Acts 26:18

Acts 26:18. To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light. The beautiful words of Isaiah's prophecy of the coming Messiah and His peculiar work, seem to ring in our ears as we read these words of the glorified Redeemer. Read now in the light which the history of eighteen centuries of the struggles of Christianity flings over the old Hebrew prophecies, one marvels at the strange blindness which came over the Jewish people when their Messiah visited them, and which induced them to hinder in every possible way His blessed work among men. The two great features in Jesus Christ's life and work which shocked His own people and drove them into fierce rebellion, were (1) In His life, He presented, the true image of a suffering Messiah. (2) In His work, begun by Himself and faithfully carried on by His disciples, He showed that the kingdom of the future was not intended to be confined to the old chosen race, nor to the old Holy Land, but that the chosen race of the future was to be made up of all mankind, and the Holy Land of the future was to consist of all the countries of the world. And this is exactly what their own prophets, in clear language, all foretold. The Isaiah prophecy, which is here so faithfully reproduced in the form of a charge to Saul from the glorified Jesus, will be found in Isaiah 42:6-16, where the Messiah is especially mentioned as given for a light of the Gentiles.

The exact correspondence between the prophecy of Isaiah and the command of Jesus to Paul will be best seen from a glance at the prophecy and command when set side by side:

Isaiah 42 Jesus' Command to Paul, Acts 26 ‘I the Lord... will give thee' (My servant Messiah)... ‘for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house...

‘ Isaiah 42:16. I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not, and I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them.... These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.' ‘ Acts 26:16. I have appeared to thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness....

‘ Acts 26:17. Delivering thee... from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee.

‘ Acts 26:18. To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light.' With what weighty force must all this have struck Paul during those two to three years' solitary study in Arabia which succeeded the ‘Damascus journey' and came before his active ministry!

And from the power of Satan unto God. The glorified King was still considering the case of the Gentiles, among whom Saul's life-work lay. He here regards all that elaborate system of idolatry which among the Pagan nations represented religious worship, and which in so many cases encouraged and even taught the vilest profligacy, as belonging to the realm of Satan.

That they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith which is in me. The purpose and end of Saul's life-work is here sketched out. The peoples who had hitherto sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, were to be guided into a knowledge of their state, of their slavery to sin, of the impossibility of their being able to help or redeem themselves, of their utter hopelessness as regards the future. Their eyes were to be opened. This was the first step. The second was to tell them of the one fountain where all sin and un-cleanness might be washed away a fountain open to Gentile as well as Jew; they were to be told how to turn from Satan to God. The third step was to show what would be the result of this opening the blind eyes and this seeing their real state, and of their turning to God. Forgiveness of all sin would follow, and they would win a place among the sanctified, a home in one of the many mansions of the redeemed and restored.

The closing words tell us that these blessed results were to be produced by faith, in its highest, truest sense of loving trust, entire child-like confidence in Jesus the Crucified and Risen.