True, he does not assume it at his conversion, but that is no reason why we should not believe that he assumes it because he is beginning to understand what it is that has happened to him at his conversion.
The fact that he changes his name as soon as he throws himself into public and active life, is but gathering into one picturesque symbol his great principle; 'If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away and all things are become new. Wheresoever there is a true faith, there is a new nature. Opinions may play upon the surface of a man's soul, like moonbeams on the silver sea, without raising its temperature one degree or sending a single beam into its dark caverns.
And that is the sort of Christianity that satisfies a great many of you -- a Christianity of opinion, a Christianity of surface creed, a Christianity which at the best slightly modifies some of our outward actions, but leaves the whole inner man unchanged.
Paul's Christianity meant a radical change in his whole nature. He went out of Jerusalem a persecutor, he came into Damascus a Christian. He rode out of Jerusalem hating, loathing, despising Jesus Christ; he groped his way into Damascus, broken, bruised, clinging contrite to His feet, and clasping His Cross as his only hope.
He went out proud, self-reliant, pluming himself upon his many prerogatives, his blue blood, his pure descent, his Rabbinical knowledge, his Pharisaical training, his external religious earnestness, his rigid morality; he rode into Damascus blind in the eyes, but seeing in the soul, and discerning that all these things were, as he says in his strong, vehement way, 'but dung' in comparison with his winning Christ.
And his theory of conversion, which he preaches in all his Epistles, is but the generalisation of his own personal experience, which suddenly, and in a moment, smote his old self to shivers, and raised up a new life, with new tastes, views, tendencies, aspirations, with new allegiance to a new King. Such changes, so sudden, so revolutionary, cannot be expected often to take place amongst people who, like us, have been listening to Christian teaching all our lives.
But unless there be this infusion of a new life into men's spirits which shall make them love and long and aspire after new things that once they did not care for, I know not why we should speak of them as being Christians at all. The transition is described by Paul as 'passing from death unto life.
A change which needs a new name must be a profound change. Has our Christianity revolutionised our nature in any such fashion? It is easy to be a Christian after the superficial fashion which passes muster with so many of us. A verbal acknowledgment of belief in truths which we never think about, a purely external performance of acts of worship, a subscription or two winged by no sympathy, and a fairly respectable life beneath the cloak of which all evil may burrow undetected -- make the Christianity of thousands.
Paul's Christianity transformed him; does yours transform you? If it does not, are you quite sure that it is Christianity at all? Then, again, we may take this change of name as being expressive of a life's work. Paul is a Roman name. He strips himself of his Jewish connections and relationships.
His fellow-countrymen who lived amongst the Gentiles were, as I said at the beginning of these remarks, in the habit of doing the same thing; but they carried both their names; their Jewish for use amongst their own people, their Gentile one for use amongst Gentiles. Paul seems to have altogether disused his old name of Saul. It was almost equivalent to seceding from Judaism. It is like the acts of the renegades whom one sometimes hears of, who are found by travellers, dressed in turban and flowing robes, and bearing some Turkish name, or like some English sailor, lost to home and kindred, who deserts his ship in an island of the Pacific, and drops his English name for a barbarous title, in token that he has given up his faith and his nationality.
So Paul, contemplating for his life's work preaching amongst the Gentiles, determines at the beginning, 'I lay down all of which I used to be proud. If my Jewish descent and privileges stand in my way I cast them aside. So we may, from the change of the Apostle's name, gather this lesson, never out of date, that the only way to help people is to go down to their level.
If you want to bless men, you must identify yourself with them. It is no use standing on an eminence above them, and patronisingly talking down to them. Even those who were not ethnically Roman were granted Roman names if they received citizenship. For Romans, the third name, called the cognomen, was the one most commonly used. The other two were used formally, like on birth certificates or other legal documents.
Having different names for different cultures was a somewhat common practice. And several examples can be found in non-biblical accounts from the time, such as Josephus. While Paul was in his early phase of ministry, it would have been more beneficial to use his Jewish name, Saul.
Even when he ministered in mainly Gentile Antioch, he joined a team of leaders that was almost all Jewish Acts , and so using his Jewish name would have been more natural.
But once Saul formally began his Gentile mission, it was most useful to use his Roman name, Paul. Is this claim, that Paul always had both names, some crazy new idea? All the Acts commentaries on my shelf agree with this evaluation see the excellent commentaries by Craig Keener, Darrell Bock, F. Bruce and I. Howard Marshall, for example.
And it is not a new claim at all. Although I am free in regard to all, I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible. To the Jews I became a Jew to win over Jews; to those under the law I became like one under the law — though I myself am not under the law — to win over those under the law.
To those outside the law I became like one outside the law. To the weak I became weak to win over the weak. I have become all things to all, to save at least some.
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