May 1, 2025 • 27 mins
Talk about a great hero of the faith! But how much do we really know about the Apostle Paul? What drove Paul to endure often treacherous journeys of hundreds of miles to establish like-minded communities around the world as he knew it? What spurred him to recruit a network of co-workers who were willing to help him in this vast project? What kept him at the task even when it landed him in prison? What prompted him to produce a body of letters to these communities of such depth that millions of people still read them with profit today? Author Frank Thielman dropped by to share some very meaningful, faith-building thoughts about Paul!
https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Apostle-Grace-Frank-Thielman/dp/0802876293
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:00):
Kurt and Kate mornings, not just on the radio.
S2 (00:03):
It's a podcast to.
S1 (00:06):
Talk about a great hero of the faith. But how
much do we really know about the Apostle Paul?
S2 (00:12):
Not enough, but we know more now because we talked
to Frank Thielman, who wrote the book Paul, Apostle of Grace.
S1 (00:19):
He wrote so much of the New Testament there's we
could literally do the radio program. We could do three
hours on Paul and we could, we could. And for
the podcast here, we could have an episode that's three
hours long. Would anybody listen? It's asking too much of
our our people who drop by to listen to the
podcast and maybe the radio program too. But there's so
(00:40):
much we can learn from the Apostle Paul's life, things
we can identify with, uh, encouragement we can gain, uh,
you know, knowing Jesus better. Uh, there's just so much
to this, and I, I really hope that as you
listen to our conversation with Frank, that it will give
you a nice foundation and maybe add some nuance to
(01:03):
your reading of some of Paul's letters in the New Testament,
and we'll give you that hunger to just spend some
time with him. That's my hope. Take a listen. We're
glad you're here. Let's dive in. Frank, where do we start?
The apostle Paul. Okay. Uh, where was he born? And
what do we know about his childhood, if anything?
S3 (01:29):
Paul was born in Tarsus, which was a large, flourishing city.
It was, um, near the coast. Not exactly on it,
but so close to the coast that lots of ships
could come into a nearby port. So it was a
very important commercial center. Greek was the language that flourished
(01:49):
there and was generally spoken. So Paul grew up knowing Greek. Uh,
Paul was part of a, um, a A Jewish family,
a very seriously Jewish family that took their faith quite seriously.
And so even though Paul was probably schooled in the
(02:10):
language and literature of, uh, great Greek philosophers and playwrights,
they were also careful to school him in the scriptures.
And so Paul was a was a really unusual person
for his time. He was very well educated. He was
(02:30):
both a well-educated Jew, and he was very well educated
in the in the way of life of the Greeks.
And that made him, uh, that really prepared him, I think,
for what God called him to do later in life
as he took the gospel to the nations.
S1 (02:50):
Isn't that very instructive? God is always working ahead of
the curve. Obviously he is, because he sees everything as
one big snapshot. It's not successive moments like those of
us who are in time. He's outside of time, so
he sees everything the beginning right up to to the end,
and he knows how he's going to to use things.
(03:11):
And of course, that takes us back to a familiar verse.
If we think about this. Romans 828, all things work
together for the good of those who love God, for
those who are called according to his purpose. And the
Apostle Paul probably will get more into this here, I'm sure.
But he was if you were just, you know, from
(03:31):
a human perspective, looking at him, uh, probably the least
likely guy that you would guess that God would choose
to use so mightily even though he had prepared him. Uh,
you know, obviously he was a persecutor of the church and,
and and all of that. The teacher that he sat
(03:52):
under in Jerusalem is a Gamaliel.
S3 (03:56):
Yeah, Gamaliel is the way I usually pronounce it. I
actually don't know if that's correct, but that's what I say.
S1 (04:04):
Yeah. We do.
S2 (04:05):
We just say words.
S1 (04:06):
Yeah, I just kind of guess.
S3 (04:07):
So.
S1 (04:07):
I gave it a shot. He was a big time teacher,
wasn't he?
S3 (04:12):
Yes. He was a famous rabbi who is known from
writings outside the New Testament. And Luke mentions him a
couple of times in the book of acts. And in
one of those places Paul is speaking, and he says
that he studied at the feet of Gamaliel. So, uh,
he Paul studied in Jerusalem. That's where Gamaliel was located.
(04:37):
And that means that sometime during his youth, his parents
sent him off from Tarsus to Jerusalem, um, where Paul
had relatives. We know from another little reference in the
book of acts that he had a nephew in Jerusalem and, uh,
he had a sister there. And so I think we
can imagine Paul having these family connections as a young
(05:00):
man and his parents realizing that it was very difficult
to understand the Mosaic law. Well, and the Hebrew Scriptures,
as well as they wanted Paul to outside the land
of Israel. And so they sent him to Jerusalem to
study under this famous rabbi. Um, you know, some of
(05:22):
that's speculative. We don't know that they sent him there.
