And it came to pass, that he tarried many days in Joppa - no doubt taking advantage of the opening for His Master's work which the miracle on Dorcas created, as well as imparting further instruction to the disciples.
With one Simon a tanner - a trade regarded by the Jews as half unclean, and consequently disreputable, from the contact with dead animals and blood which was connected with it. For this reason, even by other nations, it was usually carried on at some distance from towns; accordingly, Simon's house was "by the sea side" (Acts 10:6). Peter's lodging there shows him already to some extent above Jewish prejudice.
Remarks:
(1) It is greatly to be regretted that some able critics, even among the orthodox and believing-with the view, apparently, of conciliating the sceptical, and themselves perhaps suffering from a reigning scepticism-have shown a disposition to explain all the cases of conversion recorded in the New Testament by the one law of a gradual development of religious convictions and impressions, aided by outward events, and only divinely directed. Least of all can this case of Saul of Tarsus be so explained. No doubt his rare natural abilities and previous training at the feet of Gamaliel would go to rich account in his subsequent career; nor have we any reason to doubt that his views would undergo a progressive enlargement, and his personal Christianity ripen as he advanced. But the great turning-point was the manifestation of Christ to him on his way to Damascus. Up to that moment his feeling toward Jesus of Nazareth was that of unmixed hatred, and the express errand on which he journeyed to Damascus was to extirpate the faith of Him in that city.
But as soon as he knew that the voice which addressed him from the heavens was that of Jesus Himself, he yielded himself up in trembling but absolute subjection to His authority as the Christ of God. Now, he was His servant as heartily and wholly as until that moment he had been His enemy. As yet, indeed, he had no intelligent apprehension of the work of Christ-that, perhaps, was reserved for Ananias to impart to him-but the change then worked on him was as total, as instantaneous, as little the result of any previous thoughts and feelings, as any mental change can be conceived to be. In another place (at Matthew 13:44-46, Remark 1) we have adverted to the important difference between two great classes of conversion: the one illustrating that divine saying, "I am found of them that sought me not, I am made manifest unto them that asked not after me" (Isaiah 65:1; Romans 10:20) - and if ever there was such a case, surely this of Saul of Tarsus was it-the other fulfilling the promise, "Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13); and such was the case of Cornelius, in the next chapter.
(2) The identity of the risen and glorified Jesus with Him who was nailed to the accursed tree, receives delightful illustration from this scene on the way to Damascus. As it was for believing in the resurrection and glorification of the crucified Nazarene that Saul persecuted the Christians, so the vision of Him now in actual glory, and His own proclamation, that He was the Object against whom he was rushing, carried irresistible conviction to him that the Christians were in the right. Ever afterward did he refer to that vision as evidence that he "had seen Jesus Christ our Lord," and so had that indispensable qualification for the apostleship. If, then, all this was not an illusion, it follows that that same Jesus whom the Jews nailed to the cross is now, in His risen body, in the heavens.
(3) What unutterable consolation is in the bosom of that expostulation, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" Even on the well-known principle, that the dearer anyone is to another the more he identifies himself with him in feeling-accounting himself injured by the injuries done to his friend-this question shows that the strength of Christ's attachment to His disciples on earth had suffered no abatement by His removal to heaven, and by the new sphere of life on which He had now entered. But further, since few, if any, of those in whom He considered Himself persecuted by Saul were among the number of His disciples when on earth, it must have been their discipleship simply-no matter when or how brought about-that formed the strong bond of attachment to them on Christ's part, in virtue of which every injury inflicted upon them was, to His feeling, a violence dose to Himself. But there is more in it than this. His own explicit testimony, and that of His apostles, is, that whosoever believeth in Him is one life with Him-even as the head and members of one and the same body; because "we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones" (Ephesians 5:30). On this principle, as a wound inflicted on the extremities thrills upwards to the head, Jesus would have Saul to know that his persecuting arm beneath was felt by Himself above. And should not those who love their ascended Saviour take the full comfort of this wonderful truth? To believe the fact that Christ in heaven recognizes and realizes His oneness with believers on earth, is not enough. It is that He feels it; for so much is certainly implied in His most tender expostulation with this ruthless persecutor. And as there is nothing which Christians less vividly apprehend than this, so there is nothing more fitted to help them to it than to let this expostulation from the heavens with Saul of Tarsus sink deep into their hearts.
