Paul, a Servant of Jesus Christ

Of the many Sacred Biographies I have written, this has been by far the most interesting. For days and weeks together I have lived in the company of this glorious man; but only to feel that he transcended all one’s loftiest conceptions. Like some great mountain range, the more his character is traversed, the more it grows on the imagination.

In these chapters I have used the Epistles more largely than the Acts, as I desired to describe his life from within, and as it appeared to himself. In many cases, therefore, the historical has been subordinated to the auto-biographical.

I have taken advantage of some of the latest books which have dealt with this subject; but for the most part the following pages contain the essence of years of my own thinking and preaching. Such as they are, I send them forth, trusting that they may incite many to follow Paul as he followed Christ; and to yield themselves, as he did, to God.

Stephen Stoned 37

Paul’s Conversion 37

First Journey to Jerusalem 40

First Missionary Journey 45

Great Meeting at Jerusalem 50

Second Missionary Journey 51

Paul Arrives at Corinth 53

Third Missionary Journey 54

Paul at Ephesus 55

Imprisonment in CiESAREA 58

Two Years in Rome 61-63

A city throned upon the height behold,
Wherein no foot of man as yet has trod;
The City of man’s Life fulfilled in God — Bathed all in light, with open gates of gold.”

Phillips Brooks.

THE source of a stream must be sought, not where it arises in some green glen among the hills, making a tiny tarn of clear water, where the mountain sheep come down to drink; but in the mighty sea, drawn upwards in evaporation, or in the clouds that condense against the cold slopes of the hills. So with the life of God within us. In its earlier stages we are apt to suppose that it originated in our will and choice, and return to our Father’s House. But as we review it from the eminence of the years, we discover that we chose because we were chosen; that we loved because we were first loved; that we left the sepulchre of our selfishness and the cerements of death, because the Son of God flung his majestic word into the sepulchral vault, crying, *’ Come forth! “All mature piety extols the grace of God — that unmerited love, which each man thinks was magnified most abundantly in his own case. “By the grace of God, I am what I am,” is a confession which is elicited from every man as he reaches the crest of the hill, and looks back on the cities of the plain from which he has escaped.

Paul is very emphatic in his acknowledgments of this pre-natal grace. He loves to trace back all the good that was in his heart and life to a Love that was set on him before the mountains were brought forth, or ever God had formed the earth and the world. In the silence of eternity God’s delights had already been with him as a son of man.

I. Foreknown. — “Known unto God,’* said the grave, linen-vested James, ‘are all his works from the beginning of the world “; and if his works were foreknown, how much more his saints! Again the evangelist tells us, that Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray Him; surely then He must have known from the beginning who the believers were, and who should become his devoted lovers and apostles. Before time began it was known in heaven who would be attracted by the love of the cross to trust, love, and obey; who would be drawn to the dying and risen Son of God; who would have eternal affinity with Him in death and resurrection: and of these it is said, *<Whom He did foreknow. He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. viii. 29).

It is not a complete solution of the mystery of Predestination, and only removes it one stage further back; yet the suggestion casts a gleaming torchlight into the darkness of the impenetrable abyss when we are told that God included in the eternal purposes of life all those whom He foresaw would be attracted to an indissoluble union of faith and life with his Son. All who come to Jesus show that they were included in the Father’s gift to his Son. The Father gave Him all those who in the fulness of times should come. But why some have an affinity with the Man of the cross, and not others; why some come and others stay away; why some sheep hear the Shepherd’s voice and follow, while others persist in straying, is one of those secrets which are not revealed as yet to the children of men.

But as the eye of omniscient love glanced down the ages, it must have lighted with peculiar pleasure on the eager, devoted soul of Paul. God foreknew and predestinated him. The divine purpose, descrying his capacity for the best, selected him for it, and it for him. And there is a gleam of holy rapture on his face when, reviewing the process of those eternal movements of love from his Roman prison, he writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ; even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. i. 3, 4, R. v.).

II. Created in Christ Jesus unto Good Works. — He has been showing the place of works in the gospel scheme, insisting, with unusual emphasis and sharpness of outline, that neither our salvation, nor our faith, is matter for boasting. “It is the gift of God; not of works,” he cries, and then proceeds to the magnificent assertion, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them” (Eph. ii. 10, r. v.).

The Greek word translated workmanship is poem. We are God’s Poem. And as we review our life after the lapse of years — save where we have wilfully violated the obvious intention of our Creator — we shall perceive that there has been an underlying plan and conception, the development of which has proceeded in ever-widening circles. * * I girded thee, though thou hast not known Me,” is as true of our life as of Cyrus, who was raised up to be the destroyer of Babylon, the liberator of the people of God. God has a distinct thought in each human life. He creates with a purpose. As a great poet may adopt various kinds of rhythm and measure, such as may suit his conception, but has nevertheless a purpose in each poem that issues from his creative fancy, so God means something as He sends each life forth from the silence of eternity; and if we do not hinder Him He superintends the embodiment of that conception, making our entire life, from the cradle to the grave, a symmetrical and homogeneous poem, dominated by one thought, though wrought out with an infinite variety of illustration and detail.

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