Paul may have found Gamaliel himself, but in any case,
as a young man, he studied under this very famous
rabbi who, from what we know about Gamaliel, was a very, um,
even keeled, decent, peace loving person. Um, he, uh, in
(05:45):
the book of acts at one place, he kind of
rises to the defense of the, uh, of of the
early Christian movement with his colleagues on the Sanhedrin. Um,
he was not a believer himself, but he seems to
have been, uh, a peace loving person. Which makes it
(06:06):
odd that Paul, his student, uh, was so violently opposed
to the church. But, um, there was something about Paul,
the young man that just was violently opposed to the
Jesus movement. We don't know exactly why that was, but
it may have been because Paul saw the Jesus movement
(06:28):
as opening the kingdom of God and the people of
God up to the poor, the needy, all the nations
of the earth. Uh, and having this broad appeal, which
Paul seems to possibly have not appreciated, that might have
been one reason that he persecuted the church.
S1 (06:51):
Yes. See? That's interesting. Yeah. As we ponder his life.
And I'm so glad, Frank, that he does describe in
his writings in the New Testament, um, you know, kind
of he gives us he pulls back the curtain a
little bit on who he was, how zealous he was,
and all of that. He he wasn't really super into, um,
(07:13):
you know, writing about himself. But I am grateful for
the snapshots we get. He talks about his persecutions and
all of that. He's he's very honest. It just rings true,
doesn't it?
S3 (07:26):
Absolutely. You know, several times in Paul's letters he mentions
the fact that he persecuted the church. And as you
said a moment ago, he refers to himself as the
least of all the the apostles because he persecuted the church.
He he says that a couple of times, once in
first Corinthians and once in Ephesians, and you get this
(07:50):
sense that, um, that Paul, looking back on his life,
just felt terribly about what he had done in persecuting
the church. He presided over the death of Stephen. But
I think one of the reasons that Paul was so
consumed with the gospel and with Christ was that he
(08:12):
felt forgiven by Christ for what he had done. And
so Paul's life and he speaks of this a couple
of times in his letters. Paul's life, especially his conversion,
was an example to others that God can transform people, uh,
(08:33):
who are involved in very deep sin. I mean, Paul
was involved in, uh, murderous sin against the people of God,
and yet God graciously transformed him, forgave him, and not
only did that, but called him to preach this gospel.
(08:53):
He was one of the central people in the proclamation
of the gospel. So.
S1 (08:57):
So did he actually. I mean, we don't know 100%
for sure. Guilt by association. Maybe it's implied that he
was involved in maybe murdering some of the early believers. Maybe.
S3 (09:09):
Yeah, well, we know that that's true of, uh, Stephen who, um,
you know, at the end of acts chapter six and
all through chapter seven, we find the story of Stephen,
who was a leader in the early church. And, um, Paul, um,
Luke tells us, stood by as a witness while the
(09:31):
people that stoned Stephen, um, murdered him.
S1 (09:36):
Yeah.
S3 (09:37):
And, uh, so he played kind of a judicial role
in this lynching of Stephen. And, um, that probably was
not the only time that Paul was involved in the
deaths of Christians.
S4 (09:52):
Thank you for taking some time to listen to this
episode of the Kurt and Kate Mornings podcast. We always
welcome a review with your thoughts and comments, and please
feel free to subscribe and follow us as well.
S1 (10:04):
Let's talk about his conversion. We kind of laid the groundwork,
but the road to Damascus, the you talk about a
shocking conversion. That's exactly what happened there. Let's let's dive
into that part of the story.
S3 (10:18):
Yeah. Well, Paul was, um, as we've said a minute ago,
a vigorous persecutor of the church. He was very well
connected because the book of acts tells us that he
was able to get letters of support from the high
priests in Jerusalem to go to Damascus and round up
(10:41):
Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem. Apparently, the idea
was to snuff out the infant Christian movement in Damascus.
It's interesting that there were Christians all the way up
a couple of hundred miles or more north of Jerusalem,
in Damascus at this point. Apparently some of them, uh,
(11:02):
had some people had heard Jesus teach and, uh, gone
back to Damascus, taken the gospel there, and there was
a small community. These were all Jewish Christians. They were
all part of the synagogue. And so the high priest
in Jerusalem would have some say over how things were
run there, or at least some influence over, uh, the
(11:23):
leaders of the Jewish community in Damascus. So Paul headed
north to Damascus with a little entourage of, uh, people
with him to help him arrest Christians. And along that route, uh,
the Lord Jesus appeared to him and, um, said to him, Paul, Paul,
(11:46):
why are you persecuting me? And, you know, it's so interesting.
The Lord puts it like that. Um, because of course,
the Lord, um, had been raised from the dead. He
had ascended to heaven and was seated at the right
hand of God. But, um, he speaks as if Paul
(12:06):
is persecuting him. And some scholars have wondered if this
might be the point at which, you know, afterward, reflecting
on that language that the Lord uses, that Paul begin
to think in terms of Christians as the body of Christ,
as united with Christ by faith, so that Paul's persecution
(12:31):
of these humble believers in Damascus was actually hurting Christ. And, um,
that vision of, of Christ, uh, on the road to
Damascus was absolutely transformative in Paul's life. And, um, so
(12:52):
he carried on. You know, he was he was basically, uh,
blinded by this vision. And the people in his entourage
carried on with him to to Damascus. They probably didn't
quite know what to do because they hadn't fully understood
what had happened. Um, they seem to have seen a light. Um,
(13:15):
but they didn't understand what was said to Paul. So
they don't seem to have fully understood what had happened.
