The story of the apostle Paul begins with a name that Christians feared. Saul of Tarsus was a rising Pharisee whose zeal for the ancestral traditions expressed itself in warrants and chains. He approved the death of Stephen and tried to extinguish a movement that proclaimed a crucified and risen Messiah as Lord of all (Acts 8:1–3; Acts 7:58). Then, in blinding glory outside Damascus, the Lord Jesus confronted him, identified Himself with His people, and turned the persecutor into a preacher. “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked; and when Saul replied, “Who are you, Lord?” the answer came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:4–5). In that moment Saul learned that to touch the Church is to touch Christ, and that the One nailed to a tree now rules in splendor.
Unlike apostles who walked with Jesus in Galilee, Paul insists that the gospel he preached he “did not receive from any man,” nor was he taught it by men, but received it “by revelation from Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:11–12). He withdrew to Arabia, returned to Damascus, and only after years met briefly with Peter, because his commission and message were given from heaven for a task that would stretch across the nations (Galatians 1:17–18). What emerges from his letters is a mind and heart tutored by the risen Christ: justification by faith apart from works of the law, the mystery of one new man formed from Jew and Gentile, the indwelling Spirit as the power for a holy life, and the Church’s hope secured by the crucified and risen Lord (Galatians 2:16; Ephesians 2:14–16; Galatians 5:16–18; 1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Paul’s path, from enemy to envoy, summons us to the same undivided allegiance.
Words: 2643 / Time to read: 14 minutes / Audio Podcast: 28 Minutes
Historical & Cultural Background
Saul was born in Tarsus, a significant city of Cilicia, and raised within Israel’s covenant life. He could claim circumcision on the eighth day, descent from Benjamin, and training “according to the strict manner of the law” under Gamaliel, a pedigree he would later count as loss for the sake of Christ (Philippians 3:5–7; Acts 22:3). He knew the languages of his world and the Scriptures of his people. As a Pharisee he was committed to the law, blameless in outward righteousness as he measured it, and jealous for the purity of Israel’s worship (Philippians 3:6). The early chapters of Acts show a Jerusalem where the Church, newly born at Pentecost, bore witness in the power of the Spirit while opposition mounted from leaders who saw in the Way a threat to the temple and to Torah (Acts 2:41; Acts 4:1–3; Acts 5:17–18).
The Greco-Roman world in which Saul lived framed the Church’s mission. Rome’s roads and order carried news quickly; synagogues scattered throughout the empire gave Paul first hearing and fierce resistance, depending on the city (Acts 13:5; Acts 13:45). The crucified Messiah scandalized many and seemed folly to others, yet to those called He was “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23–24). Into that world Christ appointed Paul as a chosen instrument to carry His name before Gentiles, kings, and the people of Israel, and to show him how much he must suffer for His name (Acts 9:15–16). The commission would force new questions: how do Gentiles belong to the God of Israel without becoming Jews? what is the role of the Mosaic law in the wake of the cross? what marks the people of God in this present age? The answers would come not from accommodation to the times but from revelation anchored in Scripture fulfilled in Christ.
From a dispensational vantage, Paul’s life unfolds at the dawn of the Church Age, the administration of grace in which God forms one body through faith in Christ, apart from the Mosaic covenant’s stipulations (Ephesians 3:2–6). Israel retains a future under God’s irrevocable promises even as, now, Jew and Gentile are united in Christ with equal access to the Father by one Spirit (Romans 11:28–29; Ephesians 2:18). Paul’s distinct role was to announce and unfold this mystery, not by erasing Israel into the Church but by proclaiming Christ as the fulfillment of promise and the Head of a new people.
