Derek Thomas

This is what he was.

It's not that he met someone and, you know, he used to be a conservative, but now he's kind of loosened up and he's more tolerant and so on.

That's not the case.

Paul is still a conservative.

He's still passionate about God.

He's still passionate about God's law.

He's still passionate about Torah, about the Ten Commandments.

about the need for Christians to repent of their sins and to flee to a righteous way of living.

He's still a conservative in that sense.

But something has happened to the Apostle Paul in his understanding of the gospel, that obedience to the law and obedience to Jewish traditions or boundary markers or whatever you call them, that's not a part of the gospel.

So Paul has a past, and it was a violent past.

And something has happened.

And so in the second place, there's his conversion.

He has a past, but he was converted.

And in verse 15, but when he who had set me apart before I was born.

Isn't that an interesting way of seeing it?

He doesn't refer to the time on the Damascus Road.

He doesn't refer to the moment in which he saw and encountered the risen Jesus so much.

He goes all the way back there.

Before he was born and into eternity, I was set apart before I was born.