We all understand the need for conversion. People who travel from one country to another often have to convert their currency; American dollars aren’t always accepted in places like Fiji or Chile or Sri Lanka. You can wave around your money all you want, but it’s just useless paper to people who use different currency.

Or think about how often we have to convert measurements. Whether it’s in carpentry or cooking, something calls for 10 millimeters of this or 1 cup of that and we need to know how many inches or tablespoons that is. So we make the conversion into something we can use. We can’t leave it the way it is, because it isn’t in harmony with the tools we have at hand. We need everything to be lined up just right; to be in sync with one another.

Now, that’s not a perfect analogy, and if you give it much thought at all it begins to break down almost immediately. But I believe you can use it to understand the basic premise of what it means to change one thing into another, because we also use the word conversion when we speak about a change in our standing before God. Conversion is, as the dictionary defines it, “an event that results in a transformation.” We speak of people being converted to the faith—and this is a proper word to use because there is something fundamental that needs to be changed.

In essence, the Bible teaches us that God is holy and righteous and that we have rebelled against Him, rejecting His Lordship and rebuking His Word. Thus, we are not as we should be before God. We are His enemies. If we are to have any hope of being made right with Him, or of spending eternity with Him in heaven, then a conversion has to take place. God does not have to change; He never changes. Instead, we need to be changed—a transformation must take place.

In biblical terms, this conversion involves two key elements: a turning from sin and a turning to God. As we turn away from sin (repentance) we turn toward God (faith). That’s what we’re going to examine today, using the conversion of a man named Saul to show us what a genuine conversion involves. The point we want to make is clear: a changed life is only possible through the direct intervention and power of Christ.

We’re going to look at how Scripture details the conversion of Saul. This morning, our goal is to understand the facts about conversion: why do we need it, how does it happen, and how do we know if we’ve been converted. Next week, we’ll continue Saul’s conversion story by thinking about the fruit of genuine conversion, or the outward evidence that reveals the authenticity of the inward change.

So, our task today is to understand the facts about conversion, and we’ll begin by exploring why conversion is necessary. We see that:

1. We need to be converted because we each care more for satisfying ourselves instead of glorifying God. [9:1-2]

Saul thought he was doing God a favor. He was a devout Jew from the tribe of Benjamin, a firm believer in the One True God of Israel. He was a Pharisee, dedicating his life to observance of the Jewish law. In his own words, Saul said he was “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee… as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” [Philippians 3:5-6] Not only that, he said he was “advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.” [Galatians 1:14]

So we have here a man who is intensely dedicated to his religion, who sincerely believes that he is serving God and following Him. Saul believes that his attacks on the church are pleasing to God, just like his fellow Pharisees believed that killing Jesus was in the best interest of God’s people.

Jesus warned his apostles that things like this would happen. He said “the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me.” [John 16:2-4]

Do you remember how we were first introduced to Saul in the pages of Scripture? It was at the death of Stephen. Stephen had just proclaimed Jesus as the Christ and condemned the Pharisees for killing God’s Messiah, so they picked up rocks and stoned him to death. As Luke records for us:

"Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul approved of his execution. And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria...Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison."
[Acts 7:58-8:3]

Saul is ravaging the church. He is breathing threats against those who follow Jesus, hunting them down and dragging them off to prison. He is approving of their deaths, thinking that he is helping God by removing all of these foolish followers of Christ. Saul is so utterly convinced that he is right that he is acting in whatever way seems best to him. He is allowing his own personal convictions (not the truth) to guide him.    

That’s the heart of Saul’s problem: he was going his way, doing what seemed right to him. He’s a sinner. And that is the very same heart of our problem as well. We need to be converted because we are all sinners; we are all enemies of Christ.

Scripture teaches us that we are made for God’s glory. So, when we fail to glorify God, we are failing to do the very thing for which we were created.

Now, before we dismiss that as some kind of abstract theological concept, we need to stop and appreciate exactly what is going on here. God made us, and He designed us to do something, and then we refused to do it and rejected His rule over us. If you or I were God, I believe we would be very tempted to just scrap the entire project, as it were. To wipe the slate clean, eradicate humanity, evaporate the cosmos, and maybe try again. I doubt we’d stick with the original plan…and I seriously doubt that we would remain committed to it in the face of continued opposition and rebellion over the course of thousands of years. When we buy something, or make something, and it doesn’t do what it is supposed to do, we usually just throw it away.

