And he knew, also, that the apostles had gone out after Jesus’ crucifixion and preached that He had been resurrected from the dead! and was ascended to heaven and seated at the right hand of God. Saul believed that to be the heresy of ALL heresies! He firmly believed that it was his duty before GOD to put that heresy to silence! And so, that’s what he was doing.

“Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” Jesus said. Saul was trying to stop this “heresy” that Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father, and that He is the Savior of the world, the long expected Messiah of the Jews.

But then, Saul said, “Who are You, Lord?”

And the Lord identified Himself. “'I am Jesus Whom you persecutest….”

Immediately, Saul had a change of heart there. He came to be a believer. What he believed in the past as heresy he has now come to accept. He believed that Jesus Christ really was the Son of God! as He claimed to be. He came to believe now that Jesus died for the sins of the world, and he believed that He had been resurrected, and that He lives, because he has seen Him, and he has spoken with Him. What…greater…evidence would you need that THIS Man was the Son of God?

And, so, Saul said to the Lord, “…what will You have me to do?”

And the Lord said, “Go into the city, and it will be told you what you must do.” He went into the city, and Ananias, a disciple of the Lord, was sent to Saul to tell him what he must do to be saved.

But WHY would the Lord save this man. He declared himself “chief among the sinners,” [1 Timothy 1:15: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”]’s GRACE was made manifest.

What is grace? It comes from the same root word from which we get a number of English words. Some of them are: charity, charm, charisma, beauty; and even the word “thanks” comes from the same root as this word, “grace”.

So many people misunderstand it. They don’t understand what exactly is meant by the word “grace”. But this person, Paul, knew about the grace of God, and he knew about it first hand! He said, “By the grace of God I am what I am,” [1 Corinthians 15:10]. He came from being “chief among sinners” to being God’s apostle to the Gentile people.

I want us to think about the grace of God on our lives today, and how it’s demonstrated and manifested in so many different ways. We usually think of it, and it’s proper to think of it, as “a favor bestowed upon us unworthily.” We are unworthy of the demonstration of God’s grace, or His mercy, on us. And Paul, indeed, was one who could write that. “ For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: ⁹Not of works, lest any man should boast,” [Ephesians 2:8-9]. He knew about that as well.

Let me suggest, first of all, then, that as we think about the grace of God, our immediate attention is focused on THE GRACE OF GOD IN OUR SALVATION. That’s what we usually think about—the demonstration of the grace of God in the apostle Paul. We think of him first of all, as the “unmerited, unearned favor” of God was demonstrated in Paul’s life so that he could become a Christian. And, indeed, that’s what it was.

First of all, we like to think of the grace of God demonstrated toward us in our lives so that we can be saved. Indeed, it IS Good News of the grace of God, the Gospel which we preach. Indeed, God’s grace reaches out to each of us to salvation, just like it did to Saul of Tarsus. We’re all sinners. None of us is worthy of salvation. That’s true, all the way from the beginning—all the way back to the days of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel—God’s grace is demonstrated to us. God, in His pre-creation plan—.

You see, I believe that the creation, the heavens and the earth, are the product of God’s creative POWER, and the product of God’s creative INCENTIVES, and the product of God’s wisdom and foresight and ingenuity—His genius in planning the whole thing. We look upon the creation around us and say, “This is God’s creation.” “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” [Genesis 1:1]. That’s true.

And, then, He focuses. In Genesis 1:2, He leaves all the rest of it, and from Genesis, chapter 1, verse 2, He’s talking about God’s creation of the earth, and what He does on the earth. That’s what the rest of the Bible is about. It isn’t about the planets out there, but it’s about God’s preparing the earth for life on it. So, He creates life, and the necessities for the existence of life on this planet. Why He chose this particular planet, I don’t know. But, He chose the earth for life, and, then He created human life as the climax of all of His creative power, and put us here to be His companions and to glorify HIM in the way we live. He loved the human race; He came down in the cool of the day and walked and talked with the man and the woman in the beautiful Garden of Eden. How long that went on, I do not know. I just understand that, that’s what He did, which signifies to us that there was a close relationship there.