R.C. Sproul

He couldn't be an agent of revelation apart from the grace of God.

And he couldn't be a minister except by the gift of grace of God given by, notice, the effective working of his power.

Once again, we see an apparent redundancy there in the Scripture.

When God works with his power, it's always effective.

He doesn't have any other power that is ineffective.

But just so that we understand that God is not fooling around, when God, by His grace, endows the Apostle Paul for his apostolic ministry by the Holy Spirit, it is an effectual working of the Holy Spirit on him.

Now, I've gone over this first paragraph rather quickly.

because I want to spend most of our time together on the next paragraph.

To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, comma, and I'm going to stop momentarily at the comma.

Paul again identifies himself as being less than the least of all the saints.

Now, we could take that as an exercise of an overabundance of humility, and that Paul, in his humility, is exaggerating, for some special point, his low estate.

Now, if you're familiar with the writings of the apostle, you know this is not the only time that he refers to himself in this sense.

Elsewhere, he calls himself the chief of sinners, and you have to ask the question, why does he do this?

Again, I don't for a minute think that it's because he's indulging in some kind of false modesty.

I think to the end of his life, Paul, though he was forgiven, he

though he was cleansed, though he now had a saving relationship with Christ, never forgot where he came from and what God saved him from.

There were many people who were hostile to the preaching of the gospel.

There were many people who made themselves enemies of our Lord Jesus Christ during his earthly ministry.

We think of the scribes and the Pharisees who opposed him at almost every turn.

But no one else carried out with the credential of the Sanhedrin