Saul before Damascus
We first meet Saul at the death of Stephen, whom Paul later called the Lord's “martyr” (Acts 22:20, KJV). The men who stoned Stephen left their coats with a young man.
“And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul.”
Years later Paul remembered that he was “standing by, and consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him” (Acts 22:20, KJV). When persecution broke out in Jerusalem, he led it.
“As for Saul, he made havock of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison.”
He was not a cynic. He was sincere, gifted and sure he was serving God. In a letter to the Philippians he described the man he had been.
“Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.”
He lists “Concerning zeal, persecuting the church” (Philippians 3:6, KJV) among his credentials. That is what makes the next scene so startling.
The road to Damascus
Saul set out for Damascus with letters from the high priest, so that if he found any followers of “this way” (Acts 9:2, KJV) he could bring them bound to Jerusalem. Near the city, everything changed.
“And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.”
Two things in Jesus' words stand out. He did not speak of Saul persecuting His followers. He asked, “why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4, KJV). To strike at His people was to strike at Him. And “to kick against the pricks” (Acts 9:5, KJV) pictures an ox kicking against the pointed stick its driver uses to steer it: Saul had been fighting the One he could not escape.
Blinded, Saul was led into Damascus, where he spent three days without sight, neither eating nor drinking (Acts 9:9). Then the Lord sent a disciple named Ananias to him. Ananias protested that this man had come to arrest believers, and the Lord answered:
“But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel:”
Ananias went, laid his hands on him and greeted his old enemy as “Brother Saul” (Acts 9:17, KJV). “And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized” (Acts 9:18, KJV). Straight away Saul began preaching in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God (Acts 9:20). Paul tells this story twice more in Acts, in chapters 22 and 26.
The church did not trust him at first. In Jerusalem the disciples were afraid of him until Barnabas vouched for him (Acts 9:26-27). In Galatians Paul adds that he went into Arabia and back to Damascus, and only after three years went up to Jerusalem (Galatians 1:17-18). Later Barnabas fetched him from Tarsus to help lead the church in Antioch, where “the disciples were called Christians first” (Acts 11:26, KJV). From Antioch his great journeys began.
In Faithero you can read Acts 9 in the King James Version or the Douay-Rheims and have it read aloud, verse by verse.
What were Paul's missionary journeys?
Acts follows Paul on three journeys from Antioch, and then on a voyage to Rome as a prisoner. Most of the places are in today's Turkey and Greece.
| Journey | Where to read | Places |
|---|---|---|
| First journey | Acts 13-14 | With Barnabas: Antioch in Syria, Cyprus (Salamis and Paphos), Perga, Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, then back through the same towns and by sea from Attalia to Antioch |
| Second journey | Acts 15:36-18:22 | With Silas, and later Timothy: Syria and Cilicia, Derbe and Lystra, Phrygia and Galatia, Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth (a year and a half), Ephesus, Caesarea, then back to Antioch |
| Third journey | Acts 18:23-21:17 | Galatia and Phrygia, Ephesus (about three years), Macedonia and Greece, Troas, Miletus, Tyre, Caesarea, and finally Jerusalem, where he was arrested |
| Voyage to Rome | Acts 27-28 | As a prisoner: from Caesarea by way of Sidon and Myra to Crete, a shipwreck on Malta (Melita in the KJV), then Syracuse, Rhegium, Puteoli and Rome |
Acts 18:11 gives Paul's stay in Corinth as a year and six months, and Acts 20:31 his time in Ephesus as three years.
The letters Paul wrote
Thirteen letters in the New Testament bear Paul's name. Nine are addressed to churches and four to individuals.
To churches: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
To individuals: 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon.
Several were written from prison: he calls himself “the prisoner of Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 3:1, KJV) and ends Colossians with “Remember my bonds” (Colossians 4:18, KJV). He often wrote through a secretary; one of them, Tertius, adds his own greeting in Romans 16:22, and Paul signed off in his own hand (2 Thessalonians 3:17). Peter's second letter already speaks of “all his epistles” (2 Peter 3:16, KJV) and admits that they contain “some things hard to be understood” (2 Peter 3:16, KJV).
Did Paul write all thirteen? The church received all thirteen as Paul's from early times; Jerome, for example, lists every one. Many modern scholars accept seven as certainly his (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon) and think some of the other six were written by his followers in his name. Others defend Paul's authorship of all thirteen. The debate is real, and Christians on both sides read all thirteen as Scripture.
What about Hebrews? Hebrews does not name its author. The church historian Eusebius counted “Paul's fourteen epistles”, Hebrews included, but noted that some rejected it because they did not think Paul wrote it (Church History 3.3). Origen concluded, “But who wrote the epistle, in truth, God knows” (quoted by Eusebius, Church History 6.25). Today it is widely believed to be the work of another early Christian writer.
Why is Paul called the apostle to the Gentiles?
Gentiles are people who are not Jewish. From the start, the Lord told Ananias that Paul would carry His name before the Gentiles (Acts 9:15), and Paul took up the title himself:
“For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office:”
That is why he is called the apostle of the Gentiles, or the apostle to the Gentiles. The leaders of the church in Jerusalem recognized the same calling. Paul says they saw “that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter” (Galatians 2:7, KJV). Peter was sent mainly to Jews, Paul mainly to Gentiles.
