Paul’s question on the road to Damascus, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ (cf. Acts 9:1ff.), is a good introduction to this great saint. What was the driving force of Paul’s life, a key to his thought, if you like.
The Acts of the Apostles introduces Paul as a zealous persecutor of the Church. We should not mistake his participation in this first persecution of the infant Church for malicious sadism. Rather it represented a restless, driven search for the truth. That truth, as Paul had first understood it, had been represented by Pharisaic Judaism. His was a nature that would go to any lengths to defend his own perception of the truth. Hence, the persecution of a Church that he saw as a threat to that truth. The encounter with the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus represented a turning point crystallized in the question that was to be the work of his life: ‘Who are you, Lord?’

The title ‘Lord’ was not, for Paul, a superficial designation taken from Old Testament and imperial usage. Paul, with penetrating clarity, came to understand the deeper workings of our human nature. A sinful nature cherishes the illusion of independence, considering itself ultimately beyond any external constraint, any ‘Lordship’ that might lay claim to its life. Paul came to understand that such freedom was an illusion. Sin introduces many lords to our lives. Whatever has the power to dominate our thinking, to dictate our actions, to become a disordered enthusiasm, is, in reality if not in name, the Lord of our lives. We cannot overcome what sin has made us (cf. Rom. 7:15ff.). Ultimately we must pray for the grace to confess what we have become and identify the one Lord that has the power to save us from sin. It is for this reason that Paul’s question on the road to Damascus breaks open the life of every Christian. We are called to acknowledge the superficiality of a sinful freedom, confessing that sin has a greater power than our good intentions. Only then can we, with Paul, ask the question: ‘Who are you, Lord?’
It would be foolish to pretend that there is any single key that unlocks the thought of Paul’s letters to the various churches in the New Testament. Each letter surrenders its meaning only as we take the time to understand the particular pastoral concerns that prompted Paul’s attention. From a pastoral point of view it is encouraging to realize that Paul’s greatest insight into the reality of his Lord came from addressing rather than avoiding the problems presented by the communities he had established. At the danger of oversimplification, it might be said that a single theme runs throughout his letters: Jesus is Lord, the only one with the power to save us. No thought of ours, however enlightened, however firmly held, can take the place that belongs to Christ alone.
This principle was clearly proclaimed in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. The early Church had been formed from a Jewish background. It was not surprising, therefore, that many elements had become uneasy when it had seemed that the gospel was displacing the laws sacred to Judaism. The question of the law, and the part played by Paul, was resolved at the Council of Jerusalem as recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Acts. Only in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians do we gauge the depth of Paul’s feeling. The question of the part played by the law ran far deeper than the ‘conservative’ sensibilities of Judaism as opposed to the more ‘liberated’ attitudes of gentile converts. It was a matter of fundamental principle. Our observance of a law, however worthy, has no power to save. This belongs to Christ alone, who, in his death and resurrection, has been constituted as Lord, raised with the power to save us out of sin. ‘I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose’ (Gal. 2:21). Paul understood what human pride so frequently chooses to ignore. Too easily we elevate our own perceptions, our own insight and practice, to the status of unquestioned law. In so doing we unwittingly displace Christ as the true Lord of life.
Paul expressed this in deeply personal terms in his letter to the Philippians. From his own past he condemned the misplaced zeal, the presumption that by fulfilment of the law he could win for himself peace with God (cf. Phil. 3). After describing his own credentials he recognized and dismissed the presumption that pride sets before us all. No longer would he presume that his attempts at virtuous living could, of themselves, demand a place with God. Only Christ, proclaimed as Lord in the power of his resurrection (cf. Rom. 1:1-5), has the power that raises us to life with the Father. While Paul’s past deeds had been impressive, they had no power to save. Paul clearly recognized this:
Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection… (Phil. 3:7-10)
These words describe the inner dynamic of Paul’s conversion. They are a sure guide to our own journey in faith. Human nature, struggling for survival, is always tempted to fall back on solutions of its own making. We turn either to well-tried traditions from the past or devise new approaches for ourselves. Without realizing it we stand in danger of allowing what we do (or fail to do) to become the dominating Lord of our lives. Paul understood the futility of such arrogance. Unless we surrender our lives to Christ as Lord, all that we do is, in his words, ‘so much rubbish’.
The dangers that Paul associated with an exaggerated emphasis on the law he also condemned in the excesses of new-found freedom. Throughout his letters to the Corinthians Paul engaged those who had made freedom, rather than Christ, the Lord of their lives. In the early chapters of the First Letter he rebuked the factions that had divided the community. Paul saw beyond these clashes to their underlying sin. When our own loyalties become a source of division and the measure of all things, Christ is no longer Lord.
The list could be continued. When a competitive concentration on the gifts of the Spirit leads to disruption within the community, Christ is no longer Lord (1 Cor. 12). When self-indulgence leads to sexual immorality (1 Cor. 5) Christ is no longer Lord. Throughout Paul’s writings we find a consistent thread. Christ alone has set us free to become the children of God (cf. Rom. 8). When we reject him as the Lord of our lives, we choose a different kind of slavery, a different Lord. ‘For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh’ (Gal. 5:13).
Paul gives us a penetrating insight into the influences that form and mould our lives. In his own life he had known the domination of pride seeking its own perfection. He had been brought to the limits of human endeavour, realizing that sin would always be the master, the Lord of an unredeemed life. Only when he answered his own question – ‘Who are you, Lord?’ – did he find lasting peace and joy.

For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38-39)