Paul's Life

0:00God and His providence was preparing Paul from the womb to be the man that we know from the Scripture. And He was preparing Paul in ways that I doubt Saul would have foreseen. His birth, his heritage, his family, his education were all lines that would be interwoven into the man we know as the Apostle Paul. After he encountered the risen Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus, the Apostle Paul's life altered dramatically. He went from a persecutor of the church to a church planter and a preacher of the gospel. But who was the man behind this great legacy? What do we actually know about him? Welcome to another Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. These are some of the questions that we'll be exploring in the next few weeks as we hear messages from Dr. Guy Waters series, The Life and Theology of Paul.

1:01The series explores both notable events in Paul's life as well as key features of his theology. We'll only get to a few of these messages, but when you donate today, you can receive this entire 12-part series on DVD. You'll also get streaming access to all of the messages, a companion ebook from Dr. Waters and the Digital Study Guide. Just go to RenewingYourMind.org to give and support of this program and we'll send you all four of these resources. And thank you in advance for your generosity. Let's join Guy Waters now as he helps us explore the life of the Apostle Paul. Paul has monumental significance and influence in the history of the church. We take only three men, three great men in God's work in his church, Augustine, Luther and John Wesley, each of whom traces, if not their conversion, than a radical grasp of the gospel of grace, to an encounter with the writings of Paul.

2:08You remember Augustine's conversion? He was in the garden and he heard a child's voice say, Tala Legga, Tala Legga, Taken Read, Taken Read, and he opens the Scripture to Romans chapter 13 and verse 14. For Flash Ford, a millennium later, and there's Luther in the Tower of the Black Cloister in Vittenberg, and he's pondering that phrase in Romans chapter 1 verse 17, the righteousness of God. And it dawns on him that this is the gift of God in the gospel, and he says, I felt at once as though I had been born again and I entered into paradise. Or John Wesley on Aldersgate Street in London, 1739, and the preface to Luther's commentary on Romans is read and he says, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I'll take you and I. So much of what we know about the Christian gospel comes right from the letters of Paul, the effectual call,

3:16justification, adoption, sanctification, glorification. Imagine if we took these 13 letters out of the Scripture how impoverished our understanding of these great truths would be, we owe so much to the Apostle Paul. And so standing where we stand this morning, we are in awe of this towering figure. But I want you to imagine yourself as a Christian believer in Jerusalem. It's about the middle of the 8030s. And all of a sudden you are introduced to a man by the name of Saul of Tarsus. Your response, I suspect, would not have been one of all and admiration in light of what he was about to do. Your response likely would have been one of fear and terror. Is this a ruse? Is this some trick by the Jerusalem authorities, a fifth column in the Christian church?

4:26Saul was a ferocious persecutor of Christians. He was intent by his own testimony on exterminating the gospel and on trying to destroy the church of Jesus Christ. And Paul went far and wide to try and accomplish those goals. And so Paul, the Scripture tells us, did not spare even women. And so his Paul is introduced as Luke tells us in Acts chapter 9, among the company of believers in Jerusalem. There are men whose wives have been carried off to prison. There are women who have been widowed because of the activity of the Apostle Paul. He had cast his lot, sentencing these men to death. There were children who were looking at Saul of Tarsus and who could look at him as the one who would deprive them of mother or father.

5:30It goes to show you that you can't separate Paul the theologian from Paul the man. And the Scripture certainly does him. That was true then and that's true today. So before we give a look at the theology of Paul, we need to give a look at the life of Saul of Tarsus. And in this lecture, we're going to look at the question, who was he before Jesus Christ lay hold of him on the Damascus road? So now, Saul of Tarsus, who was he? Well, the New Testament tells us quite a bit. We have the benefit of course of Paul's 13 letters. His focus is to proclaim Jesus Christ, but Paul testifies to the grace of Christ in his own life. And so he will reflect back on his life before Christ. We have the acts of the Apostles. They were penned by Luke.

6:34As sometime companion of Paul, he tells us in the accident he traveled with Paul. He knew him well. Now, award on the name. I've mentioned Saul of Tarsus. I've also spoken of the Apostle Paul. And the New Testament addresses him by both names. Now, sometimes it's thought that Saul was his name prior to becoming a Christian. And then he assumed the name Paul when he became a Christian. But that in fact is not the way the New Testament presents him. He is called Saul all the way until Acts chapter 13. And at verse 9, he is called Paul and from then on in the acts of the Apostles, he is referred to as Paul. What's going on there with his name? Well, the name Saul was his Jewish name.

7:38And the name Paul was also his name, but it's a Roman name. Romans had three names, a kin to our first middle and last name. And Paul was one of those three names. We don't know the other two. And when Paul begins to use the name Paul is the moment when he begins actively to preach the gospel in Gentile lands. And in God's providence, Paul was a man who was conversing in Judaism and could preach the gospel to Jews. But he could also preach the gospel to Gentiles. And his names reflect that fact. Now what can we say about the Apostle Paul before the Damascus road? And when we put what the New Testament tells us together, we can say a fair bit.

