Testifying to King Agrippa about his conversion to Christianity, the apostle Paul included an interesting phrase Jesus had spoken to him on the road to Damascus. Formerly known as Saul, this Jew was known for his zeal for the law and his intense hatred of Christians. We first hear of Saul watching the stoning of Stephen, giving hearty approval (Acts 8:1). When confronted by Jesus, he was on his way to hunt down more accursed Christians and to bring them bound to Jerusalem for judgment.
His Jesus encounter radically altered his path, as he heard “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” And to this question Jesus added the curious statement, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”
A goad was a pointed stick used in Bible times to persuade a large animal to go in a desired direction. (Think of it as a low-tech cattle prod.) A sharp poke was usually all it took for an ox to get the hint. But occasionally an ornery animal might rebelliously kick back at the pointy object, and in so doing, inflict more pain upon itself!
Jesus‘s interesting analogy suggests two things. The most obvious—Saul was hurting himself by persecuting and killing Christians and resisting God’s grace. The second, more subtle, idea here is that Saul had been doing this for a while. While his Damascus road experience was the most dramatic to date, it wasn’t the first time he had encountered Jesus. His presence and goodness were manifested in the faces of the Christians he attacked and interrogated. Stephen, full of grace and power, had a face that glowed like the face of an angel (Acts 6:15). Saul may have even seen Stephen or other believers performing signs and wonders firsthand. Poke, poke.
Instead of marveling at the courage and boldness of these believers in the face of threats and death, Saul resisted grace and responded with fury (Acts 9:1). Perhaps memories would come back to him in the night of families he’d thrown in prison, who, like Stephen, called out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” He must have noticed how different these Christians were from his law-keeping Jewish friends. They had something he didn’t—a completely different nature— and this had to have created some nagging doubts. But Saul had stopped his ears and kicked back against every revelation of the Messiah, even things he may have recalled from the Scriptures that supported “The Way”. This was one strong-willed guy! Yet this time he responded to Jesus and did a 180-degree turn, becoming Paul, the apostle of grace.
Sometimes God wants to steer us in a particular direction but we act as headstrong as Saul. In His infinite patience, God gives us hint after hint— perhaps through a message we hear, something we read in the Bible, a dream, an internal desire or longing, an unusual circumstance, or via seemingly random but significant words spoken in the midst of an ordinary conversation. God had an amazing call on Saul’s life, but he kicked against the goads that were designed to usher him into a much better place. Let’s submit to God, and when we hear His voice through whatever means, let’s be wise enough to understand His will and respond with glad hearts knowing that His intentions toward us are always good and kind (see James 4:7, Hebrews 3:15, Ephesians 1:5 and 5:17).
An inciteful point, that the Holy Spirit had been reaching out to Paul well before his Damascus experience. Sometimes it takes something “dramatic” to get our attention. But it’s also a reminder to keep sharing the gospel with friends and neighbors who have rejected it – it may “goad” them in the right direction over time!