This is not intended to be a “Life of the Apostle
Paul,” but has rather to do with the particular
significance of this servant of Jesus Christ. While there
are those vital and essential factors in his case which
must be true of every servant of Christ, and which are
basic to every fruitful ministry (as we shall later
mention), everything about Paul indicates that he was
indeed “a chosen (elect) vessel,” foreknown,
foreordained and selected. This was true particularly in
the nature of the ministry for which he was
“apprehended.” The same nature of ministry
may—in measure—be the “calling” of
others, but it was pioneered in Paul. All the Apostles
stood on common ground where the fundamentals of the
faith were concerned: the Person of Christ; the work of
Christ; redemption; justification; sanctification; the
world commission to preach salvation in Christ to all the
world; the coming again of the Saviour, etc. They had the
same foundation. Each one may have had “grace
according to the measure of the gift of Christ”;
that is, according to their personal gift, whether
Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor or Teacher, each had
“grace”—anointing,
enablement—corresponding to the responsibility, but
on “fundamentals,” i.e. foundation matters,
they were agreed and one. Whatever we may say in
distinguishing Paul, we would not for a moment take one
small fragment from the great ministry of John, or Peter,
or James, or others. Never could our New Testament suffer
the loss of those ministries, and elsewhere we have
gloried in them. When all has been said as to their
value—and it would be an immense
“all”—we still have to affirm that there
was, and is, that which is unique and particular in what
came through Paul. Let us hasten to say a very
significant and helpful thing before we proceed.
It would never have been possible for Paul to understand
his pre-conversion life until he came under the hand of
Jesus Christ. That vocation with which he was called when
Jesus became his Lord throws so much illumination upon
the sovereignty of God in his past history. This is a
principle which will help so many people and servants of
God, and it shows how immensely important it is that
Jesus shall be—not only Saviour— but Lord. We
shall see this more fully later. Paul’s Jewish
birth, upbringing, training, education and deep
embeddedness in something from which he would be
extricated by the power of God, and something which was
going to be shown no longer to be what God needed, is in
itself of tremendous educative value. Why God, in His
foreknowledge, should put a man deeply into something
which does not ultimately represent His mind contains a
point to be noted. Many there are who argue that, because
they have ample reason to know that God put them into a
certain way, work, form, association, there they are to
abide for ever, willy nilly. Paul’s history says No
to that argument. God’s ways in his case came to
show that He may do a thing like that, and all His
sovereignty may truly be in it, but only for a purpose,
and a temporary purpose; namely, to give a deep and
thorough first-hand knowledge of that which is really at
best a limitation upon the full purpose of God. It is
necessary for an effective servant of God to have
personal knowledge of that from which people are to be
delivered. Abraham must know Chaldea; Moses must know
Egypt; David must know the falsehood of Saul’s
reign. So Paul must know the proscribed Judaism, so that
he can speak with authority, the authority of
personal experience. Were we the Psalmist, we should put
“Selah” there. “Think of that!”
But we must underline two aspects of this principle. We
are referring to what was definitely within the Divine
‘working of all things after the counsel of His own
will,’ and “according to His purpose.”
Paul was not changing his God at conversion, Jehovah was
his God for ever. The change was in the method
of God. It was still God working. We say this because no
one can say that, because they were born and brought up
in this or that, therefore “Providence”
(meaning God) intended that to be their way for always.
We must be as we are and where we are by the
sovereignty of God, and we must know that any
major change is equally definitely of God, and the only
alternative to making it is clear disobedience to the
presented will of God. It has to be a must, or a
missing of the way. It certainly will make demands upon
faith’s walk with God, because the element of apparent
contradiction may be present. We do not know what mental
and soul battles Paul had. It is not recorded that in
facing the immense revolution he reasoned with the
Lord—‘Well, Lord, by Your own sovereignty I was
born a Jew, and that with more than general terms:
“of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a
Hebrew of Hebrews... a Pharisee.” And now, Lord, you
are requiring me to take a course which repudiates all
that and contradicts it. It is not like You, Lord, to
contradict Yourself; it seems so inconsistent. It is not
as though I have not been God-fearing and have been
without faith in You.’ The change was so
revolutionary as to seem to be two contrary ways in the
same God. Here was a very big occasion to “trust in
the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not upon
thine own understanding.” We could cite the
cases of many servants of God who have been brought to
such a crisis between reason and faith when God was
demanding a decision which seemed to contradict
all His former leading. Some of these have come to be
very greatly vindicated by obedience. Some have lived to
be examples of having missed the way, or God’s best.