(4) That the men who journeyed with Saul to Damascus were themselves drawn partially within the blaze of this scene, and were employed to lead the converted persecutor blind into the city-while yet total strangers to the internal revolution which it effected in him-was befitting the wisdom that reigned in this wonderful dispensation. For thus were provided unexceptionable witnesses to the reality of the outward facts, and all the more so from their entire ignorance of the change which they had worked on the man whom they attended. But a deeper wisdom reigned in the subsequent steps. Since the conversion of Saul, at the very moment of it, amounted to nothing more than the absolute subjugation of his spirit to Jesus as the very Christ of God and the Lord of glory-without any explicit knowledge of the Gospel-and the teaching, if any, which he received from Ananias before his baptism would be brief and elementary, those memorable three days were permitted to intervene, during which he "was without sight, and neither did eat nor drink." We have already indicated the probable character and direction of the exercises which during those three days were to him instead of bodily sustenance-exercises which would stamp their impress on his whole future ministry, and perhaps his writings too (see exposition of Acts 9:9).
But their influence in so quickly ripening him into a powerful preacher of the Faith which he was on his way to Damascus to destroy, can hardly escape any thoughtful reader. Scarcely less remarkable were the steps which followed, by which this rare convert was to be prepared for his great work. The Lord had said to him, as he lay prostrate before Him, "Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do." But the three days are drawing to a close, and no director has appeared. At length one named Ananias, in vision, enters his chamber and puts his hand on him, that he may receive his sight; while Ananias himself, by another vision, is directed to go to Saul of Tarsus, whom he will find in such a street, at the house of such a man-and find, too, in the act of prayer-who also has seen in vision that very man, Ananias by name, who is to lay his hand on him for the recovery of his sight! At the sound of that dread name-Saul of Tarsus-Ananias is startled, because it is terror to all Christians; and the very errand on which he has now come has traveled to Damascus before him. But the Lord hushes his fears, assuring him that he is no longer the bloody persecutor, but to Him a chosen vessel for eminent service in the Gospel, for which he is to be as great a sufferer as he himself had made others to be. Not disobedient unto the heavenly vision, Ananias goes boldly to the man with the dreaded name, and delivers his commission. Immediately the film drops from the eyes of the new convert, he is baptized, receives sustenance, remains some days in private fellowship with the disciples, and straightway preaches Christ in the synagogues of Damascus, waxing mightier from day to day, and bearing down all opposition. Could it be that out of such unparalleled preparations there should not come forth a witness for Christ of signal power?
(5) That Ananias occupied no official position among the Christians of Damascus (as noted in the exposition of Acts 9:17) we may with tolerable certainty conclude, from his being described simply as "a certain disciple." Yet this was the man whom the great Head of the Church Himself sent to baptize the chiefest of the apostles and the most distinguished of all preachers, to be the instrument through whom his vision should return to him, and through whom the Holy Spirit should descend on him; nor were any other human hands laid upon him after those of this "certain disciple." Are we then to infer that any Christian may at any time baptize another on his profession of faith, and that no forms of human ordination should have place in the Church? That certainly would be in the teeth of our apostle's own instructions in his Pastoral Epistles, and in opposition to what appears to have been the regular practice in the apostolic churches; but thus much may safely be inferred from the case of Saul, that where no constituted Church of Christ exists, and official instrumentality is not to be had, the essential ordinances of the visible Church may be performed by those whom the providence or secret direction of God may point out as fittest for doing it, and the work of the ministry discharged by those whom the gifts of the Holy Spirit have qualified for the exercise of it.