Thankfully, mercifully, that’s not what God does. We’ll talk more about His reaction to our rebellion in a moment, but for now we want to remain focused on our condition apart from Christ. We are seeking to satisfy ourselves instead of glorifying God. This is troubling on two fronts:

Firstly, it goes against the very nature of who God is. He is the rightful King and sovereign of the universe. He is holy, a word that means set apart, so by definition we see that God is unique. There is none like Him, there is none beside Him. He is the only One worthy of honor, glory, and praise. This is why God can say that He is a “jealous God” (see Exodus 34:14) when it comes to worship—because it all rightfully belongs to Him, and to Him alone! When we refuse to glorify Him, we are actively robbing God of that which is His by divine right. This is a very, very serious crime.

Secondly, when we seek to satisfy ourselves instead of glorifying God, we are going against the very nature of who we are. God made us for His glory, so when we fail to glorify Him, we are not doing the very thing we were created to do. All the questions we hear floating around about the meaning of life or the purpose of our existence can be summed up in one sentence: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever” (from the Westminster Shorter Catechism). Anything that falls short of that robs us of the fulfillment that comes from doing what we were made to do.

This, remember, is the realization that Saul came to later in his life. When thinking back, listen to how he described himself:  “formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” [1 Timothy 1:13-15]

How could Saul see himself as perfectly right in what he was doing—and then later see the very same actions as proof that he is the foremost of sinners? Because his original desire was to satisfy himself, and now he sees things from the perspective of glorifying God. What he thought would please God was actually only a self-deceptive lie designed to make himself feel good. Only later, after learning the truth, did he see the ignorance and unbelief that characterized his life.

Take an honest inventory of your life this morning. What is your priority? When you examine the inner workings of your heart, do you find any concern for the glory of God? How much thought do you give to pleasing Him instead of only seeking to please yourself? This isn’t just a rhetorical question; it demands an answer.

Saul was seeking to satisfy himself—just as we all are prone to do. We need to be converted from that way of living; we need to be changed into people who care more about glorifying God than about pleasing ourselves. This is only possible through the direct intervention and power of Christ. Which leads us to see that:

2. We can be converted because God intervenes in our lives, redeeming and restoring us in His image through Christ. [9:3-9]

By now we have seen that we are all enemies of God in our sinfulness. It’s not just that we violate some incidental laws or miss one or two questions on a test—our sin is a direct assault against the identity of God and a complete disregard for the meaning of our existence. It is a vile, horrible thing, and we are all guilty of it.

This is why Saul (who would later be called Paul) could write the following statement with absolute confidence: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” [Romans 3:10-12] 

None of us seek God. Saul certainly wasn’t seeking Christ; at least not to worship Him. In that way, he was much like King Herod, who we remember from the story of Christ’s birth. He told the wise men from the east that he wanted to find the Christ child, so that he could worship him—but his real intention was to kill this man whom he perceived as a threat to his throne. And that is how people who are still living in the wickedness of their own fleshly desires ‘seek’ Christ: only in an attempt to discredit Him or to destroy Him. That is what you and I do, that is what Herod did, and that is what Saul was doing. Saul was an enemy of God, a ravager of God’s people, and an absolute hater of Christ.

Yet Christ came to Saul.

Can we truly understand the depth and power of those words? Is it possible for our limited, finite minds to grasp the reality that God—the very One who we had offended, the very One with the right and might to condemn us for all eternity—is the One who instead takes action on our behalf and saves us from our sinfulness.

We see this in a very dramatic way in the live of Saul. Here he is, on his way to round up more of Christ’s disciples, reveling in his own self-righteousness, when a blinding light knocks him off his horse. And then Christ speaks to him!

Now, if this were the Hollywood version of events, we would expect Christ to say something like “Now it’s time for you to pay, Saul! You’ve been torturing My people and thinking you’re unstoppable but now you’re going to learn who’s really in charge here. You like roughing people up, do you? Well, get ready for a taste of your own medicine!” Then maybe Saul is inflicted with horrible pain or disfigured permanently, or maybe even the ground splits open and Saul falls headfirst into hell. That’s how we might write the story, but God has something different in mind for this man.

And we have to be thankful for this, because the honest truth is that Saul did deserve that swift, terrible judgment we just imagined—and so do we. If God had not intervened on our behalf and simply allowed us to live out the natural course of our lives, our eternal destination would be hell. This would not be unfair or an injustice on God’s part, but the exact proper judgment against the sin of Adam’s race.

But that is not what Jesus says to Saul. He doesn’t come with chariots of wrath or thunderbolts of judgment, but with the power of conversion. The same Word that spoke the universe into existence, that keeps both the planets in orbit and breath in our lungs, that bled and died and rose again, now speaks to Saul and changes him in the way that only Christ can.

What gives Christ the ability to change a person’s life? He tells us plainly that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given” [Matthew 28:18] to Him. He is the Son of Man who approaches the Ancient of Days and is given an everlasting dominion and peoples and nations that will not fade away (see Daniel 7).