And they carried on to Damascus, uh, where for several
weeks Paul fasted and prayed. And then the Lord sent
to Paul, a believer in Damascus named Ananias.
S1 (13:38):
Let's talk about Ananias. This is this is classic. Well,
first of all, several weeks. Let's just think about that.
Here he is. He's been blinded. And here he is.
He's fasting. This is not just. Okay. Tomorrow, Ananias is
coming to visit me. You said several weeks here. And then.
By the way, Ananias was given a vision to go
and lay hands on Paul to heal him. Can you
(14:00):
imagine how he was shaking in his boots? He's like,
are you serious? God, am I hearing you correctly?
S3 (14:07):
That's right. And Ananias basically said that to the Lord
when the Lord directed him to Paul, he said, but
you know, Lord, this this is a person who came
here to persecute us. And, um, so there was some
fear there. But the the amazing thing about Ananias is
that he was obedient to the Lord despite his fear.
(14:32):
And he went to Paul and brought him into the
Christian community there. And it was probably in Damascus that
Paul was first Catechized in the Christian faith. So he
first began to learn the the basics of Christian theology
(14:52):
from this humble group of Jewish Christians in Damascus.
S1 (14:56):
Now, something that's kind of interesting is he didn't immediately,
I would think, okay, well, I need to head to
Jerusalem and meet with, uh, you know, the apostles and stuff.
I need to meet with the guys who were walking
with Jesus. I need to I need to learn. I
need to be instructed and all of that. But it
(15:16):
doesn't appear like he really spent a lot of time there. Instead,
he was directed to go to Arabia and for how
many years? And I don't know. Again, that's not what
we would expect to be a part of his story.
We figured he'd just, you know, pick up stakes and
go to Jerusalem and hang out with the guys.
S3 (15:36):
Right? Which he eventually did, but only after several years.
And you're exactly right. So in that initial vision. Transformative
vision from the Lord. It was communicated to Paul that
he was to take the good news of the risen
Jesus to the nations, and then that was confirmed again
(15:57):
by Ananias in Damascus. And so, apparently, the the first
nation that Paul took the gospel to, I mean, he
preached in the synagogues there in Damascus, but, uh, he
he went into the Nabataean kingdom, what was known as Arabia.
So this was a an area that stretched all the
(16:18):
way from the southern Arabian Peninsula, way up into Mesopotamia.
Most of it was ruled by a very famous, well-known
king named Aretus. Aretus the fourth and, uh, Paul went
into this area. There were lots of Jewish people there.
There were lots and lots of Gentiles there. And it
(16:39):
was a wonderful place to explain the gospel to all
the nations. It's interesting, you know, that many of the
Jewish and many of the Gentile cultures that lived in
Nabatea actually practiced circumcision. Circumcision was not unique to the Jews.
And so Paul's, Paul's movement there to proclaim the gospel
(17:05):
may have been a just kind of an incremental movement
to into a culture that was fairly close to the
culture that he knew so well and had been tutored in,
in Judea. But nevertheless, um, a lot of paganism there and, uh,
a lot of worship of other gods and a great
(17:29):
need for people to be introduced to the the one God,
the creator of heaven and earth, and his Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ. So it was an interesting choice for
Paul to go into Arabia, and he apparently spent three
years there and then returned to Damascus, which for a
(17:50):
brief period of time was under the control of King
Aratus the Fourth. And, um, Paul got into some trouble
there and had to escape over the city wall.
S1 (18:01):
Paul the Apostle Paul the Great Escape.
S2 (18:04):
Got into trouble. That's kind of a theme.
S1 (18:06):
Isn't.
S2 (18:06):
Exactly.
S1 (18:07):
Paul was always getting in trouble, which we'll talk about
his persecutions, uh, coming up in just a minute. But, uh,
you know, we talked about the thorn in the flesh
that a messenger of Satan to disturb him, to torment
him really is the way he put it. Getting back
to the road to Damascus and the blinding in the eyes.
(18:27):
We don't know what the thorn in the flesh was,
but some speculate it was a physical condition related to
that conversion experience with his eyes. Um, where do you
land on that? I'm curious.
S3 (18:40):
That's a really good question. There's been a lot of
speculation about what The Thorn in the flesh was, because
the Bible doesn't tell us, Paul doesn't tell us. Acts
doesn't tell us. But you can make some informed guesses
about what it was. Paul does say in Galatians that
he preached the gospel for the first time in Galatia
(19:04):
because of an ailment. He tells the Galatians. And he
says that he's so grateful to the Galatians because they
would have plucked out their eyes if necessary, to help him, basically. Yeah.
And so that's where that idea comes from, that maybe
it was something to do with his eyes. I leaned
(19:24):
more in the direction that it was, a that it
was a reoccurring illness of some type. The great 19th
century archaeologist and biblical scholar William Ramsay thought it was
maybe malaria, which was common in the areas that Paul
traveled and can be a recurring illness that, you know,
(19:45):
comes back and you have bouts of it. Paul says
three times the I prayed to the Lord to remove
this from me, so that it almost sounds like it
was something that recurred time and again, and he would
ask the Lord to remove it from him. You know,
that's probably all a little bit too speculative. We don't
(20:05):
know exactly what it was, but we do know that
Paul really struggled with bodily ailment and suffering. Um, you know,
that bodily ailment may have been, uh, the the origin
of his near-death experience that he talks about in Second
Corinthians chapter one. Yeah.
