Paul

But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord over-flowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. (I Timothy 1:13-14)

Paul’s writings alone clearly demonstrate God’s infinite wisdom in converting Paul. But if you consider the chronology of his life, the very source of his passion to emphasize justification through faith alone apart from works comes plainly into view. Perhaps God chose Paul for the same reason he chose David: They both portray the very best and worst in all of us. David wrote in the Psalms after being convicted by the prophet Nathan of murder for the sake of adultery, “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:16-17) We tend to systematically entrap ourselves within an outward appearance constructed of one false notion regarding ourselves after another. There are so many things that we sincerely want to believe are true about ourselves. And the longer we hold on to them the more real they become to us. Only the humility that failure produces can help us see through our deep denial of the truth. As Solomon declared, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Psalm 111:10)

Jesus begins his ministry by sending the religious world of his day into shock. He turns away from the religious experts to select twelve simple tradesman void of formal religious education or training and turns them into bold, charismatic, miracle-working servants of God. In this way he brings to life His declaration, “For judgment I have come into the world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” (John 9:39) Jesus completely confounded the self-righteous religious leaders of the day. He tells the story of the Prodigal Son, in which the religious leaders have become the jealous and resentful obedient son who remained at home. Jesus made it clear that entry into the Kingdom of God could no longer be obscured by religion. People would now overtake the religious to enter the Kingdom of God ahead of them. A host of unholy worldly attitudes drive the religious to crucify Jesus, but as He had taught throughout his ministry, He would show us the way to the Father by overcoming death through His resurrection to return to the right hand of God.

The stage was now set for Jesus to personally call Paul into service. Paul was intimately familiar with the scriptures – especially the keeping of God’s laws. He studied under Gamaliel, a leading authority in the Sanhedrin, who was a known and respected Pharisee and Doctor of Jewish Law. He was a man highly educated in religion and the scriptures with a misguided zeal for God that had him on the road to Damascus to find Christians and see them put to death. Upon halting Paul, Jesus asked him the most disturbing question of all, “Why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4) In retrospect, Paul admits that prior to his conversion he was an obsessive legalist – fully convinced that he was doing everything right. Through this admission he lends credibility to his final conclusion: Religious practice alone proved to be refuse. (Phil 3:4-7) The sobering truth was that his obsessive devotion to practicing religion for the sake of advancement through works alone did not prevent him from becoming both an accomplice to entrapment and pre-meditated murder and a persecutor of God and those He had hand-picked as servants. Paul had been in deep denial regarding himself, but Jesus confronted him with his own blindness to thereby lead him to the realization that each of us must eventually arrive at in order to truly know the real joy of salvation,

“…Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”