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.