As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this passage:
15But when God, the One setting me apart out of my mother’s womb and calling [me] through His grace, was pleased 16to reveal His Son in me in order that I might be preaching Him among the Gentiles, I immediately did not confer with flesh and blood 17neither went up into Jerusalem toward those [who were] apostles before me, but I departed into Arabia and returned again into Damascus.
As I am studying these verses, there is an enormously important issue at stake, that being the entire matter of apostolic authority. I am tempted to jot down some thoughts on the subject but I might wait until I’m further into the text.
For today, indulge me a moment to pause on those opening words, “But when God …”
Many, many times in my earthly existence, those words have been my strength and stay: “But when God …”
I often think, “and it’s a good thing …!”
Praise God that He intervenes in the cobbled up mess of our human bunglings!
I am constantly amazed how He has in the past and continues to intervene in my life. My wife and I are quite sure we’d both be dead today if He hadn’t stepped into our lives in college. There are just so, so, so many ways I have set myself on completely the wrong course, thinking I was doing the right thing, only to have the Lord somehow intervene and rescue me before I [completely] crashed and burned. “But when God …”
It’s just one more reason why we all desperately need Him in our life. I seem to have an infinite propensity for bad decisions. And I live in a malevolent world where the very air itself is trying to kill me. Washington is cruising on a path of national complete self-destruction. If it’s “up to me” basically I’m dead. I desperately need a God Who’s bigger than it all, Who’s committed to my good, and Who will intervene and rescue me whether it’s me or the world or Washington or satan’s demonic hosts trying to kill me. My wife needs that kind of God. My kids need that kind of God. We all need that kind of God. The good news is that our God’s name is Jesus “for He shall save His people from their sins.” His very name means “savior,” “deliverer.”
Good thing. Someone once said, “It be our wisdom to trace our every good gift back to God’s benevolent heart.”
And one more thing. I realize I’m seriously extrapolating from the text, but notice that the Lord’s interest in Paul didn’t start one sunny day as he was traveling to Damascus. He refers to the Lord as “the One setting me apart out of my mother’s womb.” All of us are seriously indebted to the One Who has actually been watching out for our good since our very conception. Of course we could extrapolate even that back to “eternity past,” “since the world began,” “before the foundation of the world …” Point is that we are no “lately” thought in God’s heart. He said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you and ordained you to be a prophet …” (1:5).
There was clearly a time when the Lord “called” Paul “by His grace.” But He had set him apart from his mother’s womb. So with us. Calvin said, “…He is said to separate us from the womb, because the design of our being sent into the world is that He may accomplish in us what He has decreed. The calling is delayed till its proper time, …”
This is a truth on which I nurse to maintain my sanity. Again, I have made so, so, so many bad decisions in my life. There is so, so, so much I would go back and change if only I could. So many things I wish could have been so different. On the one hand I fully realize I am responsible for my every bad decision. There is a sense in which I am simply suffering the consequences of those bad decisions. It is my fault. Yet … just before I go find a seventh floor window somewhere, I can sincerely comfort myself with the thought that God has allowed it all. Even my bad decisions. Jesus warned Peter he was going to fall. “Satan has desired to sift you.” He knew he would fail. He encouraged him to succeed, “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.” Yet what He told him was, “but when you’re restored, strengthen the brethren.” Next to Judas Iscariot, Peter’s failure probably goes down in history as one of the worst. Judas hanged himself. Peter got up and changed the world. The Lord took his “bad decision” and used it to finally purge out Peter’s pride, to make him a genuinely humble man, a man who no longer constantly self-destructed putting himself forward. And so it is with each of us. He has very carefully allowed even our failures and the failures of others who have influenced us. When we survey it all, we can do like Judas and hang ourselves or like Peter and learn from our failures, be better for what we learned, and let God use the “us” we are today. He’s been in charge all along. We are where we are today, we are who we are today, because of a good God.
Left to ourselves, we’ve all proven again and again our fetish for self-destruction.
“But when God …”
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