And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. (6) And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.
Nothing surely can be more simply and yet more beautifully related, than this wonderful action. Though it is a work wholly supernatural, in the Lord himself speaking from heaven to a poor sinner fallen to the earth, with the splendor of the glory which shone upon him; yet, through grace, we are enabled to enter into a proper apprehension of the whole scene. The Lord though overwhelming both the body and mind of Saul with shame and fear, yet gave him strength to put forth the earnest question of enquiry, and to ask who it was that thus condescended to speak to him. No doubt, the same Almighty power which shone without, shone no less within the mind of Saul, that when he said, w ho art thou Lord? his heart told him that it must be Jesus. He humbly and tremblingly put the question, but dreaded the answer. And when the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest! what must have been the terrors of his soul? For although the Lord spake no doubt with tenderness, (for Jesus cannot speak to his own, but with tenderness as Jesus), yet the self-reproaches, and self-condemnation, rushing like a torrent through every chamber of Saul's mind, could not but carry all before it, and must have left him a wreck of distress before the Lord. The only astonishment is, (and indeed can be ascribed to no other cause, but grace supporting him), that he had not given up the ghost through anguish of spirit.
I admire the very blessed manner, and I think that the Reader will admire it also), in which the Lord Jesus spake to Saul, in calling himself Jesus. Had he said, as he might have said, I am the God of thy Fathers, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob; Saul might have pleaded, that his persecution of the Church of Christ was out of zeal for the Lord's glory. But when from this Shechinah, Jesus himself spake to him as Abraham's God, and called himself Jesus, the weapons of all warfare fell at once from his hands and all self-defense was taken away. And no doubt he lay trembling on the earth, expecting that the next words of the Lord would be to sentence him to hell.
Reader! pause, admire, and adore, the wonders of grace! For the same as was manifested here to Saul, is, and must be manifested, more or less, to every child of God. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. And when a child of God is recovered from the Adam - state of a fallen nature, into the glorious liberty of the sons of God; then to look back and review the wonderful mercy shewn him in all the properties of it, opens such a prospect, as cannot but melt down the soul to the very dust before God. The freeness of it, the seasonableness of it, the greatness of it, the unexpected, unlooked for, yea, unthought of, nature of it, and its everlasting, unchanging property; these till the soul with a joy unspeakable and full of glory! Oh! the wonders of distinguishing grace! That when sinners deserve wrath, they find mercy. And when in themselves they are hastening to hell, the Lord is bringing them in Christ to heaven!