(6) What was Saul's object in withdrawing to Arabia, in the midst (as we judge) of his first labours at Damascus as a preacher of Christ, and in returning to it, after a lapse of probably more than two years, to continue his preaching labours? Not to enter on a new sphere of evangelistic labour-as some think. For why, if he was to return to Damascus, should he have left it at all, at a time when his work was telling so powerfully there upon the Jewish mind? and why, if preaching had been his object, does he make no allusion to it to the Galatians, when, in mentioning to them his visit to Arabia, it would certainly have been to his purpose to tell them that he had gone there after leaving Damascus, preaching his own Gospel, without any communication with the other apostles? Instead of this, he simply says he went into Arabia and returned to Damascus (Galatians 1:17). That he never preached in Arabia none will say; but the object of this lengthened visit appears to us to have been the enjoyment of a period of retirement and repose.
Perhaps the excitement attending the change in his character and occupation demanded this, and his contendings with the Jews as to the sense of the Old Testament required deeper study and more prayerful reflection than he could possibly have given it since the light of heaven had broken in upon his darkened understanding. And if the prophets, after giving forth their Messianic predictions, had themselves to "search what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories which were to follow them" (1 Peter 1:11) - we may well conceive how it should be indispensable to the maturing of this great apostle's gift for opening the Messianic sense of the Old Testament Scriptures, that he should have to spend a lengthened period in searching them, "comparing spiritual things with spiritual," as he expressly tells us that he did (1 Corinthians 2:13). Certain it is, that in such researches, as in everything else, "the soul of the diligent shall be made fat" (Proverbs 13:4).
(7) What internal evidence of truth does the account of Saul's first visit to Jerusalem, after his conversion, bear to the unsophisticated reader. Him object was (as himself afterward writes to the Galatians, Galatians 1:18) to see Peter. But he obtrudes not himself and his commission direct upon that apostle; he simply "assays to join himself to the disciples," as one of their number. But the sight of him awakens their fears, and their recollection of his dreadful proceedings in time past begets the suspicion that he may only be putting on the cloak of discipleship for the purpose of identifying and seizing them. Here it is that Barnabas steps in, and in beautiful consistency with that "goodness" elsewhere ascribed to him (Acts 11:24), and which shone through all his proceedings, he brings him not to the disciples at large, but to the apostles-whose satisfaction would speedily dispel the fears of the rest-informing them of the circumstances of his conversion, and of his subsequent labours at Damascus in the cause of the Gospel. This was enough for the apostles, and through them for all; and now he is constantly with them, coming in and going out testifying boldly of Christ, particularly to the Hellenistic class of Jews to which himself belonged, until his life was in danger from them, and then his friends hurried him off to Caesarea and thence to his native Tarsus. Are these the marks of an artfully dressed-up narrative, as the critics of the Tubingen school allege?-pretending to a historical insight of which, in its deeper and only worthy sense, they are signally destitute.
(8) The rest or peace which the Church at this time had from Jewish persecution (the hands of the Jews being then full enough of their own endangered interests), and the consequent increase of the disciples and prosperity of the Christian cause, has had its parallels once and again in later times. How often, for example, did it happen at the time of the great Reformation, that when the cause of Protestantism was in imminent danger from the Popish princes of the empire-and from the emperor himself, who was ever ready to league with the Pope to crush it-the danger that all were in, of being overwhelmed by the victorious and ever-advancing Turks, procured the reformers and reforming princes a blessed breathing time, during which their cause acquired both growth and consolidation. And thus it is that oftentimes the Lord, not by holding their enemies' hands, but by simply giving them other work to do, effectually interposes in behalf of His people-thus exemplifying, as in numberless other ways, that ancient law of His kingdom - "The Lord will judge His people, and repent Himself for His servants, when he seeth that their strength is gone" (Deuteronomy 32:36).