I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness. —Acts 26:16
Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus was no passing dream. It was a vision that brought with it clear and emphatic instructions. Jesus told Paul that from now on Paul’s whole life was to be mastered: it was to be subdued, to have no end, aim, or purpose except Christ’s. “I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant.”
All of us, when we are born again, have visions of what Jesus wants us to be. The big thing we must learn is not to be disobedient to the vision; we must not say that it can’t be attained. We think it can’t be attained because our faith doesn’t have the proper foundations. It isn’t enough to believe that God has redeemed the world, or that the Holy Spirit can make all that Jesus did come alive in us. We must have the basis of a personal relationship with him. Paul wasn’t given a script or a doctrine to proclaim; he was brought into a vivid, personal, overmastering relationship with Jesus Christ, and on this basis he became a witness.
We too must have as the foundation of our faith a personal relationship with Jesus. This is the only way our vision will be attained, and the only way we’ll succeed in obeying it. Verse 16 is immensely commanding: “to appoint you as a servant and as a witness.” There is nothing there apart from a personal relationship.
Paul was devoted to a person, not a cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ’s. He saw nothing else; he lived for nothing else. “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
Wisdom from Oswald
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.”
The Shadow of an Agony
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