Galatians 1.13-24 KWL - 13 For you heard the story of my behavior
- when I was in Judaism—
- that, in my extremism, I persecuted God’s church
- and was laying waste to it.
- 14 In Judaism, I was advancing
- beyond many of the peers in my class,
- being extremely zealous
- in my spiritual fathers’ “traditional” interpretations.
- 15 When God thought it best,
- he separated me from the time I was in my mother’s womb,
- and called me by his grace,
- 16 to reveal his Son to me
- so I might evangelize of him to the gentiles,
- I didn’t immediately confer with flesh and blood,
- 17 nor did I go to Jerusalem
- to those who became apostles before me.
- I went to Arabia instead.
- Then I returned to Damascus again.
- 18 After three years, then I went up to Jerusalem
- to interview Simon Peter.
- I stayed with him 15 days.
- 19 I saw none of the other apostles except James, our Lord’s brother.
- 20 I write you all about this:
- Look, I swear before God I’m not lying.
- 21 Then I went to the region of Syria and Cilicia,
- 22 and my face was unknown to the Jewish Christian churches.
- 23 They had only heard,
- “Our former persecutor now evangelizes
- the faith he was previously destroying,”
- 24 and they were glorifying God over me.
Paul gives some of his testimony here. As you know (or oughta know) a conversion story is a testimony, but it’s hardly one’s only testimony.
Various people, much as they have
Their rewrite of history disregards Paul’s own writings. Every reference to Paul’s conversion points out no evangelist won him over, no logical explanation got him to change his mind. Paul was absolutely convinced Christianity
Paul was absolutely certain he was doing right by God to purge the world of Jesus’s followers, and nobody but nobody could tell him different; he had all
The better-than-average Pharisee.
Occasionally people describe Paul as a former Jew, or former Pharisee. These are descriptions Paul never used for himself. First of all you can’t be “a former Jew” unless you’re not ethnically Jewish. Paul was a descendant of Benjamin ben Israel ben Isaac ben Abraham. He could never not be a Jew.
As for being Pharisee, Paul never stopped identifying himself as one. Including when he had to stand before
Acts 23.6 KJV - But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.
Despite what our culture means by the word “Pharisee,” Paul’s culture recognized a Pharisee meant a devout Jew, one in a religious sect which took the L
At some point Paul moved from Tarsus to Jerusalem to attend a Pharisee academy. It was the ancients’ closest equivalent to a college education; it meant following a rabbi around and asking him tons of questions, and he’d Socratically ask you questions right back, straighten out your misconceptions, and teach you to sharpen your thinking. (Yes, it’s exactly what Jesus did with his students.) Likely it was after he came of age, so around age 13 or so.
In verse 14 he kinda describes himself as the class valedictorian, the furthest ahead in his age group. Speaking from experience as a former child prodigy: When you’re the littlest guy in the classroom, you tend to get labeled “the little man,” and if you proudly own these nicknames, they stick. This is where I suspect his Greek name
Paul recognized his zeal for knowledge, and ability to retain it, was God-given. That’s likely what he meant by “separated me from my mother’s womb” in verse 15: It wasn’t about being born, but about being chosen by God even before he was born. He was made to follow God. We all were, but when you’re a child prodigy it’s a little more obvious.
God had big plans for Paul. His contemporaries knew it; his parents probably moved to Jerusalem because of it; even as a
But look at the utter mess he made with these abilities when Jesus wasn’t guiding him!
This is why Jesus had to personally intervene. Sometimes people aren’t gonna turn to him any other way. It’s like hearing from fellow employees, “The boss wants you to do such-and-so,” but the instructions sound implausible or confusing, and your coworkers are kinda flaky, so you don’t trust them, and won’t do anything till you hear it straight from the top. And when she shows up, either she’s gonna patiently steer you right, or impatiently fire you, depending on what kind of person she is. Too many of us expect Jesus to appear in wrath and fire, both in
When Luke wrote of Paul’s conversion in
But it’s after Paul’s conversion we see some of what God had created Paul to do. When he switched
Likely he preached Jesus with the same zeal he had previously opposed him. That is to say,
Meeting Peter.
Luke related how, after Damascus, Paul wanted to join the Christians in Jerusalem—the very same Christians he persecuted three years before.
Acts 9.26-28 KJV - 26 And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus. 28 And he was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem.
Paul’s version of events is a little different: He wrote nothing about Barnabas. He says he didn’t meet with anyone but Peter and James, and he swears he’s not lying.
Nah. Paul says he saw no apostles but Peter and James, and the Holy Spirit hadn’t yet made Barnabas an apostle.
For the most part this left behind James bar Joseph, Jesus’s brother, who ran the Jerusalem church as its bishop; and Simon bar Yoannis, whom Jesus called
Though neither Luke nor Paul got into it, bear in mind another factor which was going on in the Christians’ minds when Paul first tried to join them: Hard feelings. Three years ago, Paul viciously persecuted these people. Some of them might’ve been killed, or were permanently disabled. Not all of them wanted to forgive Paul for it. It took the bigger people among them, like Barnabas, to put aside their anger and hate, and forgive the kid.
This particularly relates to the subject at hand—the Galatians
Not every Christian recognizes this is exactly what we’re doing whenever we make new Christians, or repentant sinners, follow our ridiculous, overly complicated “restoration” practices. All of which go right back
Paul then spent half a month with Simon Peter. Various Christians like to imagine Peter giving the young Pharisee a condensed course in Jesus’s teachings—as if two weeks would be anywhere near enough! But that’s not how Paul described it. He used that time
They might have spent more time together, but James and Peter decided to send Paul home to Tarsus, ’cause Paul was getting into the same sort of trouble as he had in Damascus.
Acts 9.29-30 KJV - 29 And he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians: but they went about to slay him. 30 Which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to Caesarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus.
By “the Grecians” Luke meant Greek-speaking Jews; apparently Paul was going to their synagogues and picking fights. The apostles didn’t need that! So they sent him home to Tarsus. He could pick fights there, where there wasn’t active persecution going on.
Thus Paul was out of the way for the next decade or so, with nothing but a good story left behind: “Our former persecutor now evangelizes the faith he was previously destroying,”
