Arthur and Paul

by Bishop Paul Barnett

Australia’s most famous convert is the Eternity Man, Arthur Stace, and the Bible’s most famous convert is Paul of Tarsus. ‘Damascus Road’ is international code for conversion of any kind, a radical change of worldview. A musical, and now an opera has been written about Stace, and many documentaries as well. Eternity is a name for Sydney and even for various products, even for a brand of facial tissues.

I was an office junior in the city when the identity of the nocturnal Eternity chalk writer was still unknown and a matter of daily newspaper speculation. Who was this phantom chalk writer? The Herald ultimately revealed the mystery: it was Arthur Stace, a tiny man who wore a suit and tie and who rose before dawn in all weathers for his daily campaign. The enigmatic Eternity word kept appearing, though it was now matched by an equally elegant piece of yellow copperplate writing by a local wit – Maternity.

Eternity has become a kind of symbol for Sydney, but few understand that it was ‘eternity’ in alcoholic hell from which Stace had been delivered that was the inspiration for his relentless passion to bring this message to a hell-bound city. Stace was converted from alcoholism and petty crime through local preachers including John Ridley and R.B.S. Hammond and was barely literate. Paul of Tarsus, was from a wealthy family, was highly intelligent and an accomplished biblical scholar and was converted from Pharisaism and murderous religious zealotry.

A striking contrast: Arthur Stace and Paul the Pharisee.

A New Creation

Let me concentrate on Paul and his conversion and its implication for us.

Paul summed it all up in one short statement (2 Cor 5:17): If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation.

There are only six words here:

Here is a splendid text for reflection. It invites us to explain in turn, ‘if any’ and ‘in Christ’ and ‘new creation.’

“If any” highlights the mercy of God, rich and free for even the lowest of the low, as the grievously deceived persecutor Paul had been. “In Christ” is shorthand for belonging by commitment of faith and repentance to the crucified but risen Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. “New creation” picks up Isaiah’s prophecy of the new heavens and the new earth and indicates that the person ‘in Christ’ now has the Spirit of the living God and is being transformed from what he or she had been into what he or she will be when God’s ultimate new creation is finally revealed. In a word: redemption.

Yet however did Paul manage to convince fellow Jews about his message of the Messiah crucified – crucified by the Gentiles – the Gentiles their Messiah was expected to defeat? How, for example, did Paul manage to persuade synagogue-president Crispus (Acts 18:8) and other Jews in Corinth about this astonishing, contrarian message?

Paul’s personal witness

I think Paul then did something else when he went to the synagogues with his ‘Christ crucified’ message. As best as I can understand it, Paul introduced his own story of conversion as the living demonstration that in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus the Christ that God had not been defeated but had actually triumphed.

Paul divided his life-story into two parts, ‘before’ and ‘after’. Before Damascus Road was his ‘former life in Judaism’ (Gal 1:13), first in Tarsus as the son of a deeply conservative Diaspora family (Phil 3:5a) and then in Jerusalem as an eminent younger Pharisaic scholar and hate filled persecuting zealot (Phil 3:5b-6). At Damascus Road, as he said, he was “seized by Christ” (Phil 3:12) whereupon subsequently he became a love-controlled (2 Cor 5:14) preacher to others of the Jesus he had previously ‘persecuted’ (Acts 9:4-5; Gal 1:13, 23), proclaiming him to all people – to the Jews first but also to the Greeks (Rom 1:16; 2:9).

The converted Paul who stood before Jews as the preacher of Christ crucified and risen as the fulfilment of the Scriptures was himself the living proof of the resurrection of the crucified Christ; and that God had not been defeated but had powerfully triumphed. The living evidence was the conversion of the Pharisee and persecutor who stood before them.

The New Covenant representatively fulfilled in Paul

Here we must recall that Paul never denied his Jewishness. To the end he was a Hebrew, an Israelite, a son of Abraham (2 Cor 11:22; Rom 9:1-5; 11:1). We think of conversion as from (say) Hinduism to Islam, out of one religion into another. Paul, however, lived and died as a Jew.

Paul’s conversion was not denominational but rather deeply personal, changing his very heart and his behaviour from the inside out. He lived no longer to and for himself but for the one who died for him and was raised alive for him (2 Cor 5:15). Love, not hate, now lay at the centre; Christ, not the law; the Spirit-freedom, not ritual.

My observation, then, is that Paul saw his conversion as an act of God that made him the living demonstration that in Christ crucified God had not been defeated nor had failed but had in fact had triumphed. Furthermore, Paul so wrote about his own conversion as a reflection of the fact that it was as true for other believers as it was for Paul himself.

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