See, when God made Adam, He intended for Adam to rule as a mini-King, if you will, to have a dominion over this earth as an appointed representative of God. But Adam lost that dominion. He gave it up when He sinned against God, and the entire creation has been subject to groaning and death ever since.

So Christ appears as the ‘second Adam’ (see Romans 5) and does what Adam did not: obeys God and images Him perfectly. He humbly submits Himself to the will of Father, even to the point of death on a cross. Jesus, the one who knew no sin, was made to be sin for us. In other words, although He was not under the curse of sin and death, He took both of those things in our place.

On the cross, Christ takes the sin of His people upon Himself as if it were His own. Since He has no sin of His own to atone for, God accepts Christ’s sacrifice of His own blood in our place. And then God pours out His full wrath and anger and judgment against our sin—but since Christ has taken that sin on Himself, God’s wrath is poured out on His own Son. Jesus takes the full wrath of God, paying the wages of sin. In all of this, He remains perfectly obedient to the Father’s will.

So Christ never abdicates His dominion and, as a result, He is raised from the dead (since death had no power over Him) and He is given a dominion and rule that will never end. No one will ever remove Christ from the throne or challenge His Lordship of the cosmos. And there is coming a day when He will return and restore all things to their rightful place in submission to the rule of God.

The message of the Gospel is that, while we are enemies of God, He has made it possible for us to be made right with Him. What Christ did is completely sufficient to pay the sin-debt we owe God. Not only that, but when we place our faith in Christ, we receive credit for His perfectly obedient life. We can stand before God and be seen as innocent—our debt has been paid by Christ and His righteousness given to us.

We are converted when, by the power of Christ, we finally see our sin for what it truly is and turn away from it. As we turn from it (this is what the Bible calls repentance) we turn toward Christ, now seeing Him as He truly is, placing our personal trust (this is what the Bible calls faith) in Him alone. That is conversion. And the only way conversion is possible is through the direct intervention and power of Christ.

Christ may not intervene in your life in a dramatic way like He did with Saul, but He will intervene in your life. If you are saved, you should be able to look back and see the hand of Christ at work in your life. Maybe it was one distinct moment when the truth was suddenly revealed to you, as if a veil were quickly lifted from your face and you could see for the first time. Or maybe it’s a series of moments throughout your life that—from this side of your conversion—you can trace the working of Christ through as He led you to place your faith in Him.

Let me put it this way: If someone asks you how you know that you are saved, and your first answer is because you walked an aisle or said a certain prayer, then you aren’t thinking about your salvation biblically. Of course, I’m not suggesting that if you walked an aisle or repeated a prayer that you aren’t saved, but what I do want to make clear is that walking an aisle or repeating a prayer does not save you. Christ saves you. Our confidence and assurance in salvation rests on Him, not on anything we have done. Remember, it is God who takes the initiative on our behalf. We are not seeking Him; instead, He comes to us.

Think of this: all Jesus did for you was before you were born. His voluntary leaving of heaven; His birth, life, and ministry; His brutal murder on a cross; His glorious resurrection—all happened thousands of years before you came on the scene. It is not you who seeks God—He always takes the initiative.

You, who were content to live out your days in discord, strife, and the pursuit of every wicked lust your heart could fathom—and would have eternally done so in unrighteous rage against God—were spared that fate by the very hand of the One you have spurned. You cared nothing for God, nothing for His Word, nothing for His Son, and yet He graciously snatched you from everlasting hell and redeemed you.

Later in his life, Saul (who became Paul) would sum up the gospel message in his letter to the church in the city of Ephesus. It’s a lengthy passage, but it is worthy of our full attention, so we’ll read the whole thing together:

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." [Ephesians 2:1-10]

That is the truth of the Gospel. We were dead, but God made us alive through Christ. We are saved as a result of His grace, through faith, not of our own works.

Is that what you believe? Or do you still think that you are good enough for God to overlook your indiscretions? Do you secretly count on the fact that you aren’t as ‘bad as others’ to earn you favor before God? It won’t. It can’t. Only Jesus saves.

Friends, if you do not know Christ in this way, if you have not trusted in Him alone as the Author and Finisher of your salvation, then your faith is in the wrong thing. Whether it’s in your own goodness, or your religious résumé, or in the sincerity of your belief doesn’t matter—if your faith isn’t in Christ, it cannot and will not save you.

The reason for this is because, at its core, the Gospel is not about you. It’s not about me. It’s not even mainly about our need for it. No, the Gospel is about Christ. It is about who He is and what He has done, and how He demonstrates God’s love for us and bears God’s wrath as our Passover Lamb. Our faith must be in Christ alone.

