Chosen to Suffer for the Name

Acts 9:15-16

But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part One)

The Lord is calling Saul for a particular task. The time has come for the message about the one true God, the Jewish good news of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to be told to the wider world, the world of pagans, Gentiles, people who know nothing and care less about this God. And the person to do this task, to spearhead the work of getting the message out to those outside the law, must be the one who most clearly, of all others of his generation, had been the most keen to stamp the message out. . . . [W]hen you want to reach the pagan world, the person to do it will be a hard-line, fanatical, ultra-nationalist, super-orthodox Pharisaic Jew. And then they say God doesn’t have a sense of humor (145).

Aaron Orendorff

The very instrument chosen to “carry [the] name” of Jesus is the same instrument chosen to suffer for its sake. In fact, the call, it appears, is one in the same. To bear the name of Jesus—as all followers of Christ do—means being remade into his likeness. This likeness, as Paul is soon to discover, means more than just moral conformity and spiritual satisfaction. It means “becoming like him in his death” in order to likewise share in his resurrection (Phil. 3:10):

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you (2 Co. 4:8-12).