02.03. ESSAY NO. 3

ESSAY NO. 3

After at least one return visit to the congregations he had founded in Galatia during his first visit to that district, Paul, busily evangelizing other places, heard that Judaizing wolves, piously alleging that they were better informed than Paul, were working havoc in the Galatian churches.

These designing, false men, "wiser for their own generation than the sons of light," could make out a reasonable case against Paul before the facile Galatians. There is ample evidence in Galatians and the Co­rinthian letters to show that their chief line of attack was that Paul was only an upstart, inferior apostle, independent of and out of fellowship with the real, original apostles; and that he kept his disciples sub­ordinate to other Christians by withholding from them truth essential to their full development. (Imagine how the proud, hot-headed Galatians would boil at that!) The diabolic cleverness of these "deceitful workers" is better understood when it is remembered that min­isters of the old Serpent, who "beguiled Eve in his craftiness" (2 Corinthians 11:3) by persuading her that God was withholding good from her, "also fashion them­selves as ministers of righteousness" (2 Corinthians 11:14) in Corinth, Galatia, Moscow, Rome or Washington to serve the fiendish ends of their demonic master. To overthrow the souls of men, the ministers of the Devil have never needed better strategy than the Fa­ther of lies used in Eden.

Paul Explains The small amount of truth in the lying accusations of Paul’s detractors made these slanders all the more formidable. By giving the truth that Paul was inde­pendent of the real apostles a fatal twist, they had something so plausible, and yet so false, that it could be used against him with deadly effect. At the same time, however it furnished skillful Paul a good oc­casion to set all fair minded men right on a vital mat­ter.

Paul’s explanation is the boldest and fullest state­ment of his apostolic commission. He concedes, as charged, that he saw none of the apostles before he began preaching, and tells why: "For I made known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it was not after men, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ." Paul here reminds the Galatians that the gospel which they heard from him was not of hu­man origin; nor did he acquire it by the customary educational methods of men; but it came to him direct­ly from the risen, living, reigning Lord in heaven. Hence, the conclusion that in apostolic knowledge and authority, he, at least, could not be "a whit behind the very chiefest apostles" (2 Corinthians 11:5) follows in­evitably. In the next five verses, to support this affirmation of divine instruction and ordination, Paul shows that he could not have learned of Christ, either before or after his conversion, in an ordinary way. Before, with characteristic energy and zeal he so persecuted "be­yond measure . . . the church of God" that no Christian could have even thought of trying to win him. After, instead of going "up to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before" him to confer with "flesh and blood," he "went away into Arabia."

Paul in Arabia

Christ said to Paul: "For to this end have I appeared unto thee, to appoint thee a minister and a witness both of the things wherein thou hast seen me and of the things wherein I will appear unto thee" (Acts 26:16). Thus, did Christ pledge himself to be Paul’s future teacher. Following this initial appearance, five more appearances, selecting fields of labor, encourag­ing in prison, sustaining in shipwreck, and revealing the future, are recorded in the books of Acts. Further­more, Paul to prove to the Corinthians that his apostle-ship was bona jfide speaks of "visions and revelations of the Lord," and mentions one very special occasion when he was "caught up into Paradise, and heard un­speakable words" (2 Corinthians 12:1-4). Now, we know how Paul learned "the deep things of God" which caused Peter to write: Paul also, according to the wisdom giv­en to him, write . . . some things hard to be under­stood" (2 Peter 3:15-16).

According to Galatians, part of the three years that elapsed between Paul’s conversion and his seeing Pet­er, Paul spent in Damascus, and the remainder in Arabia. His reason for going to Arabia may be ascer­tained, I think, with reasonable certainty from Galatians 1:1-24.

Probably the life of no man has ever been so wrecked and so rebuilt as Paul’s. Skeptics have always failed as miserably to account for his revolutionized life as for Christ’s resurrection. No horizontal line of natural cause and effect can explain it, for it was caused by an original act of super-natural grace, coming down from God. Much vital Christian truth flashed into Paul’s mind at the time of his conversion: the de­spised Nazarene was the Messiah: he had arisen from the dead, and was even now speaking to him from heaven. Dying Stephen had talked with him. Conse­quently, Paul’s life, which he had so laboriously built up to lofty eminence, lay in ashes. Crushing guilt and terror fell upon his soul as he recalled his contempt for Christ and the innocent men and women he had tortured. To learned, successful, proud Paul, Damascus was the loss of everything. All he had prized in life suddenly became mere refuse. But Paul had more to learn and to suffer. God’s schooling for his "chosen vessels" includes solitude as attested by Moses in Midian, the Baptist in the wil­derness, and John on Patmos. Even so, Paul needed time and quiet for soul work. "The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude." Could there be a fitter place than lonely Arabia and Sinai where fasting Moses received the law and despairing Elijah heard "a still small voice" that made him feel still smaller? Surely, some of Paul’s "visions and revelations" came to him in Arabia. To help him understand the Old Testament, the letter of which he had mastered without getting a taste of its spirit, would not the Lord from heaven commune with him and aid him, as he on earth before his death communed with and aided the other apos­tles? The Bible would soon become to Paul another book. From every page new meanings would leap out at him. Must it not have amazed him exceedingly to realize that he so grossly, and for so long, had missed it all?