S1 (20:24):
It could be the the the stoning, uh, incident. Right.
S3 (20:29):
That could be connected with it as well. That's exactly right. And, uh,
you know, Paul clearly, uh, he was stoned and left
for dead. He must have had a severe concussion. Well,
that can do things to you, you know. And so
this Paul clearly struggled with some kind of illness or
disability for much of his ministry.
S1 (20:52):
How encouraging to think about that. Yeah. Can God use me?
The chief of sinners? Can he really forgive me for that?
A trophy of his grace, the Apostle Paul. Can God
really not only forgive me, but use me?
S2 (21:06):
He does.
S1 (21:06):
Apostle.
S2 (21:07):
Paul. We're all sinners.
S1 (21:08):
Look at.
S2 (21:09):
This.
S1 (21:09):
And out of that great love that is in grace
that's shown to us, we love him back. Paul loved
him so much that he said, anywhere, God, take me anywhere.
But it wasn't easy. Hello. Does God always want you
to be healthy without any pain? Physical pain? Look at
the life of the Apostle Paul. He dealt with physical challenges.
(21:35):
The bottom line is God is with you in the
midst of them. Sometimes he removes them. He's sovereign. But
other times he says, my grace, like you told Paul,
my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is
made perfect in your weakness. God makes the call on this. Wow. Okay. So,
(21:58):
by the way, guys, if you want to read more
about the the Apostle Paul, kind of a flyover. Uh,
acts 22 through 26, chapters 22 through 26. Maybe you
want to make that a point of your Bible reading
here over the next couple of days or so? Church tradition. Frank,
what did the Apostle Paul look like now, based upon
(22:19):
what I've heard, is that, uh, citing some of these sources,
we would not be impressed with his appearance today. I mean,
he wouldn't be the guy. You'd be like, there we go.
He's our next megachurch pastor right there. Yeah. Um, what?
Do we know anything about his physical appearance?
S3 (22:38):
Well, a lot of it is speculative, so we have
to be careful here. But, you know, sort of like
with the thorn in the flesh, we can we can
make some educated guesses. And it is true that a
very early, uh, document, uh, called the Acts of Paul. Now,
it's not canonical, and, um, it probably contains a lot
(23:01):
of information in it that is not correct, but it
has a description of Paul's physical appearance in it. And, um,
it's a very early document. It was written in the
in the mid second century AD, and it may contain
a memory of what the Apostle Paul actually looked like.
(23:23):
And he is described as, uh, short, basically kind of
bowlegged and balding. And, you know, this sort of matches
up with what Paul's opponents that Paul describes in Second
Corinthians said about him that he was a person whose
(23:44):
bodily presence was weak, was the way that they put it. And,
you know, his letters are impressive, they say, but his
speaking ability is not at all impressive, and his bodily
presence is weak. So, you know, we don't know for sure,
but Paul does seem to have been a person that
(24:04):
would not have, you know, just immediately attracted attention because of, uh,
because he was so strong or handsome or anything else.
Quite the reverse. He seems to have been somebody that was, uh,
was even kind of painful, perhaps, to look at, you know,
(24:25):
at the end of Galatians he says, let no one
give me trouble because he's being criticized, Sized for preaching
a people pleasing form of the gospel because he preaches
God's grace and he says, let no one give me trouble,
because I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.
(24:47):
And he uses a word for marks there, stigmata that
sound like he's talking about some kind of physical scarring,
maybe from the beatings that he received or the lashings
or that stoning in Lystra in Acts 14. Yeah. And so, uh,
you know, he may have had some real physical, um, um,
(25:08):
impairments resulting from that and may or may not have
been a person that was very easy to look at.
S1 (25:16):
We have just two minutes here before we have to
cut you loose, which is a bummer because like I said,
we could continue this conversation for hours. But, uh, one
thing I do want to point out is that, in
my opinion, one of the best The evidences of the
resurrection of Jesus is the lives of his disciples. And
(25:36):
I'm including the Apostle Paul in this. Why would Paul,
of all people throw away all of his, you know, education?
He was zealous. He was on track to be a
mover and shaker. He sat under the best teachers in Judaism.
He was going to be the bomb, and this was
(25:57):
his ambition. There is no way you can explain why
he would turn and embrace a life of persecution and rejection,
and go through everything that he went through. If Jesus
had not risen from the dead, in fact, he even
says that you know your our faith is useless. We
die in our sins. If Jesus has not been raised,
(26:19):
but he has been raised. What a great evidence that
the faith that we embrace as believers is real.
S3 (26:28):
Absolutely. That's right on target. um, hurt. And, you know,
for Paul, um, that experience of the resurrected Christ was
just absolutely transformative for him. He could say, as he
sat in prison in Rome, for me to live is
Christ and to die is gain. Uh, he could say
(26:50):
to the Galatians, I have been crucified with Christ nevertheless,
not I, but Christ lives in me and the life
I now live in the flesh. I live by faith
in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me. So that's how transformative, um, the gospel
of the crucified and risen Jesus was for Paul.