Biblical Narrative
Stephen’s martyrdom forms the prelude to Saul’s arresting grace. Saul guarded the garments of those who stoned Stephen and approved the execution, then “began to destroy the church,” entering house after house, dragging off men and women, and committing them to prison (Acts 7:58; Acts 8:1–3). Still breathing threats and murder, he obtained letters to Damascus so that, if he found any who belonged to the Way, he might bind them and bring them to Jerusalem (Acts 9:1–2). Near the city a light from heaven flashed, he fell to the ground, and the voice of Jesus spoke his name and exposed his war against God. Blinded, he was led into Damascus where he fasted and waited (Acts 9:3–9).
The Lord sent Ananias to lay hands on Saul, calling him “Brother Saul” and announcing that the same Jesus who appeared on the road had sent him so that Saul might regain sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Immediately something like scales fell, he arose, was baptized, and began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying that He is the Son of God (Acts 9:17–20). The astonishment of Damascus quickly hardened into plots, and Saul escaped by night through an opening in the wall, lowered in a basket (Acts 9:23–25; 2 Corinthians 11:32–33). He testifies that he did not consult flesh and blood, nor go up to Jerusalem first, but went away into Arabia and returned to Damascus, and only after three years did he go to Jerusalem to visit Cephas for fifteen days (Galatians 1:16–18). The Scriptures do not narrate what transpired in Arabia, but Paul is emphatic that his gospel came by revelation of Jesus Christ and that, when he later set that gospel before recognized leaders, they added nothing to it (Galatians 1:12; Galatians 2:6).
Paul’s letters give windows into this direct instruction. When he rehearses the Lord’s Supper, he writes, “I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you,” and then he recounts the words spoken “on the night he was betrayed” (1 Corinthians 11:23–25). When he summarizes the gospel he preached at the first, he says he delivered what he also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to many witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:3–8). He speaks, reluctantly, of being caught up to the third heaven and hearing “inexpressible things,” experiences he refuses to turn into credentials but which underline that his ministry stands under the Lord’s direct dealings (2 Corinthians 12:1–6). In Antioch he opposed Peter publicly when table fellowship was fractured out of fear of the circumcision group, because such behavior was “not acting in line with the truth of the gospel” (Galatians 2:11–14). At the Jerusalem council he and Barnabas contended for the freedom of Gentile believers from the yoke of the law as a condition of salvation, and the apostles and elders affirmed that salvation is through the grace of the Lord Jesus for Jew and Gentile alike (Acts 15:10–11; Acts 15:19–21).
The rest of Acts shows the commission unfolding. The Spirit and the church at Antioch sent Barnabas and Saul, and from city to city Paul proclaimed Jesus as the promised Christ, reasoning from the Scriptures that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead, and calling Jews and Gentiles to repent and believe (Acts 13:2–4; Acts 17:2–3; Acts 20:21). He labored with his hands to avoid burdening the churches, suffered beatings and imprisonments, and counted his life worth nothing if only he could finish his course and the ministry he received from the Lord Jesus: to testify to the gospel of God’s grace (2 Corinthians 11:23–28; Acts 20:24; Acts 20:34–35). Summoned before rulers, he told the same story—how the Lord appeared, how He commissioned him “to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God,” so that they might receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those sanctified by faith in Christ (Acts 26:16–18). From prison he wrote letters that have nourished the Church ever since, expounding union with Christ, the Church as His body, the armor of God, and the hope secured by the resurrection (Ephesians 1:22–23; Ephesians 6:10–18; Philippians 3:10–11).
Theological Significance
Paul’s insistence that he received his gospel by revelation is not a boast but a guardrail. The message centers on a righteousness from God given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, apart from works of the law. “We know,” he says, “that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ,” and he refuses any arithmetic that makes Christ’s death unnecessary (Galatians 2:16; Galatians 2:21; Romans 3:21–26). In Paul’s teaching the cross is not only example or victory; it is substitution in which Christ became a curse for us so that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations and the promised Spirit be received through faith (Galatians 3:13–14).