All this has had to do with God’s sovereign
preparation and equipment of a servant so that that
servant should truly know by deep experience what he is
talking about and what the differences are. This then, in
brief, as to his Jewish relationship.
But this man was elected and destined to be God’s
special messenger to the nations, not just to a
nation. The nations were mainly under Roman government
and Greek culture and language. Through his father Paul
inherited Roman citizenship and Freemanship, and by his
birth and upbringing in Tarsus he had both the Greek
language and a first-class familiarity with Greek life
and culture. These three things—Jewry, Roman
citizenship and Greek language—took him with
facility and ease into practically the whole world. But,
added to all this natural qualification was that without
which Paul would never have been the real factor that
history testifies to; he was anointed with the Holy
Spirit. Sometimes the anointing has made up for much
natural deficiency in education and birth, and men have
made spiritual history who would never have been
recognized on merely natural grounds. The Lord took very
real care that Paul could never make his natural
advantages the ground of his true success. This
was implied or indicated in the first recorded words of
the Lord about him (to Ananias) after his conversion:
“I will show him how many things he must suffer for
My name’s sake” (Acts 9:16).
The sovereignty of God is many-sided and has many ways.
It is only when the full story is told that a true
explanation is seen. At the beginning and in the course
there can be room for many a “why?” A Moses and
a Jeremiah may start off with what they are convinced is
a definite handicap and contradiction, but history
justifies God and in the end His wisdom is vindicated.
When God says “He is a chosen vessel,” He knows
all about the clay of which the vessel is made. As we go
on, the two implicit things just referred to will become
increasingly apparent. One, that the messenger and his
message are one thing; the message is in the man’s
constitution and very history under the hand of God. And
two, the man is not just recognized for his natural
qualifications alone, but pre-eminently because God has
anointed him for his position and work. No man can be in
any but a completely false position who speaks without
what he says being born out of real experience. Only, for
instance, may a man speak of brokenness if he himself has
been broken. Paul’s ministry throughout came from a
continuous history with God in deep and usually painful
experiences of conflict. It was “the spoil of
battle.” It is absolutely imperative that it should
be obvious and manifest that any position, function and
ministry on the part of anyone in relation to Christ
should be by anointing, and that the impression made and
the conclusion drawn by others is that “that man is
clearly anointed for that job!” Anointing simply
means that God is most evidently with the person
concerned in what they are doing and in the position that
they hold. To be out of position is to be out of
anointing in that particular. We cannot select, choose,
decide our place and function. That is an organic thing,
and just as it is awkward for a leg to try to do the work
of an arm in the human body, so there will always be
something wrong when we assume a work or position for
which the sovereignty of the Spirit has not chosen us.
With all the adversities and oppositions, it is the most
helpful thing to know that we are where we are by Divine
appointment and not by our own will. It is a good thing
when we know what our function is, and what it
is not, and act accordingly! There are sufficient
functions in the body corporate for every member to have
a quite definite one under the one anointing, and the
function will as naturally express itself as an eye sees,
an ear hears, a hand grips, and so on, if the
head (the Head) is in full and right control. Paul, then,
has much to teach us on this matter, first by his life
and then by his writings. At this point we are brought
back to where we diverged from the message to the man,
and we must now consider that differentiation of function
for which Paul was particularly chosen and apprehended.
Paul’s Distinctive
Vocation
That there was a difference and peculiar
importance in Paul’s ministry has a number of strong
evidences and attestations. He knew it himself and often
referred to it, both as to its substance and the way in
which he received it. This is expressed in such words as
these:
“the stewardship (R.V. margin) of that
grace of God which was given me to you-ward”;
“how that by revelation was made known unto me the
mystery... whereby... ye can perceive my understanding in
the mystery of Christ”; “Unto me... was this
grace given... to make all men see (bring to light—R.V.
margin) what is the stewardship of the mystery”
(Eph. 3:2–4, 8, 9).
While Paul does not say that he alone had the
“mystery” made known to him, he does claim
that, as a stewardship, a ministry, it was revealed to
him in a distinctly personal and direct-from-heaven
manner. He claimed that he was divinely apprehended for
this particular ministry. What that revelation was has to
spread itself over all that we shall yet write. At the
moment we are concerned with the fact of
Paul’s specific vocation.
