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Many of us are facing anxiety, fear, and confusion. Hypocrisy is seemingly just a part of life for many people. However, Paul lived differently. When I read this for the first time I was shocked. Am I living out my faith in such a way that if other people followed my example they would be following Jesus? He relied heavily on his co-workers throughout his ministry and took little credit for his own achievements. Timothy was one of his primary co-workers and is mentioned in all but three of his fourteen letters.
Two of these letters are written directly to Timothy as an encouragement to him and his ministry. He does not take pride in his own accomplishments but praises God and gives him the credit and glory in everything.
One of the easiest ways to determine what is important to a person is to look at how they spend their time. For Paul, it was working hard, and preaching the Gospel, showing that the most important things to him were loving God, and loving others, the two greatest commandments.
Definitely keep this aspect of his discipleship model in mind. How do you spend your time? Does it reflect what is important to you? What does that communicate to the people you are discipling? Shoebox Collection Week is Here! Plus Toggle navigation. Password Assistance. Email address. Paul in the Bible. Share Tweet Save. Chapter Parallel Compare. May it not be held against them. Acts Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.
Ephesians Romans For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.
Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors.
As a Roman citizen, Paul possessed a coveted status. Some, like the centurion in Acts , had to pay a lot of money to have it.
Others served in the Roman military for 25 years to earn it. But Paul was born into this privilege. And instead of lording this status over everyone, he preached about a citizenship which everyone could choose to claim by accepting Jesus as Lord:. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
As a Pharisee, before his conversion to Christianity, Paul saw Christians who were predominantly Jewish at the time as a scourge against Judaism. He believed that Jesus was a mere man, and was therefore rightfully executed for claiming to be God. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
After putting his faith in Jesus, Paul immediately began preaching publicly Acts , and he quickly built a reputation as a formidable teacher Acts Throughout the rest of Acts, Paul is a prominent figure who plays a pivotal role in bringing the gospel to non-Jewish communities. His letters frequently address problems and questions these churches wrote to him about. Fun fact: Paul did proclaim the name of Jesus to a Gentile king. The gospel he preached to them was enough, and they just needed to have faith in Jesus.
On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised.
For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. And if Peter, James, and John had nothing to add to what Paul preached, then why would the Galatians listen to someone else who said there was more they needed to do to be saved?
As an apostle to the Gentiles, not only did Paul need to engage the cultures he was trying to reach, but he had to protect these new believers from the weight of obligation that Jewish Christians often tried to impose on them.
Paul established numerous churches throughout Europe and Asia Minor, and was typically driven toward regions no one had evangelised to before:. Everywhere he went, Paul established new Christian communities and helped these fledgling believers develop their own leadership.
He corresponded with these churches regularly and visited them as often as he could. Occasionally, they financially supported him so that he could continue his ministry elsewhere Philippians —18, 2 Corinthians —9.
Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he promised his followers they would receive power through the Holy Spirit Acts The Book of Acts records that the apostles performed miracles, and Paul is no exception. He healed people, cast out spirits, and even brought someone back from the dead. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.
The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything. This famous encounter is referred to as the road to Damascus, the Damascene conversion, and the Damascus Christophany a vision of Christ distinct from his incarnation. And for that, he would need to meet a follower of Christ.
In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name. This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.
I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. Paul spent the next few days with the very Christians he had come to capture, and he immediately began preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ—to the confusion of Christians and Jews alike.
In his own accounts of his conversion, Paul says that Jesus appeared to him 1 Corinthians —8 , and he claims that Jesus revealed the gospel to him Galatians — In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul appeals to the authority of eyewitness testimony, pointing out that Jesus appeared to many people including himself. In his letter to the Galatians, he builds the case that the Galatians can trust the gospel he presented them because it came directly from God, and the first apostles supported his message Galatians —9.
This encounter on the road to Damascus completely redefined who Paul was, and it changed the purpose of his journey from silencing Christians to speaking out in support of them. Instead of taking away from their number, he added to it. And once Jesus redirected him, Paul continued on this trajectory for the rest of his life. While he was a contemporary of Jesus, they never crossed paths—at least, not before Jesus died.
The first century was a tumultuous time for Christianity. As a leader in the Jewish community, Paul saw the rapidly spreading Christian community as a threat, and he directly contributed to the persecution early Christians faced.
But after his encounter with Jesus, instead of stamping out Christianity, Paul stoked the flames of the faith wherever he went, at whatever the cost. More than any other person besides Jesus, Paul was the reason Christianity spread so far and so fast. And Paul and Saul are actually two versions of the same name.
The reality is that Saul was a Hebrew name and Paul was a Greek version of the same name. Of all the ways Paul affected Christianity, the biggest was arguably his role in spreading the gospel to non-Jewish communities. When Christianity emerged, it was often thought of as a Jewish sect—it built on Jewish teachings and beliefs, and because most Christians were also Jewish, many still followed Jewish customs and rituals established in the Law of Moses.
For Paul, the apostles, and the early Christians, the Law and specifically, circumcision was one of the greatest theological issues of their day. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.
Instead, they essentially instructed Gentiles be culturally sensitive to their Jewish brothers and sisters, because the Law was respected and observed by Jews everywhere. After he received a vision Acts —16 , Peter was one of the first apostles to specifically advocate for sharing the gospel with Gentiles. But as the Gentiles joined the church, Paul noticed that Peter still treated Gentile Christians differently in order to save face with those who still valued the law.
For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.
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