8:39We can point to seven or eight things. Firstly, Paul tells us in one of his most autobiographical accounts in Philippians chapter 3 at the fifth verse. He says, I was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. Now Paul was raised in what we might call an observant Jewish home. He was circumcised on the eighth day according to the law of Moses. He was in Israelite and particularly of the tribe of Benjamin. And his parents clearly took pride in that heritage because they named him after one of the most famous sons of the tribe of Benjamin. Saul. Paul says, I was a Hebrew of Hebrews. He did not reject his heritage. He embraced it wholeheartedly.

9:41Jews were under constant pressure in Paul's day to conform to Greek and Roman ways of thinking and living. And it took great effort to live faithfully as a Jew. Paul's parents seemed to have done that and Paul himself seems also to have resisted those pressures and to have embraced who he was by birthright. Second, it's always interesting to imagine what did the Apostle Paul look like? We don't, of course, have pictures or videos. And we get a little hint in 2 Corinthians in the 10th chapter. Here Paul is quoting his opponents. His opponents didn't have a lot favourable to say about him. They say his letters are weighty and strong but his bodily presence is weak and his speeches of no account.

10:42Paul does not seem to have been a strapping person. We have no description of Paul in the New Testament but we have a suggestive description that comes from an apocryphal book, a century or two later. And it reads as follows. Paul was of a low stature, bald or shaved on the head, crooked thighs, handsome legs, hollowed eyes, crooked nose, full of grace. And then of course there is what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11. Paul was a man who underwent intense physical suffering. He describes countless beatings often near death. Five times I received from the Jews the 40 lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods and once I was stone.

11:44Anyone who saw the Apostle Paul would have seen a man whose body bore the marks of intense suffering for Jesus Christ, the scars and the disfigurement of this kind of torture. That's why he tells the Galatians, I bear in my body the marks of Jesus and they were evident to all. Third, what can we say about Paul's family? We've already noted that he was born into an observant Jewish family. And he was presumably reared in the synagogue, he would have been taught the scripture from youth, he would have been taught to pray to sing the Psalms of David. We know that Paul's father was a Roman citizen. We know that because Paul says that he was born a citizen and if you were born a citizen that meant that your father was a Roman citizen. We'll talk more on that in a moment.

12:47Acts mentions a nephew, a son of Paul's sister who was living in Jerusalem. So Paul even after becoming a Christian maintained ties with his family. Paul never mentions a wife, maybe that he was a lifelong bachelor, maybe that he was widowed, we don't know. But he did know that he was called to serve God as a single person. Fourth, where was Paul born? And he tells us he was born in Tarsus of Silesia. Silesia was a Roman province in what is today, Southeastern Turkey. And Tarsus was a city on the coast. We know from the book of Acts, particularly the second chapter, that Jews in the first century were spread all around the Mediterranean basin. They lived in North Africa, they lived in Italy, they lived in Asia Minor, and Tarsus was one such city.

13:55Paul has an interesting way of describing the city of his birth. He says, I am a citizen of no ordinary city. We know about Tarsus, what made it no ordinary city. Well, one recent New Testament scholars described it this way, it was very much a Hellenistic city. It was not a Jewish enclave. It was a university town, a concourse of ideas flowed through it. It lay on a major Roman road, and so it had traffic and trade. And it was estimated to have some half million people, that was a sizable community in that day. Fifth, we mentioned this a bit earlier, Paul was born a Roman citizen. Now, Paul appeals to his Roman citizenship on two occasions in Acts, once in Philippi, and then a little later in Jerusalem in chapter 22.

15:02And it's fair to say that Paul's citizenship probably spared his life on at least one occasion. We see the dramatic moment, especially in Acts 25, and the Roman governor of Festus, the calculating political governors, about to hand Paul over to the will of unbelieving Jews. And it seems as though Paul's life is forfeit. Paul appeals to Caesar, the right of a Roman citizen, to have his case heard before Caesar himself on Italian soil, and so Paul is sent off to Rome. Paul's Roman citizenship, it becomes clear from the scripture, was a way for the gospel to be advanced. It was one of the meanings by which the gospel made its way to Rome. And there's Paul's education, sixly.

16:04Can we say about Paul's education and training? Well, he tells us in Acts 22 that he was brought up in Jerusalem. Educated under Gamelio, strictly according to the law of our fathers. And it was in this way, he tells the Philippians that I became a Pharisee of Pharisees. It seems at some point that his family moved him to Jerusalem, from Tarsus, and they placed him under the tutelage of Gamelio, very well-respected Jewish teacher. A Phariseeical teacher. And he was taught, he says, strictly, hoarding to the Jewish law. Gamelio was not lax or slack, but he took his Phariseeism very seriously. And Paul himself embraced his training with gusto.

