13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. 14 And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born,1 and who called me by his grace, 16 was pleased to reveal his Son to2 me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone;3 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.
Section Overview: Paul’s About-Face as Evidence of the Divine Origin of His Gospel
In Galatians 1:13–17 Paul begins the chronological account of his relationship with the influential apostles as proof (“for”; v. 13) that his gospel comes not from any human being (whether the other apostles or his own imagination), but from God. The story begins with his dramatic call to proclaim to the Gentiles the very gospel whose adherents he had previously tried to destroy (vv. 13–16a). Only God could have transformed Paul so radically. The story continues with a brief review of Paul’s work in Arabia and Syria. This was a three-year period (v. 18) in which he had no contact with the influential apostles and therefore could not have received either his gospel or his apostolic authority from them.
Section Outline
Response
Paul does not use the word conversion of his call to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, but it is an appropriate description of what happened to him. God turned the direction of Paul’s relationship with him 180 degrees. As the Christians he used to persecute said in amazement, he was “now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy” (1:23). Paul’s point in 1:13–17 is that only the power and grace of God could produce such a change. There was actually no human involvement in it at all, either from Paul himself or from anyone else.
What Paul affirms about his own conversion is something he affirms for everyone else who enters the people of God as well. “While we were enemies,” he says in Romans, “we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (5:10). Apart from God’s dramatic intervention in the lives of sinners, no one would be in a peaceful relationship with God. This act of great generosity toward every believer should prompt all of us to thank and praise God for his kindness (cf. 1 Tim. 1:12, 17).
Because the conversion of any believer is entirely an act of God’s free and powerful grace, God’s choice of who to include among his people is often surprising. Who would have guessed that God would choose the great enemy and persecutor of the early church, himself a zealous nationalist for his own people, to become one of the early church’s most effective preachers of the gospel to all types of people (Eph. 3:7–10)? Paul’s conversion forms an important leitmotif through much of the NT precisely because it is so surprising and such a clear demonstration of God’s power to change even the worst sinners into his faithful servants (Acts 8:3; 9:1–29; 22:3–21; 26:9–20; 1 Cor. 15:9; Eph. 3:8; 1 Tim. 1:12–13). We should never assume that anyone is beyond the reach of God’s grace, and we should humbly welcome everyone whom his grace reaches and brings into the full fellowship of his people.