<p>9:16 <em>For I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake-</em> There seems no record of the Lord as it were informing Saul of the details of his life ahead of time. The idea may rather be that throughout the course of his life, he would come to realize the sufferings of Christ through sharing the sufferings he had brought upon the Christian believers. Ananias had just spoken of the believers as those who bore the Lord's name (:14), and so the idea here may be that Saul was to experience the sufferings he had brought upon those who bore the Lord's name.</p><p>Right at his baptism, Paul realized that the Lord Jesus intended to make Paul fellowship the spirit of his experience on the cross (Acts 9:16). Later, Paul speaks of how he is &quot;filling up what is lacking&quot; in the aim Christ had set him: to fellowship the crucified Lord Jesus (Phil. 3:10). As the sufferings of Christ (i.e. his ability to relate to them) increasingly abounded in Paul (2 Cor. 1:5 Gk.), so did his comfort and certainty that he would be in the Kingdom; because he knew that if he suffered with Christ, he would share his glorious resurrection (2 Cor. 4:11,12). As we grow, therefore, our realization that we are progressively sharing the sufferings of Christ should increase; our understanding of the memorial meeting (which reminds us of this) will deepen, as we appreciate more what it means to take the cup of his pain. The need and simple beauty of the breaking of bread becomes more logical; taking those emblems becomes in a sense more difficult, yet more sobering and comforting. The point is that as we grow, the centre of our attention will increasingly be the Lord Jesus and his cross.</p>