Individual Independence
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Lord. The word of Inspiration is not Yea and Nay, but Yea and Amen
in Christ Jesus.
Our Saviour follows His lessons of instruction with a promise that
if two or three should be united in asking anything of God it should be
given them. Christ here shows that there must be union with others,
even in our desires for a given object. Great importance is attached
to the united prayer, the union of purpose. God hears the prayers
of individuals, but on this occasion Jesus was giving especial and
important lessons that were to have a special bearing upon His newly
organized church on the earth. There must be an agreement in the
things which they desire and for which they pray. It was not merely
the thoughts and exercises of one mind, liable to deception; but the
petition was to be the earnest desire of several minds centered on the
same point.
In the wonderful conversion of Paul we see the miraculous power
of God. A brightness above the glory of the midday sun shone round
about him. Jesus, whose name of all others he most hated and despised,
revealed Himself to Paul for the purpose of arresting his mad yet honest
career, that He might make this most unpromising instrument a chosen
vessel to bear the gospel to the Gentiles. He had conscientiously done
many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. In his zeal
he was a persevering, earnest persecutor of the church of Christ. His
convictions of his duty to exterminate this alarming doctrine, which
was prevailing everywhere, that Jesus was the Prince of life were deep
and strong.
Paul verily believed that faith in Jesus made of none effect the
law of God, the religious service of sacrificial offerings, and the rite
of circumcision, which had in all past ages received the full sanction
of God. But the miraculous revelation of Christ brings light into the
darkened chambers of his mind. The Jesus of Nazareth whom he is
arrayed against is indeed the Redeemer of the world.
Paul sees his mistaken zeal and cries out: “Lord, what wilt Thou
[430]
have me to do?” Jesus did not then and there tell him, as He might have
done, the work that He had assigned him. Paul must receive instruction
in the Christian faith and move understandingly. Christ sends him to
the very disciples whom he had been so bitterly persecuting, to learn
of them. The light of heavenly illumination had taken away Paul’s
eyesight; but Jesus, the Great Healer of the blind, does not restore it.