Luke's Story by Tim Lahaye 7 Jerry B. Jenkins Page B

purpose, so that he might bring them bound to the chief priests?’

    “But I inc="1em"> “Proving it how?”

    “From the Scriptures, which I knew almost by heart. And by performing miracles.”

    “You? You performed miracles?”

    Paul nodded.

    “Show me.”

    “Show you? The miracles that Jesus and His disciples performed are not for entertainment, Luke. They are done to show the power of God unto salvation. When men see them, they believe and come to repentance.”

    “Repentance?”

    “Of sin. I have come to believe that Jesus is who He claimed to be, the holy and righteous Son of God who came to seek and to save those who are lost. He bore their sins in His own body on the cross, sacrificing His blood and His life for the remission of sin.”

    Sin. The concept sounded so earthy, so crass, and yet it resonated with Luke. Sinful was how he felt about his pride, jealousy, conceit, lust, boastfulness. Sin was what his master Theophilus and he rued when they talked about trying to take control of their own passions and how wanting Stoicism was in this regard. They had never called it sin, of course, preferring other terms. Was it possible he could be forgiven, repent, and not be controlled by his own desires?

EIGHTEEN

    I’m intrigued by how your own people responded to this change in you, Paul. You had been making a name for yourself. Your defection must have been noisy.”

    “Oh, it was! In fact, after many days I became aware that the Jews were plotting to kill me. I naturally wanted to return to Jerusalem, though I feared I faced the same fate there. My hope was to persuade the disciples of Jesus that my conversion was real and to see if I could come alongside and help them in any way. But I dared not travel back out of Damascus the way I had come, for word was that the Jews were watching the gates day and night, and they would not be merely arresting or imprisoning me. The disciples of Damascus took me by night and let me down through the wall in a large basket, far from any gate, and I was able to steal away.”

    “So you got to Jerusalem?”

    “In truth for several years I lived in seclusion, studying, praying, and preparing myself for ministry. Partly I felt I needed to wean myself from my old ways and prepare myself for the new. But I confess that it was too dangerous for me to return to Jerusalem, once the leaders of the synagogue there had heard what had become of me. And I knew the disciples of Jesus would be wary of me also.

    “It was seven years after the resurrection of Jesus that I finally stole into Jerusalem. But my hopes were almost immediately dashed. I put out the word quietly that I wished to talk with the leaders of Jesus’ disciples. I had heard they were camped in an upper room at a private home, but messages came back to me that they had no reason to believe I was being sincere. So many of their number had suffered at my hands that they naturally feared this was a trick to infiltrate them.

    “My only ight="6" width="1em"> “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

    “Not that I have already attained it, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Luke, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things that are behind and reaching forward to those things that are ahead, I press toward the