S2 (27:13):
Thanks for listening to Kurt and Kate Mornings podcast. Please
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no matter where in the world you are, you can
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Kurt and Kate mornings, not just on the radio.
S2 (00:03):
It's a podcast to.
S1 (00:06):
Talk about a great hero of the faith. But how
much do we really know about the Apostle Paul?
S2 (00:12):
Not enough, but we know more now because we talked
to Frank Thielman, who wrote the book Paul, Apostle of Grace.
S1 (00:19):
He wrote so much of the New Testament there's we
could literally do the radio program. We could do three
hours on Paul and we could, we could. And for
the podcast here, we could have an episode that's three
hours long. Would anybody listen? It's asking too much of
our our people who drop by to listen to the
podcast and maybe the radio program too. But there's so
(00:40):
much we can learn from the Apostle Paul's life, things
we can identify with, uh, encouragement we can gain, uh,
you know, knowing Jesus better. Uh, there's just so much
to this, and I, I really hope that as you
listen to our conversation with Frank, that it will give
you a nice foundation and maybe add some nuance to
(01:03):
your reading of some of Paul's letters in the New Testament,
and we'll give you that hunger to just spend some
time with him. That's my hope. Take a listen. We're
glad you're here. Let's dive in. Frank, where do we start?
The apostle Paul. Okay. Uh, where was he born? And
what do we know about his childhood, if anything?
S3 (01:29):
Paul was born in Tarsus, which was a large, flourishing city.
It was, um, near the coast. Not exactly on it,
but so close to the coast that lots of ships
could come into a nearby port. So it was a
very important commercial center. Greek was the language that flourished
(01:49):
there and was generally spoken. So Paul grew up knowing Greek. Uh,
Paul was part of a, um, a A Jewish family,
a very seriously Jewish family that took their faith quite seriously.
And so even though Paul was probably schooled in the
(02:10):
language and literature of, uh, great Greek philosophers and playwrights,
they were also careful to school him in the scriptures.
And so Paul was a was a really unusual person
for his time. He was very well educated. He was
(02:30):
both a well-educated Jew, and he was very well educated
in the in the way of life of the Greeks.
And that made him, uh, that really prepared him, I think,
for what God called him to do later in life
as he took the gospel to the nations.
S1 (02:50):
Isn't that very instructive? God is always working ahead of
the curve. Obviously he is, because he sees everything as
one big snapshot. It's not successive moments like those of
us who are in time. He's outside of time, so
he sees everything the beginning right up to to the end,
and he knows how he's going to to use things.
(03:11):
And of course, that takes us back to a familiar verse.
If we think about this. Romans 828, all things work
together for the good of those who love God, for
those who are called according to his purpose. And the
Apostle Paul probably will get more into this here, I'm sure.
But he was if you were just, you know, from
(03:31):
a human perspective, looking at him, uh, probably the least
likely guy that you would guess that God would choose
to use so mightily even though he had prepared him. Uh,
you know, obviously he was a persecutor of the church and,
and and all of that. The teacher that he sat
(03:52):
under in Jerusalem is a Gamaliel.
S3 (03:56):
Yeah, Gamaliel is the way I usually pronounce it. I
actually don't know if that's correct, but that's what I say.
S1 (04:04):
Yeah. We do.
S2 (04:05):
We just say words.
S1 (04:06):
Yeah, I just kind of guess.
S3 (04:07):
So.
S1 (04:07):
I gave it a shot. He was a big time teacher,
wasn't he?
S3 (04:12):
Yes. He was a famous rabbi who is known from
writings outside the New Testament. And Luke mentions him a
couple of times in the book of acts. And in
one of those places Paul is speaking, and he says
that he studied at the feet of Gamaliel. So, uh,
he Paul studied in Jerusalem. That's where Gamaliel was located.
(04:37):
And that means that sometime during his youth, his parents
sent him off from Tarsus to Jerusalem, um, where Paul
had relatives. We know from another little reference in the
book of acts that he had a nephew in Jerusalem and, uh,
he had a sister there. And so I think we
can imagine Paul having these family connections as a young
(05:00):
man and his parents realizing that it was very difficult
to understand the Mosaic law. Well, and the Hebrew Scriptures,
as well as they wanted Paul to outside the land
of Israel. And so they sent him to Jerusalem to
study under this famous rabbi. Um, you know, some of
(05:22):
that's speculative. We don't know that they sent him there.
Paul may have found Gamaliel himself, but in any case,
as a young man, he studied under this very famous
rabbi who, from what we know about Gamaliel, was a very, um,
even keeled, decent, peace loving person. Um, he, uh, in
(05:45):
the book of acts at one place, he kind of
rises to the defense of the, uh, of of the
early Christian movement with his colleagues on the Sanhedrin. Um,
he was not a believer himself, but he seems to
have been, uh, a peace loving person. Which makes it
(06:06):
odd that Paul, his student, uh, was so violently opposed
to the church. But, um, there was something about Paul,
the young man that just was violently opposed to the
Jesus movement. We don't know exactly why that was, but
it may have been because Paul saw the Jesus movement
(06:28):
as opening the kingdom of God and the people of
God up to the poor, the needy, all the nations
of the earth. Uh, and having this broad appeal, which
Paul seems to possibly have not appreciated, that might have
been one reason that he persecuted the church.
