Witness

“Paul and Agrippa” by Vasily Ivanovich Surikov, 1875

Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you. (Acts 22:1 KJV)

Here is Paul, having been taken prisoner by soldiers after a misunderstanding at the temple, making his defense.  Jews thought he had taken gentiles into the temple and defiled it.  He had not.

In his defense, Paul gives his conversion testimony.  He tells who he was and what happened to him to change his life.  To turn his life around.  To repent, to change direction.

He tells of his meeting with Christ.  He speaks of it again in Chapter 26, before Agrippa and Festus, admitting before the court:

I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. (Acts 26:9 KJV)

He did them on purpose – do we?  He did them based on what he believed to be right – do we?
Or do we ignore the two basics of God’s word.  The ones that have remained consistent since the brotherhood of Cain and Abel (which Cain destroyed):

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40 KJV)

We can’t seem to get those right in our own families, can we?  Oh, don’t give me that answer!  I know you love your children.  Maybe you love your spouse (but do you continually lift them up?), but how about the in-laws?  Oh, you tell me they aren’t lovable?  Please point out to me where anything, Bible or not, tells us it’s OK to be selective, that we may love this one but not that.

The closest I’ve found is in Jude where we’re told to save, not hating the person, but the garment stained by sin – love the sinner but hate the sin:

And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. (Jude 1:23 KJV)

Paul was a faithful witness.  From the time he told Ananias what happened on that road to Damascus, he continued to tell others on all of his travels.  He wrote to churches, exhorting them to follow the commandments of our Lord.  He changed so completely that those who knew him before held no question about that change.

How about us?  Do the people around hear our witness?  Has Christ made a sufficient change in our life that we speak of it?  Or has even the trips to the Lord’s house become so routine that people there don’t hear words from us?

These are questions I need to answer.  Do you?