Acts 7:58 And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul.

We spoke yesterday about the cloaks representing the appearance of righteousness. I see irony in this verse because laying their cloaks at Saul’s feet looks like them laying their trust in the way Saul walked. Saul became Paul and became the leading voice of following Christ. Paul wrote the bulk of the epistles in the New Testament.

I can think of no one who has made more drastic change in beliefs than Saul of Tarsus. He persecuted the early church and was on the road to Damascus to put more Christians to death when he met Jesus. He ended up dying himself for the faith he preached.

My dad was a heavy smoker for decades. When he quit he became the loudest advocate for quitting. He didn’t want smokers in the house because their cloaks stunk of smoke. You couldn’t see it, but the stink was obvious to him. Irony? Not really, his attitude did not lead anyone that I knew to quit smoking.

Zealots preach to people who already agree with them. They change no ones minds. Saul was a zealot, Paul was an apostle. Zealots follow their own passions, apostles proclaim the passions of the One who sent them. Our conversion will not move people if we approach them with the same zeal we had as sinners. Their response will be justified; “You’re the same old guy with a new passion.”

The new creation reflects the creator not the corpse.

Matthew 9:16 No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse.

Acts 7:57-58 Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul.

The Greek word used here for clothes would be the outer garment, the cloak, mantle or tunic. At the time of Acts 7 this indicated ones station in life. You could tell a Priest from a Rabbi from a Sadducees from a Pharisees from a tax collector by the clothes they wore. Appearances were everything back then. Not like today.

The subtle act of removing their cloaks while stoning Stephen to death was to remove any appearance of guilt for causing Stephen’s death. They could keep up appearances because there was no blood on their cloaks. The inner garments representing the inner man, now that was a different matter. When they finished and put back on their “robes of righteousness” it became a man-made covering of their sin.

Mark 9:3 And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them.

Here in Mark 9 raiment is the same Greek word, himation. A fuller is one who cleans wool. The implication here is that the righteousness of Jesus is not achievable by human effort. But that doesn’t stop us from putting on appearances, does it? In spite of our efforts, the undergarments are still bloody. Nothing will ever change that. So what are we to do?

Philippians 3:9 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:

Walk by faith not by appearances.