He also unfolds the mystery long hidden and now revealed: that Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, a stewardship he calls the “dispensation of God’s grace” given to him for the nations (Ephesians 3:2–6). This does not erase Israel’s identity or future; the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable, and Paul looks ahead to a mercy that will yet astonish (Romans 11:28–29). In the present Church Age, however, God is forming one new humanity in Christ, creating peace at the cross and giving both Jew and Gentile access by one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:14–18). That unity rests not on cultural absorption but on shared union with the crucified and risen Lord.
Paul teaches the end of the Mosaic law as covenant over the believer without despising the law’s holiness. The law served as a guardian until Christ; now that faith has come we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus we are sons and heirs (Galatians 3:24–26). In Christ the record of debt that stood against us has been canceled, nailed to the cross, and the principalities have been disarmed (Colossians 2:14–15). The life that follows is not antinomian but Spirit-filled; we walk by the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit, and bear the fruit the law could never produce though it could command (Galatians 5:16–25). Paul’s doctrine of the church as Christ’s body grounds sanctification and service in union with the Head who fills all in every way (Ephesians 1:22–23). His eschatology fixes hope in the Lord’s appearing and resurrection glory, not in human perfectibility, and it teaches the believer to labor now in the confidence that our toil is not in vain in the Lord (Titus 2:13; 1 Corinthians 15:50–58).
Spiritual Lessons & Application
Paul’s transformation is an argument for grace. The man who ravaged the church now spends his life for it, and he explains the change not by temperament but by mercy: “The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me,” he says, and that confession becomes the engine of obedience (Galatians 2:20). For those who think themselves beyond the reach of Christ, Paul stands as a living contradiction to despair; for those tempted to boast in pedigree or performance, Paul stands as a rebuke, counting all such gain as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord (Philippians 3:7–9). The grace that pardons also appoints. Christ did not simply forgive Paul; He sent him, and the sending explains the scars (Galatians 6:17).
His Arabia years suggest that usefulness flows from being taught by Christ. We are not apostles receiving new revelation, yet the pattern endures: withdrawal for prayer and Scripture, seasons in which the Lord clarifies the message and burns away self-reliance, are not delays but preparations. When Paul emerged, he could say both that he labored more than others and, in the same breath, “yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Churches and leaders who refuse Arabia—who will not be still before the Lord’s word—often trade depth for noise.
Paul’s courage also teaches us how to love truth without losing love. He opposed Peter because table fellowship was at stake; the gospel creates a table where Jew and Gentile eat as one, and to withdraw was to deny, in practice, what Christ purchased, in blood (Galatians 2:11–14; Ephesians 2:14–16). In our day, when cultural badges still threaten to crowd the center, Paul calls us back to the cross as the only ground of belonging. At the same time, the man who could pronounce anathema on false gospels could also plead with tears and restore the fallen gently, watching himself lest he, too, be tempted (Galatians 1:8–9; Galatians 6:1; Acts 20:31). The firmness of Paul is never cruelty; it is covenant care.
Finally, his life reframes endurance. Beatings, shipwrecks, hunger, and prison mark the trail, yet he presses on to know Christ, the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death in order somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead (2 Corinthians 11:23–28; Philippians 3:10–11). Such perseverance is not superhuman; it is resurrection life at work in a fragile vessel, and it belongs to every believer who sets heart on the same prize.
Conclusion
Paul’s instruction by the risen Christ birthed a ministry that still steadies and sends the Church. He received from the Lord what he also delivered: the gospel of the crucified and risen Son, justification by faith, the gift of the Spirit, and the unveiling of one new people in this present administration of grace (1 Corinthians 11:23; Galatians 2:16; Ephesians 3:2–6). He lived as a servant whose learning became labor and whose scars became seals of his allegiance. At the end he could say that he had fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith, not because he was strong but because the Lord stood by him and strengthened him (2 Timothy 4:7; 2 Timothy 4:17). His story calls us to the same undivided devotion: to be taught by Christ in His word, to hold the gospel without addition, to love the church for whom He died, and to spend ourselves until we see His face.
“Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” (Acts 26:16–18)
All Scripture quoted from:
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.