Derek Thomas

He's not Peter.

He's not John.

He's not James.

He's not one of Jesus' disciples.

He said, Johnny, come lately, these Judaizers are suggesting.

Paul does this in a number of epistles.

You'll find Paul doing something similar in 2 Corinthians, for example, where the church is being influenced by a group within it calling Paul's authority into question as an apostle of Jesus Christ.

So let's look at this section, verses 11 through 24.

The first thing I want us to see is that Paul has a past, right?

He talks in verse 13 of his former life.

You have heard of my former life in Judaism.

That's an interesting expression, isn't it?

That he's already distancing himself from Judaism.

There's a certain sense in which the early church is still, it still has a foot in two camps.

It's Christian, but it's also still in synagogues.

And so until that moment when they're put out of the synagogues and by the turn of the first century, they're no longer under the aegis of Judaism.

And that gets them into trouble with the Roman Empire and brings in all kinds of persecution against the Christian church.

It was a very definitive moment, the end of the first century, the turn into the second century, when the church, as it were, has to stand on its own two feet in the Roman Empire.

Well, Paul is talking about a former life.

And the context, of course, is that Paul is being accused of being a charlatan, a Johnny-come-lately.