And I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.
By this way is meant the followers of Jesus, the believers in Christ as the Son of God, His disciples. Against them Paul directed a persecution unto the death, seeking them out, pursuing them, and delivering them to death, so that many lost their lives for belief in Christ. He bound them and delivered them into prisons, both men and women, haling them through the country and hunting them violently and fiercely from place to place.
His own hand did not do the murder, but he had a voice in the decisions condemning them to death, zealously sustained those decisions, prepared the way, and gave believers of the gospel into the hands that took their lives. For this work he went to and appealed to the highest religionists for authority. Those religionists were the men who had put Christ to death, and from the high priest he sought letters to Damascus to bring any believers bound to Jerusalem.
He acted as a proud Pharisee with a proud heart, as a religious zealot exceedingly mad against the truth concerning Jesus, zealous toward God, with great energy and zeal for an erroneous faith, firmly and conscientiously opposed to Christ and His followers. Believing a falsehood did not make him kind, tender, and compassionate. He honestly thought he was prosecuting a weak, ignorant, poor, fanatical, uncultured sect without special authority or intellectual and moral ability, while he himself was conscientiously bigoted, ignorant of the mission and work of Christ, wrapped and blinded in misunderstanding, deluded and deceived, ignorantly following under the banner of the prince of darkness while thinking he served God, and needing another kind of education.
This persecuting work was entirely different from his later preaching of Christ and Him crucified, which though he was not unlearned was a new gospel to him. On the journey to Damascus, at the gate of Damascus before Jesus revealed Himself to him, the vision of the Crucified One arrested and convicted him of sin, changed the whole current of his life and brought his proud heart to bow to the crucified Nazarene, making the persecutor a disciple and the teacher a learner, so that he abandoned his former ways and professed faith in Jesus. He acknowledges this former zeal in telling how he was converted, believing his changed life and account would convince his former associates to believe in Jesus as the Son of God. His personal testimony temporarily softened his hearers, and remembering his former prejudice later filled him with remorse and pity for the Jews who opposed him.
By this way is meant the followers of Jesus, the believers in Christ as the Son of God, His disciples. Against them Paul directed a persecution unto the death, seeking them out, pursuing them, and delivering them to death, so that many lost their lives for belief in Christ. He bound them and delivered them into prisons, both men and women, haling them through the country and hunting them violently and fiercely from place to place.
His own hand did not do the murder, but he had a voice in the decisions condemning them to death, zealously sustained those decisions, prepared the way, and gave believers of the gospel into the hands that took their lives. For this work he went to and appealed to the highest religionists for authority. Those religionists were the men who had put Christ to death, and from the high priest he sought letters to Damascus to bring any believers bound to Jerusalem.
He acted as a proud Pharisee with a proud heart, as a religious zealot exceedingly mad against the truth concerning Jesus, zealous toward God, with great energy and zeal for an erroneous faith, firmly and conscientiously opposed to Christ and His followers. Believing a falsehood did not make him kind, tender, and compassionate. He honestly thought he was prosecuting a weak, ignorant, poor, fanatical, uncultured sect without special authority or intellectual and moral ability, while he himself was conscientiously bigoted, ignorant of the mission and work of Christ, wrapped and blinded in misunderstanding, deluded and deceived, ignorantly following under the banner of the prince of darkness while thinking he served God, and needing another kind of education.
This persecuting work was entirely different from his later preaching of Christ and Him crucified, which though he was not unlearned was a new gospel to him. On the journey to Damascus, at the gate of Damascus before Jesus revealed Himself to him, the vision of the Crucified One arrested and convicted him of sin, changed the whole current of his life and brought his proud heart to bow to the crucified Nazarene, making the persecutor a disciple and the teacher a learner, so that he abandoned his former ways and professed faith in Jesus. He acknowledges this former zeal in telling how he was converted, believing his changed life and account would convince his former associates to believe in Jesus as the Son of God. His personal testimony temporarily softened his hearers, and remembering his former prejudice later filled him with remorse and pity for the Jews who opposed him.