S1 (06:51):
Yes. See? That's interesting. Yeah. As we ponder his life.
And I'm so glad, Frank, that he does describe in
his writings in the New Testament, um, you know, kind
of he gives us he pulls back the curtain a
little bit on who he was, how zealous he was,
and all of that. He he wasn't really super into, um,
(07:13):
you know, writing about himself. But I am grateful for
the snapshots we get. He talks about his persecutions and
all of that. He's he's very honest. It just rings true,
doesn't it?
S3 (07:26):
Absolutely. You know, several times in Paul's letters he mentions
the fact that he persecuted the church. And as you
said a moment ago, he refers to himself as the
least of all the the apostles because he persecuted the church.
He he says that a couple of times, once in
first Corinthians and once in Ephesians, and you get this
(07:50):
sense that, um, that Paul, looking back on his life,
just felt terribly about what he had done in persecuting
the church. He presided over the death of Stephen. But
I think one of the reasons that Paul was so
consumed with the gospel and with Christ was that he
(08:12):
felt forgiven by Christ for what he had done. And
so Paul's life and he speaks of this a couple
of times in his letters. Paul's life, especially his conversion,
was an example to others that God can transform people, uh,
(08:33):
who are involved in very deep sin. I mean, Paul
was involved in, uh, murderous sin against the people of God,
and yet God graciously transformed him, forgave him, and not
only did that, but called him to preach this gospel.
(08:53):
He was one of the central people in the proclamation
of the gospel. So.
S1 (08:57):
So did he actually. I mean, we don't know 100%
for sure. Guilt by association. Maybe it's implied that he
was involved in maybe murdering some of the early believers. Maybe.
S3 (09:09):
Yeah, well, we know that that's true of, uh, Stephen who, um,
you know, at the end of acts chapter six and
all through chapter seven, we find the story of Stephen,
who was a leader in the early church. And, um, Paul, um,
Luke tells us, stood by as a witness while the
(09:31):
people that stoned Stephen, um, murdered him.
S1 (09:36):
Yeah.
S3 (09:37):
And, uh, so he played kind of a judicial role
in this lynching of Stephen. And, um, that probably was
not the only time that Paul was involved in the
deaths of Christians.
S4 (09:52):
Thank you for taking some time to listen to this
episode of the Kurt and Kate Mornings podcast. We always
welcome a review with your thoughts and comments, and please
feel free to subscribe and follow us as well.
S1 (10:04):
Let's talk about his conversion. We kind of laid the groundwork,
but the road to Damascus, the you talk about a
shocking conversion. That's exactly what happened there. Let's let's dive
into that part of the story.
S3 (10:18):
Yeah. Well, Paul was, um, as we've said a minute ago,
a vigorous persecutor of the church. He was very well
connected because the book of acts tells us that he
was able to get letters of support from the high
priests in Jerusalem to go to Damascus and round up
(10:41):
Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem. Apparently, the idea
was to snuff out the infant Christian movement in Damascus.
It's interesting that there were Christians all the way up
a couple of hundred miles or more north of Jerusalem,
in Damascus at this point. Apparently some of them, uh,
(11:02):
had some people had heard Jesus teach and, uh, gone
back to Damascus, taken the gospel there, and there was
a small community. These were all Jewish Christians. They were
all part of the synagogue. And so the high priest
in Jerusalem would have some say over how things were
run there, or at least some influence over, uh, the
(11:23):
leaders of the Jewish community in Damascus. So Paul headed
north to Damascus with a little entourage of, uh, people
with him to help him arrest Christians. And along that route, uh,
the Lord Jesus appeared to him and, um, said to him, Paul, Paul,
(11:46):
why are you persecuting me? And, you know, it's so interesting.
The Lord puts it like that. Um, because of course,
the Lord, um, had been raised from the dead. He
had ascended to heaven and was seated at the right
hand of God. But, um, he speaks as if Paul
(12:06):
is persecuting him. And some scholars have wondered if this
might be the point at which, you know, afterward, reflecting
on that language that the Lord uses, that Paul begin
to think in terms of Christians as the body of Christ,
as united with Christ by faith, so that Paul's persecution
(12:31):
of these humble believers in Damascus was actually hurting Christ. And, um,
that vision of, of Christ, uh, on the road to
Damascus was absolutely transformative in Paul's life. And, um, so
(12:52):
he carried on. You know, he was he was basically, uh,
blinded by this vision. And the people in his entourage
carried on with him to to Damascus. They probably didn't
quite know what to do because they hadn't fully understood
what had happened. Um, they seem to have seen a light. Um,
(13:15):
but they didn't understand what was said to Paul. So
they don't seem to have fully understood what had happened.
And they carried on to Damascus, uh, where for several
weeks Paul fasted and prayed. And then the Lord sent
to Paul, a believer in Damascus named Ananias.
