‘Death by Religion’… the dark secret of Saul of Tarsus exposed on the Road to Damascus?

What did Jesus mean when he appeared to and confronted Saul of Tarsus on way to Damascus and said to him….“It is hard for you to kick against the goads?”

The Resurrected Lord, whom Saul detested and whose influence Saul was intent on obliterating from the face of the earth, had arrested Saul with these significant words!

Jesus obviously asked him something that was extremely personal, possibly known only to God and inwardly by Saul himself.

Something to do with an obviously deep and painful inner conflict and a devastating turmoil going on in Saul’s soul and life! There is the school of thought that holds that the ‘goads’ that Saul was kicking against was not the Christian Church per se, the sect whom he personally despised and was viciously persecuting, but was in fact Saul’s own total disillusionment with his religion!

A judgemental religion based on the knowledge of good and evil, the doing of right and not wrong, and  on man’s own self efforts and religious performance within a system of rituals, sacrifices and law–keeping aimed at appeasing  a God  perceived as a Judge, vindictive and intolerant and of human weakness.

The nerve that Jesus touched inside the secret wound in his soul was that Saul secretly and inwardly realized and was acutely aware, that his fanatical pursuance of strict legalistic religious rules and rituals, and the upholding of outward observances, had produced in himself and only further deepened his feelings of spiritual impotence, futility and despair.

His best religious efforts had only served to further emphasize the sense of distance and his lack of intimacy and vital relationship with God.

Paul’s secret heart cry became…”O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ” Romans 7:24 This spiritual emptiness inside Saul produced a realization of the utter inadequacy and futility of his ‘works based’ religion. Saul, himself, by his own confession qualifying as  being righteous according to the Law, a Pharisee amongst Pharisee’s, epitomizing in his own person the ultimate human representation of this performance based religion, now had a severe predicament!

”O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Admitting this inner dilemma to himself or to his peers was impossible, it meant forfeiting all recognition and respect and losing all that during his lifetime had at least substituted  some meaning and purpose for the frustrating God-void in his life! This deep inner turmoil and dissatisfaction was ironically enough the very underbelly that motivated and guided his fanatical religious zeal in resisting, judging, condemning and his diabolical devotion to destroying ‘The Way’ that was based on Grace!

This ‘new and living’ ‘ Way’ of relating to God by faith alone, a method of worship and fellowship with God that was completely antithetical and counter productive to all that he understood.

Bring included into the favour of God based exclusively on the unmerited favour of a loving Heavenly Father plus nothing else but the Person of Jesus Christ!

Literally faith in Jesus Christ plus nothing else! In fact in a manner of speaking Grace plus Nothing!

Grace plus Nothing!

In Romans chapter seven Paul describes the wretchedness and misery in which Christ had found and rescued him on the Damascus road!

So, my friends, this is something like what has taken place with you. When Christ died he took that entire rule-dominated way of life down with him and left it in the tomb, leaving you free to “marry” a resurrection life and bear “offspring” of faith for God.

For as long as we lived that old way of life, doing whatever we felt we could get away with, sin was calling most of the shots as the old law code hemmed us in. And this made us all the more rebellious. In the end, all we had to show for it was miscarriages and stillbirths.

But now that we’re no longer shackled to that domineering mate of sin, and out from under all those oppressive regulations and fine print, we’re free to live a new life in the freedom of God. Rom 7 4-6

Don’t you remember how it was?  I do, perfectly well. The law code started out as an excellent piece of work. What happened, though, was that sin found a way to pervert the command into a temptation, making a piece of “forbidden fruit” out of it.

The law code, instead of being used to guide me, was used to seduce me. Without all the paraphernalia of the law code, sin looked pretty dull and lifeless, and I went along without paying much attention to it. But once sin got its hands on the law code and decked itself out in all that finery, I was fooled, and fell for it.

The very command that was supposed to guide me into life was cleverly used to trip me up, throwing me headlong.

So sin was plenty alive, and I was stone dead. Rom 7:8-11

I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. Rom 7:22-25

Let us be grateful to the Apostle Paul for allowing us to get a glimpse the inner sanctuary of his life, and for sharing with us the deepest secrets of the soul of a perfectly ‘religious’ man devotedly ‘working for God’.

Yet a desperate man, who, by all appearances was ‘righteous and blameless according to the Law’ yet inwardly depressed and trapped in frustration and futility.

Legalism with its inevitable view, that righteousness and the favour of a Judgemental God, is something that is only achieved and earned as a reward for man’s accumulated moral accomplishments, inevitably leads to the critical and mercenary attitude that had taken possession and manifested in Paul’s life!
When the Resurrected and Glorified Jewish Messiah apprehended the bloodthirsty Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus he had a licence to kill the Name of Jehovah God in the handwriting of the highest Religious Order and Institution, the High Priest of Isreal, clutched in his hand!

The central requirement of the true faith and ancient religion of his Hebrew forefathers, namely, of doing justly, and loving mercy, and walking humbly before their God, had been replaced by an insidious self –righteous pride, a false religious burden and a critical, judgemental and bitter spirit!