Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.
2 Corinthians 11:16-33
Immediately after Paul’s Damascus Road conversion, he began to preach Christ and quickly became a strong apologist for faith in Jesus Christ. Paul soon became a target of the Jews who were enraged by his defection. Because of their threats, Paul was sent to Tarsus. Paul disappeared for more than a decade of time, during which he may have spent in Syria and Cilicia. After some years, he returned and submitted his doctrine to the scrutiny of the other apostles. Though Paul himself says he became an apostle as “one born out of due time,” the other apostles, including Peter, welcomed him to the work of the apostles. Paul’s work of building the church began in earnest, a work that would encompass at least three missionary journeys, the founding of countless churches, and the writing of 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament. Paul pursued these ends with the same zeal with which he once tried to destroy the church, admitting to great shame over his past and referring to himself as the chief of sinners, also, saying he was “the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Yet, Paul was able to put his past behind him and look ahead. He said that all the things he once considered to be to his credit he had come to regard as “rubbish” (dung in the Greek) as compared to having Christ. His efforts were directed at “forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.” Perhaps no other conversion has carried a greater personal cost during an apostle’s lifetime. In our verses today, Paul recounts some of the sufferings he went through because of his work for Christ. He was frequently in pain, often without physical comforts, constantly in danger, and always filled with concerns for the people he pastored. Furthermore, he was afflicted with a mysterious “thorn in the flesh.” He was even stoned and left outside the city thought by his executors to be dead. Still, at the end of his life, Paul could say to Timothy, “I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” He told King Agrippa, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” Paul had done as his Lord commanded him to do when they came face to face on the Damascus road. Paul’s life, extraordinary in so many ways, should define the ordinary life of the Christian in one sense: radical obedience. Jesus calls us to count the cost before enlisting and, having made a decision for Him, never look back. What part of your life before Christ do you sometimes want to return to? Repent of your “looking back.”
Source: S C Ball January 4, 2024
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