S1 (13:38):
Let's talk about Ananias. This is this is classic. Well,
first of all, several weeks. Let's just think about that.
Here he is. He's been blinded. And here he is.
He's fasting. This is not just. Okay. Tomorrow, Ananias is
coming to visit me. You said several weeks here. And then.
By the way, Ananias was given a vision to go
and lay hands on Paul to heal him. Can you
(14:00):
imagine how he was shaking in his boots? He's like,
are you serious? God, am I hearing you correctly?
S3 (14:07):
That's right. And Ananias basically said that to the Lord
when the Lord directed him to Paul, he said, but
you know, Lord, this this is a person who came
here to persecute us. And, um, so there was some
fear there. But the the amazing thing about Ananias is
that he was obedient to the Lord despite his fear.
(14:32):
And he went to Paul and brought him into the
Christian community there. And it was probably in Damascus that
Paul was first Catechized in the Christian faith. So he
first began to learn the the basics of Christian theology
(14:52):
from this humble group of Jewish Christians in Damascus.
S1 (14:56):
Now, something that's kind of interesting is he didn't immediately,
I would think, okay, well, I need to head to
Jerusalem and meet with, uh, you know, the apostles and stuff.
I need to meet with the guys who were walking
with Jesus. I need to I need to learn. I
need to be instructed and all of that. But it
(15:16):
doesn't appear like he really spent a lot of time there. Instead,
he was directed to go to Arabia and for how
many years? And I don't know. Again, that's not what
we would expect to be a part of his story.
We figured he'd just, you know, pick up stakes and
go to Jerusalem and hang out with the guys.
S3 (15:36):
Right? Which he eventually did, but only after several years.
And you're exactly right. So in that initial vision. Transformative
vision from the Lord. It was communicated to Paul that
he was to take the good news of the risen
Jesus to the nations, and then that was confirmed again
(15:57):
by Ananias in Damascus. And so, apparently, the the first
nation that Paul took the gospel to, I mean, he
preached in the synagogues there in Damascus, but, uh, he
he went into the Nabataean kingdom, what was known as Arabia.
So this was a an area that stretched all the
(16:18):
way from the southern Arabian Peninsula, way up into Mesopotamia.
Most of it was ruled by a very famous, well-known
king named Aretus. Aretus the fourth and, uh, Paul went
into this area. There were lots of Jewish people there.
There were lots and lots of Gentiles there. And it
(16:39):
was a wonderful place to explain the gospel to all
the nations. It's interesting, you know, that many of the
Jewish and many of the Gentile cultures that lived in
Nabatea actually practiced circumcision. Circumcision was not unique to the Jews.
And so Paul's, Paul's movement there to proclaim the gospel
(17:05):
may have been a just kind of an incremental movement
to into a culture that was fairly close to the
culture that he knew so well and had been tutored in,
in Judea. But nevertheless, um, a lot of paganism there and, uh,
a lot of worship of other gods and a great
(17:29):
need for people to be introduced to the the one God,
the creator of heaven and earth, and his Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ. So it was an interesting choice for
Paul to go into Arabia, and he apparently spent three
years there and then returned to Damascus, which for a
(17:50):
brief period of time was under the control of King
Aratus the Fourth. And, um, Paul got into some trouble
there and had to escape over the city wall.
S1 (18:01):
Paul the Apostle Paul the Great Escape.
S2 (18:04):
Got into trouble. That's kind of a theme.
S1 (18:06):
Isn't.
S2 (18:06):
Exactly.
S1 (18:07):
Paul was always getting in trouble, which we'll talk about
his persecutions, uh, coming up in just a minute. But, uh,
you know, we talked about the thorn in the flesh
that a messenger of Satan to disturb him, to torment
him really is the way he put it. Getting back
to the road to Damascus and the blinding in the eyes.
(18:27):
We don't know what the thorn in the flesh was,
but some speculate it was a physical condition related to
that conversion experience with his eyes. Um, where do you
land on that? I'm curious.
S3 (18:40):
That's a really good question. There's been a lot of
speculation about what The Thorn in the flesh was, because
the Bible doesn't tell us, Paul doesn't tell us. Acts
doesn't tell us. But you can make some informed guesses
about what it was. Paul does say in Galatians that
he preached the gospel for the first time in Galatia
(19:04):
because of an ailment. He tells the Galatians. And he
says that he's so grateful to the Galatians because they
would have plucked out their eyes if necessary, to help him, basically. Yeah.
And so that's where that idea comes from, that maybe
it was something to do with his eyes. I leaned
(19:24):
more in the direction that it was, a that it
was a reoccurring illness of some type. The great 19th
century archaeologist and biblical scholar William Ramsay thought it was
maybe malaria, which was common in the areas that Paul
traveled and can be a recurring illness that, you know,
(19:45):
comes back and you have bouts of it. Paul says
three times the I prayed to the Lord to remove
this from me, so that it almost sounds like it
was something that recurred time and again, and he would
ask the Lord to remove it from him. You know,
that's probably all a little bit too speculative. We don't
(20:05):
know exactly what it was, but we do know that
Paul really struggled with bodily ailment and suffering. Um, you know,
that bodily ailment may have been, uh, the the origin
of his near-death experience that he talks about in Second
Corinthians chapter one. Yeah.
