---

The moment had come for Saul. His conversion is a fact accomplished. He speaks to it by speaking its reliable evidences. Short, undoubtedly sharp, and as it now appears decisive, had the conflict within been, but it is now over. And the fight over finds out the two results - the soldier unwounded and the victory won. The moment had come also for Jesus. What preparations his had been! What work he had accomplished! What "sufferings" he had endured! What shame he had borne! And his mighty power and mightier love have now triumphed. He too has his victory, has taken, and without blood, his captive, and has bound that captive to him, a willing captive for ever and ever. That moment of double victory - of Jesus over the human heart, and of a man's better over his worse self by the grace of the Spirit - two victories, yet but one, is described by one of the best of our sacred hymn-writers, and could scarcely be better set forth -

"'Tis done! the great transaction's done!
I am my Lord's and he is mine!
He called me and I followed on,
Glad to confess the voice Divine." The question on Saul's lip (in the text) speaks, we say, the sure moment of his conversion. Much may prepare the way for that moment - thought and feeling, honest doubt and dishonest, fear and shame and strife, convictions stifled, purposes dishonored, resolutions broken, and perversest kicking against the pricks. But these are but the always mournful, often shameful, last show of sword-play of the wicked one, who knows no pity for the subject he is so soon to lose, and when he must leave his old abode would then most discredit it. And therefore in this question, may we not find in simplest, clearest outline, the suggestions of what are the real facts involved in conversion? They are -

I. THE DISTINCT RESIGNING OF TRUST IN SELF. That surrender will mean the surrender of:

1. Self-guidance.

2. Much more of self-will, the determination that self shall rule and shape all.

3. The works of self.

4. The loved ends that have only self or self supremely in view.

5. Must of all, the last remnant of an idea that self can procure its own salvation. For here is a man who possibly less leaned on fellow-creature than any other man who ever lived. But let him come to know Jesus, and his first question thereupon is the childlike, leaning, humble question, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?"

II. THE TAKING UP AND PLAIN PROFESSION OF UNDIVIDED ALLEGIANCE TO THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. The converted is not all at sea. That is what he once was, but not what he is now. He has not to seek and calculate between different and competing matters. That was once large part of his deep-seated unease and dissatisfaction, when "other lords many had dominion over him." But now he knows to whom his undivided allegiance belongs. That undivided allegiance takes him to Jesus Christ as:

1. Unrivaled and undisputed Teacher. He sees, knows, feels, that Jesus has won this place all his own - the one grand Revealer of the deepest things of the Spirit in man and of the state of man and of the future for man. And all other knowledge he feels to be necessarily subordinate to this.

2. Perfect Example. No sculptured model so perfect for example as the delineated character, the written life of Jesus, the impress that is made on the attentive observer of his work and word and manner. Here is the sculptor seen, indeed, and his sculpture worth the studying. And Christ's true convert will be this kind of true student of him also. He will well know the place at his feet, and his own right attitude as he sits there watching.

3. Master and Lord. He will feel that his strength and devotion belong to him. "What has he done for me and what for him shall I not do?"

4. One alone Savior. Whatever his trust or hope for his own future life and for his soul may once have been, he finds all now in "Jesus only." And if he were conscious of, careful for none at all before, now how earnestly he clings to Jesus, because of this - "Savior" his dearest name, "mighty to save" his dearest attraction! Oh, with what passionate adoration of gratitude and of love did Paul sing, and since him unnumbered millions of others have sung it, "My dear Redeemer and my Lord"! Thus Saul, in his first allegiance to Jesus, calls him "Lord," and asks him nothing else but as to what are his instructions: "What wilt thou have me to do?"

III. THE ALTERED PRACTICAL LIFE. Conversion means a changed heart, changed thoughts, changed feeling, a changed air and light. But it means nothing if it do not mean also a genuinely, practically changed career. No sublime enjoyment, no rich experience, no flight of sanctified imagination, no foretaste in saintly, heavenly communings with unseen realities, of "the joys" that are to come, shall satisfy Jesus, nor can satisfy Scriptures conception and representation of the convert of Christ. His life must be "Christ;" and he must await death to know his full "gain. His life must be a witness to Christ, albeit it be first strong witness against his old past self, and ever a quiet rebuke of those who live not after the same rule. The amazement and the solemn dread of those minutes of blindness and strongest excitement, when Saul lay on the earth, and was already summoned as it were to the bar of his Maker, did not prevent him, as a true convert and as type of a true convert, asking for his practical work. Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" In our ignorance, perhaps we should, a priori, have thought a more reasonable question, a more modest question, a more reverent question, might have been, "Lord, where wilt thou have me to go" - go hide myself? "Where wilt thou have me go," that I may shed bitter tears and do penance for the past. "Where wilt thou have me go," that I may pass through the fires of some purgatory, and be proved by some solemn ordeal? But no, the question cannot be mistaken, misreported, or altered. It is, "What wilt thou have me to do? And Jesus tells him, and does not say new, "This is the work of God, that you believe on me." He tells him, and it proves very shortly, how really he had "to do," to "spend and be spent," "to labor more abundantly than they all," and to prove his conversion by his changed life and its fruits. For vain, unspeakably vain, the profession of a changed heart and the hopes of Christ and of heaven, without the proof that lies in the changed life. - B.

---

---

Parallel Verses

KJV: 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.

WEB: But rise up, and enter into the city, and you will be told what you must do."