Daily Devotionals

Devotional: August 21st

SAUL AND PAUL

Saul, who is also called Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost. - Acts 13:9

Paul is a Roman name. He strips himself of his Jewish connections and relationships. His fellow-countrymen who lived amongst the Gentiles were in the habit of doing the same thing; but they carried both their names - their Jewish for use amongst their own people, their Gentile one for use amongst Gentiles. Paul seems to have altogether disused his old name of Saul. It was almost equivalent to seceding from Judaism. It is like the acts of the renegades one sometimes hears of, who are found by some travellers dressed in turban and flowing robes, and bearing some Turkish name; or like some English sailor, lost to home and kindred, who deserts his ship in some island of the Pacific, and drops his English name for some barbarous title, in token that he has given up his faith and his nationality.

The spirit which led the Apostle to change the name of Saul, with its memories of the royal dignity which, in the person of its great wearer, had honoured his tribe, for a Roman name is the same which he formally announces as a deliberately adopted law of his life: "To them that are without law I became as without law, .... that I might gain them that are without law I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."

It is the very inmost principle of the Gospel. The principle that influenced the servant in this comparatively little matter is the principle that influenced the Master in the mightiest of all events. " He who was in the form of God, and thought not equality with God a thing to be eagerly snatched at, made Himself of no reputation, and was found in fashion as a man and in form as a servant, and became obedient unto death." "Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood. He Himself likewise took part of the same "; and the mystery of incarnation was transacted, because when the Divine would help men, the only way by which the infinite love could reach this end was that the Divine should become man; identifying Himself with those whom He would help, and stooping to the level of the humanity that He would lift.

Sympathy is the parent of all wise counsel, because it is the parent of all true understanding of our brethren’s wants; sympathy is the only thing to which people will listen; sympathy is the only disposition correspondent to the message that we Christians are entrusted with. For a Christian man to carry the Gospel of infinite condescension to his fellows in a spirit other than that of the Master, and the Gospel which He speaks, is an anomaly and a contradiction.

You remember the old story of some heroic missionary or other that wanted to carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ amongst captives, and as there was no other way of reaching them, he let himself be sold for a slave, and put out his hands to have the manacles fastened upon them. It is the law for all Christian service: become like them if you will help them. "To the weak as weak, all things to all men, that we might by all means save some." And, my brother, there was no obligation on Paul’s part to do Christian work which does not lie on you.

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