S1 (20:24):
It could be the the the stoning, uh, incident. Right.
S3 (20:29):
That could be connected with it as well. That's exactly right. And, uh,
you know, Paul clearly, uh, he was stoned and left
for dead. He must have had a severe concussion. Well,
that can do things to you, you know. And so
this Paul clearly struggled with some kind of illness or
disability for much of his ministry.
S1 (20:52):
How encouraging to think about that. Yeah. Can God use me?
The chief of sinners? Can he really forgive me for that?
A trophy of his grace, the Apostle Paul. Can God
really not only forgive me, but use me?
S2 (21:06):
He does.
S1 (21:06):
Apostle.
S2 (21:07):
Paul. We're all sinners.
S1 (21:08):
Look at.
S2 (21:09):
This.
S1 (21:09):
And out of that great love that is in grace
that's shown to us, we love him back. Paul loved
him so much that he said, anywhere, God, take me anywhere.
But it wasn't easy. Hello. Does God always want you
to be healthy without any pain? Physical pain? Look at
the life of the Apostle Paul. He dealt with physical challenges.
(21:35):
The bottom line is God is with you in the
midst of them. Sometimes he removes them. He's sovereign. But
other times he says, my grace, like you told Paul,
my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is
made perfect in your weakness. God makes the call on this. Wow. Okay. So,
(21:58):
by the way, guys, if you want to read more
about the the Apostle Paul, kind of a flyover. Uh,
acts 22 through 26, chapters 22 through 26. Maybe you
want to make that a point of your Bible reading
here over the next couple of days or so? Church tradition. Frank,
what did the Apostle Paul look like now, based upon
(22:19):
what I've heard, is that, uh, citing some of these sources,
we would not be impressed with his appearance today. I mean,
he wouldn't be the guy. You'd be like, there we go.
He's our next megachurch pastor right there. Yeah. Um, what?
Do we know anything about his physical appearance?
S3 (22:38):
Well, a lot of it is speculative, so we have
to be careful here. But, you know, sort of like
with the thorn in the flesh, we can we can
make some educated guesses. And it is true that a
very early, uh, document, uh, called the Acts of Paul. Now,
it's not canonical, and, um, it probably contains a lot
(23:01):
of information in it that is not correct, but it
has a description of Paul's physical appearance in it. And, um,
it's a very early document. It was written in the
in the mid second century AD, and it may contain
a memory of what the Apostle Paul actually looked like.
(23:23):
And he is described as, uh, short, basically kind of
bowlegged and balding. And, you know, this sort of matches
up with what Paul's opponents that Paul describes in Second
Corinthians said about him that he was a person whose
(23:44):
bodily presence was weak, was the way that they put it. And,
you know, his letters are impressive, they say, but his
speaking ability is not at all impressive, and his bodily
presence is weak. So, you know, we don't know for sure,
but Paul does seem to have been a person that
(24:04):
would not have, you know, just immediately attracted attention because of, uh,
because he was so strong or handsome or anything else.
Quite the reverse. He seems to have been somebody that was, uh,
was even kind of painful, perhaps, to look at, you know,
(24:25):
at the end of Galatians he says, let no one
give me trouble because he's being criticized, Sized for preaching
a people pleasing form of the gospel because he preaches
God's grace and he says, let no one give me trouble,
because I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.
(24:47):
And he uses a word for marks there, stigmata that
sound like he's talking about some kind of physical scarring,
maybe from the beatings that he received or the lashings
or that stoning in Lystra in Acts 14. Yeah. And so, uh,
you know, he may have had some real physical, um, um,
(25:08):
impairments resulting from that and may or may not have
been a person that was very easy to look at.
S1 (25:16):
We have just two minutes here before we have to
cut you loose, which is a bummer because like I said,
we could continue this conversation for hours. But, uh, one
thing I do want to point out is that, in
my opinion, one of the best The evidences of the
resurrection of Jesus is the lives of his disciples. And
(25:36):
I'm including the Apostle Paul in this. Why would Paul,
of all people throw away all of his, you know, education?
He was zealous. He was on track to be a
mover and shaker. He sat under the best teachers in Judaism.
He was going to be the bomb, and this was
(25:57):
his ambition. There is no way you can explain why
he would turn and embrace a life of persecution and rejection,
and go through everything that he went through. If Jesus
had not risen from the dead, in fact, he even
says that you know your our faith is useless. We
die in our sins. If Jesus has not been raised,
(26:19):
but he has been raised. What a great evidence that
the faith that we embrace as believers is real.
S3 (26:28):
Absolutely. That's right on target. um, hurt. And, you know,
for Paul, um, that experience of the resurrected Christ was
just absolutely transformative for him. He could say, as he
sat in prison in Rome, for me to live is
Christ and to die is gain. Uh, he could say
(26:50):
to the Galatians, I have been crucified with Christ nevertheless,
not I, but Christ lives in me and the life
I now live in the flesh. I live by faith
in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me. So that's how transformative, um, the gospel
of the crucified and risen Jesus was for Paul.
S2 (27:13):
Thanks for listening to Kurt and Kate Mornings podcast. Please
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no matter where in the world you are, you can
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