That did not mean Paul turned his back on his own people. In town after town he went to the synagogue first, and he wrote that the gospel is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16, KJV). When a synagogue rejected the message, he and Barnabas said, “lo, we turn to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46, KJV). The great struggle of his ministry, at the Jerusalem council of Acts 15 and in his letter to the Galatians, was for Gentile believers to be welcomed as full members of God's people through faith in Christ, without first being circumcised and keeping the law of Moses (Acts 15:1-11).
The people around Paul
Paul rarely worked alone. Barnabas brought him into the church's life and traveled with him first. Silas and Timothy shared his second journey, and Luke, “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14, KJV), was with him in his imprisonment. In 2 Timothy Paul writes, “Only Luke is with me” (2 Timothy 4:11, KJV).
Women were among his closest coworkers. Lydia, a seller of purple, opened her home in Philippi to Paul and the believers (Acts 16:14-15, 40). Priscilla and her husband Aquila risked their lives for him (Romans 16:3-4). And he commends Phoebe, spelled Phebe in the KJV, as “a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea” (Romans 16:1, KJV). Read more about them in women in the Bible.
How did Paul die?
The Bible does not tell us. Acts closes with Paul in Rome, living under guard and still preaching.
“And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.”
In 2 Timothy he writes as a man who expects to die soon.
“For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”
For what happened next we rely on early Christian writers. A letter from the church in Rome to the church in Corinth, known as 1 Clement, says Paul “suffered martyrdom under the prefects” (1 Clement 5). Tertullian wrote that at Rome Paul “wins his crown in a death like John's” (Prescription Against Heretics 36). Since he names the apostle John separately in the next breath, he means John the Baptist, who was beheaded (Matthew 14:10). The historian Eusebius records “that Paul was beheaded in Rome itself” under Nero (Church History 2.25), and Jerome adds that he was buried on the Ostian Way, the road to Ostia (Lives of Illustrious Men 5).
When did it happen? Nero ruled from AD 54 to 68. Britannica dates Paul's death to about AD 62 to 64, perhaps among the Christians Nero had killed after the great fire of Rome in 64. Jerome placed it in Nero's fourteenth year, about AD 67 to 68. Either way, Paul had long been ready: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21, KJV).
Frequently asked
Why did Saul become Paul?
He did not change his name when he was converted, and the Bible never says God renamed him. Acts keeps calling him Saul after the road to Damascus (Acts 9:17; 13:2). Then it simply notes, "Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,)" (Acts 13:9, KJV), and from there on calls him Paul. Saul was his Jewish name, shared with Israel's first king, who also came from the tribe of Benjamin (1 Samuel 9:1-2). Paul was a Roman name: the same chapter mentions a Roman governor called Sergius Paulus (Acts 13:7). The switch comes just as his mission to the Gentiles begins.
How many books did Paul write?
Thirteen New Testament letters bear Paul's name: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon. That is 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament. Some early Christians counted 14 by adding Hebrews, but Hebrews does not name its author. Scholars also debate whether Paul himself wrote all thirteen; many accept seven as certainly his.
Was Paul one of the twelve apostles?
No. The Twelve were chosen during Jesus' ministry, and Matthias took the place of Judas (Acts 1:26). Paul was called later by the risen Christ, and he described himself as "the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God" (1 Corinthians 15:9, KJV).
Where was Paul from?
Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, now in Turkey. Paul called himself "a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city" (Acts 21:39, KJV). He was brought up in Jerusalem, where he studied under the teacher Gamaliel (Acts 22:3).
Was Paul married?
The Bible never mentions a wife, and when he wrote 1 Corinthians he was unmarried: "I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I" (1 Corinthians 7:8, KJV). In the verse before, he adds that every person has his own gift from God, "one after this manner, and another after that" (1 Corinthians 7:7, KJV).
What was Paul's thorn in the flesh?
Paul does not say. He calls it "a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me" (2 Corinthians 12:7, KJV) and says he asked the Lord three times to take it away. Readers have suggested many things, from an illness to constant opposition, but the text does not tell us. What it does give is God's answer: "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9, KJV).
Grace for the worst of sinners
Paul never forgot who he had been. He wrote, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15, KJV). He did not say he used to be the worst. He said he is. And in the next breath he explains why God chose him: to show how patient Christ is, as a pattern for everyone who would believe after him (1 Timothy 1:16).
That is the hope of Paul's story for us. If the man who dragged believers to prison could become the apostle who carried the gospel across the world, no one is beyond the reach of grace. “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10, KJV). The good news he preached is set out simply in what is the gospel?
Paul in one paragraph
Paul was born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, now in Turkey: a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin and a Roman citizen from birth (Acts 22:3, 22:28; Philippians 3:5). He was brought up in Jerusalem under the teacher Gamaliel, became a strict Pharisee, and earned his living as a tentmaker (Acts 18:3). Known at first by his Jewish name, Saul, he hunted down the followers of Jesus until the risen Christ met him on the road to Damascus, about AD 33. He spent the next thirty years or so preaching Jesus as Messiah and Lord, above all to Gentiles, on journeys around the eastern Mediterranean. He wrote letters to churches and to his coworkers, was arrested in Jerusalem, appealed to Caesar, and was taken to Rome as a prisoner. Christian tradition says he died there as a martyr in the 60s AD.