Then Saul mercilessly persecuted the church of God, going from house to house into the homes of believers to arrest both men and women and drag them off to prison.
Mercy kissed me, even though I used to be a blasphemer, a persecutor of believers, and a scorner of what turned out to be true. I was ignorant and didn’t know what I was doing.
By now you have heard stories of how severely I harassed and persecuted Christians and how systematically I endeavored to destroy God’s church, all because of my radical devotion to the Jewish religion.
Yes, I am the most insignificant of all the apostles, unworthy even to be called an apostle, because I hunted down believers and persecuted God’s church.
Then they pounced on him and threw him outside the city walls to stone him. His accusers, one by one, placed their outer garments at the feet of a young man named Saul of Tarsus.
And concerning the righteousness of the Torah, no one surpassed me; I was without a peer. Furthermore, as a fiery defender of the truth, I persecuted the messianic believers with religious zeal.
Don’t let them defeat me, Lord. You can’t let me fall into their clutches! They keep accusing me of things I’ve never done, breathing out violence against me.