The man holding the coats

He is young. Brilliant. Trained at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the greatest rabbis of the age. He is a Pharisee of Pharisees — circumcised on the eighth day, from the tribe of Benjamin, as to the law blameless. He has given his entire life to the study and defense of the God of Israel.

And he is absolutely certain that the people being killed today deserve to die.

The witnesses need their hands free to throw stones, so they hand their outer robes to Saul. He takes them. He watches. The text says he approved of the execution. This is not a reluctant bystander — this is a man who believes, with everything in him, that Stephen is a blasphemer and that justice is being done.

What does he see? He sees a man praying for the people killing him. He hears the words: Lord, do not hold this sin against them. He watches Stephen's face — the face that looked like an angel — go still.

Does any of this land? In the moment, it seems not. What follows is one of the most violent persecutions in the early church's history, and Saul leads it. He goes house to house, dragging men and women to prison. He breathes threats and murder.

But years later, when he writes to a church in Corinth about love bearing all things, about love keeping no record of wrongs — where do you think he learned that?

Some seeds take time.

Saul held the coats. He approved. He ravaged the church. And then God got hold of him.

The man who oversaw the first Christian martyrdom became the greatest missionary in the history of the faith. The letters he wrote from prison — the same kind of prison he put others in — have shaped Christian thought for two thousand years.

Nobody is too far. Nobody's past is too dark. Nobody is holding coats so bloody that grace cannot reach them.

That is not a comfort for the comfortable. It is an offense to everyone who has decided some people are beyond it.