TRANSFORMING HOPE

Paul’s life and mission were transformed by his confrontation with Jesus on the road to Damascus. His story was narrated by Luke in Acts chapter 9, then re-told twice more in Acts as Paul shared his testimony with courts and rulers. Snippets of his story also appeared from time to time in his letters. But his experience with Jesus was more than that one-off encounter. He had been committed beyond the point of violence to defending the faith as he had understood it. He had been driven by fear of this strange story of Jesus and the threat it posed to his faith and his nation. Perhaps he also claimed that he was seeking to correct those who had been deceived and bring them back to the true faith. After his dramatic conversion, he spent years re-studying the Hebrew scriptures, finding and fitting Jesus into the Pharisee’s training that had been such a part of his former life. Beyond the glory Moses had encountered and even reflected at the beginnings of the Israelite nation, Paul had now discovered a greater glory.

While the glory reflected in Moses was temporary and even then had to be veiled to avoid alarming the people he was leading, Paul showed that a greater revelation of God’s glory had been unveiled in Jesus. He argued, “Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away” (2 Corinthians 3:16). For Paul—and for all believers in Jesus—this is transformative. We “are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory” (2 Corinthians 3:17). And this transformational experience is the foundation for hope, which is, in turn, the foundation for boldness. Paul’s encounter with Jesus changed the way he believed, thought, and lived in the world. And because of that, it also changed the world around him and everyone he met.