17:05He tells the Galatians in chapter 1, I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people. Paul was not a sea student, he was at the top of the class. He was extremely zealous, he says, for the traditions of my fathers. He gives you a hint where his zeal and his training lay in the traditions that overlay the Scripture, and were taught within Phariseeical circles of Judaism. We know that Paul knew many languages. He knew Aramaic, Paul tells us in Acts 21. And Aramaic was the language of the Jewish people at that time. He knew Hebrew, he could read the Old Testament in the Hebrew original. He obviously knew Greek, he wrote letters in Greek, and he conversed in Greek.

18:05And in all probability, he knew Latin, because he ministered in parts of the empire where Latin was the predominant tongue. So he was multi-lingual. He probably had most, if not all, the Old Testament, committed to memory in Hebrew or Greek. It didn't have the benefit of concordances or search engines the way we do today. And if you look particularly at the quotes in Romans chapter 15, you'll notice in those Scripture quotes a common denominator. It's the word Gentiles. These passages come from all over the Scripture. And what Paul is doing is he's filing through his mental concordance and he's pulling passages that he is memorized from his mind. So he knew the Scripture, inemantly.

19:05But Paul's education extended to Greco-Roman sources. If you turn to Acts chapter 17, here's Paul at the Aereopagus. Paul with the Athenians. He shows himself conversing in the literature, the poetry that Greco-Roman's were reading. He's familiar with stoic philosophy and epicurean philosophy. So Paul was a broad-minded man. His training ran beyond training in the Scripture. So Paul was a thoroughly educated man. But then seventh, it raises the question, how did Paul make a living? What was his occupation? Now here we have an important difference between the way Greeks looked at scholarship and living in the way that Jews looked at scholarship and living. For Greeks, if you knew a lot, if you were devoted to a lifetime of learning, then manual labor was beneath you.

20:10And that attitude is still with us today. But it wasn't that way with Jews. For Pharisees, the most learned of teachers were expected to earn a living, farming or business or some other place. Paul learned trades the way that Jews learned trades from his father. He tells us that he was a tentmaker. Tentmaker was a person who built and repaired tents. And in a world where people traveled and slept in tents, particularly soldiers, this was a much needed, much sought after trade. And so Paul worked with his hands. And as a Christian apostle, this helped him in many ways. In Paul's day, there were many traveling teachers in the Roman world. And they would, we say, munch off their hairs. They would teach and then they would get money from their hairs and make a living that way.

21:15And they didn't have the best reputation, as you might imagine. Paul very much did not want to be lumped with that group. And so again and again, he prides himself, proper sort of pride in presenting the gospel free of charge. He tells the Corinthians, I'm not one of those teachers that pedals my message. He tells the Thessalonians, when I was with you, don't you remember that I worked night and day so as not to be a burden to you? And that was an important thing for Paul to be able to present the gospel without specter of personal financial gain. And his occupation allowed him to do that. But eighth and finally, and perhaps most importantly, as Paul surveys the whole of his life before Jesus Christ, he lands on persecution.

22:16He tells Timothy towards the end of his life. And first Timothy won, I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent opponent. He was too much for Paul that Jesus of Nazareth should be believed and worshiped as God's Messiah. And that's what took him to the Damascus road on that day. Now what have we seen as we've surveyed Paul's life? What we've seen is that God and his provenance was preparing Paul from the womb to be the man that we know from the Scripture. And he was preparing Paul in ways that I doubt Saul would have foreseen. His birth, his heritage, his family, his education were all lines that would be interwoven into the man we know as the Apostle Paul. He was a deeply cut gorge, we could say.

23:17Abilities experience, temperament, relations, all in place, but he lacked one thing. And that was the sovereign grace of God to course through that gorge, to remake him and renew him and make him the one who would bear witness to Jesus Christ. That's a potent metaphor and a helpful reminder for us today. Whatever natural abilities we may or may not possess, every person is utterly dependent on God's renewing grace to enable them to live for his glory. This has been the Saturday edition of renewing your mind. I hope you've enjoyed this study with Dr. Guy Waters exploring the life of the Apostle Paul. But there's 11 additional messages in this series that go even deeper into both the events that shaped Paul's life as well as the distinctive features of his theology.

24:18When you donate today, we'll send you the series on DVD plus you'll receive lifetime digital access to all 12 messages. And you'll also get the companion ebook from Dr. Waters along with a digital study guide. Just go to renewingyourmind.org to make your gift and we'll send you all four of these resources. The Apostle Paul went from imprisoning Christians to becoming a Christian and being imprisoned himself for his faith. How did this dramatic shift happen and why? Here's a preview of next week's episode. We're not saying that Paul had to have had a dramatic religious experience. Sometimes that comes with conversion, but sometimes it doesn't. Nor are we saying that Paul spent his whole life in Judaism burdened by guilt. There may have been periods when he was, but that need not have been the case. What we're saying when we say that Paul was converted on the Damascus Road is there came a moment on that day and in that place when confronted by Jesus Christ,

25:31confronted with a sense of his sin, he turned from his sin to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith. That's what we mean when we say that Paul was converted and that's what we'll see is born out by the testimony of the Scripture. Be sure to join us next Saturday here on renewing your mind.