyes with which God sees. And not only can it be hard to accept that redemption in others, and may God soften all our hearts to forgive those who may have hurt us when they turn their lives to Christ, but it can sometimes be the hardest to accept that redemption for ourselves.
One of the most beautiful things about the Gospel of Christ is that, no matter what your past is, when you have repented before God and accepted Christ as Lord of your life that’s all that God sees. He casts away your sins and failings and raises you up with Christ as a new creation and, I love typing this out, whatever God has made new is new indeed! What an amazing gift! When God has called you into new life, you leave the old life behind and step into God’s new purpose for you.
Saul was the worst of the worst as far as the Jews were concerned as we meet him in the book of Acts. He was a murderer, a persecutor, a hypocrite, and so much more. God didn’t care. He looked at Saul and said, “Yep. That’s my guy.” I, too, by the standards of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount am a murderer, a blasphemer, a hypocrite, and so much more.
But God looked at me. God looked at you. Others said, “Huh? Are you sure, God? They did this and that, they’re the worst!” Maybe we’re the ones saying that louder than anyone else about ourselves. God doesn’t care. God saw us and said, “Yep. That’s them, they’re mine.”
It’s our past, but it’s God’s choice. And, praise God, friend – He wants to choose us each and every time.
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