(May 04, 2024) Brian Bell shares encouragingly …

If you’re thinking, ‘How can such a title bring me encouragement?,’ please keep reading!

Recently I have shared several lessons we can learn from Paul’s letters. Here I plan to share some thoughts about Paul… who was originally known as ‘Saul’ (Saulus or Shaul, the Jewish name of Paul, Paulus).

Pre-conversion
Luke tells us in Acts 7:58NLT about the stoning of Stephen: ‘The official witnesses took off their coats and laid them at the feet of a young man named Saul’ (possibly around 30ish then). And in Acts 8:1NLT that ‘Saul was one of the witnesses, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen.’

After his participation at Stephen’s stoning, Saul progressed to direct and violent persecution of the early Christian believers and ‘… was going everywhere to devastate the church. He went from house to house dragging men and women to throw them into jail’ (Acts 8:3).

Back then Saul was like those Pharisees who took issue with the Lord Jesus during His earthly ministry. In fact he later confessed that he had been ‘… a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law.’ I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church’(Philippines 3:5b-6aNLT. See also Acts 26:5).

The record against Saul is not what you or I might consider a good reference if we had to choose someone to bring the gospel to the known world. Yet God’s plan was to choose Saul!

Incredible, when you think of it! But… this should encourage us all; our pre-conversion background (even our post-conversion failing!) is not an impediment to God using us as an instrument in His service.

Conversion
This is recorded in Acts 9. Luke doesn’t tell us that Saul was under a strong conviction of sin in his life at that time – which is a common pre-conversion experience for many people. Verse 1 tells that he was pressing ahead with great determination to destroy the Lord’s followers, ‘still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples.’

I’ve learned to respect how the Lord chooses to work in people’s lives to draw them to Himself. Some people have been saved from difficult circumstances such as addictions, while others were brought up in a sheltered church going environment. We are all sinners, however, and it takes the same grace and faith to make us children of God!

In Saul’s case the Lord chose a very direct approach when He made a post-resurrection intervention to Saul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3-8).

Preparation 
In Acts 9:10 the Lord calls a believer named Ananias to visit the now blind Saul. The message he was given to bring to him did not highlight any great accomplishments that would be achieved later, but that Saul would now realise he was a believer and that he –

• Was the Lord’s chosen instrument to proclaim His name to the Gentiles.
• Would also proclaim Jesus to the people of Israel. 
• Would be shown by Jesus how much he must suffer for Him, for His very name.

Faithful Ananias did this, laying hands on the blinded Saul who not only miraculously received his sight restored, but was filled with the Holy Spirit, who would enable him to fulfil his calling.

Following his conversion, Paul, by which name he is now known, had difficulty convincing the believers of the genuineness of his conversion and found the tables turned as the Jewish leaders he had been serving now sought to kill him!

But God knew what He was doing in calling Paul to serve Him. As a younger man, Paul had been a real student of the scriptures… as he had told a waiting crowd who were set to kill him, he was educated in Jerusalem under Gamaliel (Acts 21:3).

In his letter to the Galatians he shared how he spent three years in Arabia where he received a direct revelation from the Lord Jesus about his message. Now that learning experience, far exceeded all that he had learned in the rabbinical school of Gamaliel!

And later he told King Agrippa, ‘As the Jewish leaders are well aware, I was given a thorough Jewish training from my earliest childhood among my own people and in Jerusalem. If they would admit it, they know that I have been a member of the Pharisees, the strictest sect of our religion’ (Acts 26:4-5).

Ministry
Reading through the book of the Acts, Paul’s missionary journeys are captured for us and so well recorded by Luke who accompanied him.

We find Paul’s ministry in bringing the gospel message to both Gentiles and Jews – just as the Lord had prophesied. The account of Paul’s missionary journeys in Acts are further enhanced by reading his letters to the early believers formed into groups or bodies that we generally refer to as ‘church.’

Those letters – epistles – are Romans, 1+2Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippines, Colossians, 1+2Thessalonians, 1+2Timothy, Titus, Philemon… and possibly Hebrews (although not everyone shares this view).

Each letter is unique: With great teaching and lessons included in their content such as –

• Living as a Christian in the everyday world and within the church.
• Precious Holy Spirit’s work in the life of believers.
• Sovereignty of Jesus and His work of redemption.
• Sure return of Christ.
• Unearnable salvation: It is a work of grace through faith.
  

It is clear that Paul’s general intention was that these letters should be shared. For example in Colossians 4:16 encourages – ‘After you have read this letter, pass it on to the church in Laodicea so they can read it too and you should read the letter I wrote to them.’

Legacy
Most people see Paul’s letters as his greatest legacy. In 2Timothy 3:16 he wrote, ‘All scripture is inspired by God.’  Here Paul was speaking about what we call the Old Testament scriptures… never imagining that in God’s providence his letters would make up a major part of what would be known as New Testament scripture.

 Paul’s life –

• Demonstrates that it is possible to live the Christian life in the face of great adversity.
• Shows that we can even rejoice in the face of sickness and uncertainty.
• Encourages us to ensure we don’t live selfishly, but live the ‘Spirit-filled’ life.
• Inspires us to keep pressing on in the Christian life, working and waiting on either the upward call of the Lord at the rapture of those believers still living, or our resurrection from the grave at the time of that event.

Paul believed and wrote about this last event… aware that it draws nearer each new day, yet wisely never sought to state a date.

His words in Philippians 1:21 are perhaps the greatest testimony to his legacy ‘For me, living is for Christ and dying is even better.’

Paul didn’t leave a legacy of property or other valuable possessions. His legacy was not what he left but what he would gain: something eternal and incorruptible. For Paul dying was not the inevitable conclusion to his life on earth but an entrance into a new life which even he had not been able to fully comprehend.

Testimony
I often need to remind myself of Paul’s words in Philippians 3:12-14NLT – ‘I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be… I am still not all I should be… forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus is calling us up to heaven.’

When we stand as believers to give an account of our service to the Lord there will be ‘degrees’ of reward, but may we who have been able to labour in the harvest field, wherever and however that may have been, hear the Lord say, ‘Well done good and faithful servant.’ Surely that makes dying even better!

To finish, I share a verse from the Graham Kendrick 1993 song All I Once Dear which reflects Paul’s thinking –

‘Oh to know the power of your risen life
And to know you in your sufferings,
To become like you in your death my Lord.
So with you to live and never die.’

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Brian Bell is a diaconate member, Christ Church (Congregational) Abbots Cross, Northern Ireland. Brian describes himself as ‘grateful for the privilege and opportunity given me to serve my Lord.’
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