But notice the last part of that passage from Ephesians 2 as well. God saves us to something. Scripture reveals that He has created good works for His people—long before they were converted—that they are now to be doing. The good works don’t save God’s people (they come after the conversion) but they are part of the convert’s new life in Christ. That is why we see, finally, that:

3. Those who have been converted by God humbly submit to His sovereign will and authority. [9:10-19]

We’ve been talking about conversion—repenting from sin and putting faith in Christ—and how it is only possible through the direct intervention of power of Christ. Because Saul was converted by this power, he is now described by God as a “chosen instrument” [Acts 9:15], implying a vessel set apart for a specific use.

In this case, Saul was God’s choice to take the Gospel to the Gentile world. As John Calvin once pointed out, “the man who previously tried to suppress the name of Christ was now entrusted with carrying it.” [Acts, 155] While our specific ‘works’ will differ from Saul’s, the fact is that God has already prepared things which He intends for us to do.

Perhaps it will help to phrase it this way: In the same way that we were created to glorify God, we are converted to glorify God as well. This includes submitting to the works He has prepared for us to do—not in order to earn or keep our salvation, but because we have been saved by God. In Saul’s case, these works were going to involve a lifetime full of personal hardship and trials. God makes that clear from the outset, when He tells Ananias: “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” [Acts 9:16]

You know, it’s interesting to note that Saul lost his eyesight as a result of his encounter with Jesus. And yet, in a much more profound way, Saul was finally seeing—truly seeing—for the very first time in his life. Sitting in the darkness of the house in Damascus for three entire days, Saul of Tarsus had seen his sin for what it was and seen Christ for who He was, and even in total blindness, had a sight beyond sight. He had been converted, in the same way that any of us are: by the power of Christ.

But how do we know that Saul was converted—that he truly repented of his sin and placed his faith in Christ? Well, we immediately see evidence of it in his life. He turned from his sinful ways of persecuting and attacking Christ and turned to the Lordship of Christ in his life. In other words, he did what God told him to do. Faith and repentance are both evident in his life, and while we’ll see more of the fruit of conversion next week, there is enough evidence of it here in this passage to speak to the genuineness of Saul’s conversion: we see that Saul is praying, that he is fasting, and that he is waiting for the Lord’s direction, completely submitting himself to the Lord Jesus Christ. He has been humbled by Christ. He is no longer persecuting Christ; he is no longer primarily concerned with himself.

We also see the role of a man named Ananias. We must point out that he, too, demonstrates the marks of genuine conversion by obeying God in what must have been a hard thing to understand. Here was Saul, the most notorious enemy of the Church, in Ananias’ own city, suddenly blind and in a very vulnerable position. Yet Ananias doesn’t seek to take matters into his own hands, nor does he pass judgment on Saul for his previous actions. Nor does he refuse God’s instruction. Instead, he obeys God and goes to the house and lays his hands on his new brother in Christ.

And isn’t it amazing that Ananias calls him “Brother Saul”?  This is a strange thing to do if you think that the man you are talking to still wants to kill you. But God told Ananias that Saul was His chosen instrument, and that was good enough for Ananias. Ananias didn’t really understand what was happening, or why God would deal with His enemy in such a way, but he saw that God’s sovereign power had changed Saul’s life.

Truth be told, Ananias would not have been alone in his skepticism. Saul would not have been what we would call a ‘likely candidate’ for conversion. If you had asked the members of that early church to think of people who might come to Christ, it’s doubtful that any of them would have mentioned Saul. If you had asked them to go and share their faith with Saul one-on-one, many would have been reluctant to do so for fear of persecution or death. Saul did not give the appearance of being open to the Gospel or even having an inkling of his need for it. And yet God was at work in Saul’s life; the invisible, inevitable power of Christ was already beginning to draw Saul to Himself, even while Saul was persecuting Him, coming to a head on the road to Damascus.

Perhaps you are not a ‘likely candidate’ for conversion either. Maybe you have been rebelling against God for so long that few people believe there is any hope for you—maybe you even believe that yourself.

Or maybe you’ve been brought up in church your entire life and people have assumed that you have already been converted—maybe you’ve assumed that yourself.

In either case, perhaps today is when Christ’s power intervenes in your life in a way that it never has before and compels you to see your sin for what it really is and to see Christ for who He really is. To truly see.

We can sum it up this way: “We are accountable to the God who created us. We have sinned against that God and will be judged. But God has acted in Jesus Christ to save us, and we take hold of that salvation by repentance from sin and faith in Jesus.” [Greg Gilbert, What is the Gospel?, 32]

If this truth is being revealed to you right now in a way it never has been before; if you sense God’s Spirit drawing you to Himself in this moment, repent of your sin and place your faith in Him. Only Jesus saves. 

All Scripture quotations are taken from the English Standard Version.