Not least among the evidences of this was the fury,
invective, hatred, malice and murderous cruelty of the
devil and his forces focused upon this man, relentlessly.
It was surely because of what was coming through him and
not just because of his personality. It began and broke
loose on the same issue before Paul was the apprehended
vessel of it. To see and understand this we have to go
back to the one man who had previously seen what Paul was
shown. We refer to Stephen as the first Christian martyr
and we are deeply moved when we read the account of his
death. But how little Stephen has been understood, and
how blind we have been to the real meaning of his
death—his destruction by Satan-controlled men.
Stephen—the Precursor of
Paul
A thoughtful consideration of
Stephen’s discourse before the Jewish Sanhedrin will
show that Stephen was like a ‘preface’, an
introduction, to Paul’s ministry. If Stephen had
lived, there is little doubt that he and Paul would have
been in a mighty partnership in the Stewardship of the
Mystery. This, of course, supposes that the Lord did not
foresee that Stephen would die, and that, in
that foreknowledge, He did not mark down Paul for the
alone steward of this ministry in its fulness. The Divine
sovereignty has rarely been evidenced more than in
Saul’s presence with Stephen at the time of the
latter’s death, although an accomplice in it. As we
move with Stephen through that long discourse, following
his mind from Abraham through Isaac, Jacob, the
Patriarchs, Joseph, Israel, Moses, Egypt, the Exodus,
Sinai, the Tabernacle, the Wilderness, Joshua, David,
Solomon, the Temple, the Prophets, up to Christ, the
“Righteous One,” there is one thing that is in
Stephen’s mind throughout, and that one thing is the
key to everything and that which—more than anything
else—explains, defines and characterizes Paul and
his ministry. That one thing is that God is ever, from
eternity to eternity, pressing on to an all-comprehending
goal. Through human failure, human and Satanic
obstruction and attempted frustration; by a variety and
multitude of ways, means, and persons, in all generations
and ages, God is ever going on. His desired and selected
instruments may become a hindrance rather than a help.
Nations, empires and systems may oppose and obstruct;
circumstances may seem to limit Him, but—given
time— He is found not to have given up, but still to
be going on. He has set Himself a purpose and a goal, and
that goal will be reached. Let Jewry “always resist
the Holy Spirit” as Stephen says; so much the worse
for Jewry. That is the tremendous upshot of
Stephen’s discourse. Within that inclusiveness there
are other features. God’s purpose is a heavenly one,
a vast one, a spiritual one, an eternal one. Neither the
Tabernacle, with all its inner beauty and symbolic
embodiment of Divine thoughts; nor the Temple of Solomon
with all its magnificence and glory; nor Solomon himself
with his stunning wisdom and overwhelming
wealth—says Stephen—can remotely approximate to
that toward which God is moving in relation to His Son.
That is not “made with hands.” That is not of
the earth. That is not God’s House (Acts 7:48,49).
The Holy Spirit—says Stephen, in effect—is
moving on, ever on to this so-much-greater in every way.
Stephen, in one glorious hour met the devastating force
of that with which Paul contended all his life, namely
the incorrigible disposition of God’s people
to bring what is essentially heavenly down to earth and
fix it there; to crystallize spiritual things into
man-made systems; to lay hands upon what is of God and
make it something of man, something exclusive and legal
under man’s control. Stephen’s stand for, and
testimony to, this “Heavenly Vision” (that
became Paul’s phrase) brought him into the most
violent and vicious hatred of vested religious interests,
so far as systems were concerned, and Satan’s
fiercest jealousy behind all. Touch religious traditions
and established orders and you will find the same thing
that Stephen met, a jealousy which issues from blindness
to the vastly greater purpose of God. In some way
you will be stoned! by ostracism, exclusion, closed
doors, suspicion and misrepresentation, all of which are
traceable in the case of Paul.
Have we said enough about Stephen to justify and
establish our statement that he was—so to
speak—Paul in advance? Stephen himself is an example
of God going on in spite of hell and men, as Paul was
the going on of God in fulness when men put Stephen away.
We look back to our beginning statement that a major
evidence of the particular ministry for which Paul was
chosen is the vehemence of Satanic antagonism.
All that we have said, and much more, will, of course,
come out in our consideration of the ministry of Paul
himself, but I am sure that we are beginning to see
something of his significance.
Still ahead of our contemplation of the crowning and
consummate ministry of Paul the Apostle, there are
several matters of considerable value which may make a
brief chapter of helpfulness by themselves.
