Paul allowed God to use him however He needed to in order to accomplish His will in Paul’s life as well as in the lives of those around him. Paul was a very intelligent man. He had one of the highest educations available in that time. As a Pharisee, he was learned in the scriptures and had a passion for God. He was a man who sought after the Christians to kill them. Why? Because he saw them as a threat to his God—the God that he knew, with his mind and education and training. He saw those who followed Christ as a threat to his God and thought he was justified in what he did. You can look at Paul and see this man who “knew his God.” He had his God placed in this box and said to himself, This is the one true God and this is the God I serve and you had better serve Him or I am going to have to take you out, because I cannot allow you to come up and threaten the Almighty God and all that He is.

He was a man who knew what the Israelites went through when they left Egypt and God said, When you cross into the Promised Land, you wipe out every person—you wipe them out, because they are serving false gods and they will corrupt the purity of this lineage that I created. That is the God that Paul understood. He understood what it meant to stand for God against all obstacles and he was not going to allow these “Christian believers” to harm or defame the name of God. That is what Paul saw; that was his box…his life. It was what he was trained in and he was passionate about. 

Today, we look at the writings of Paul and we can see how he quoted many, many scriptures, teachers and prophets of the Old Testament: Isaiah, Elijah, Moses, Abraham. However, his eyes were not yet open to the reality that the Messiah promised in the passages he so often quoted had, in fact, come to fulfill His promise.

He had a zeal for God and on the road to Damascus Jesus appeared to him, and when Jesus appeared to him, truth was revealed and everything that Paul knew was shattered. He spent 3 days unable to see, not eating, not drinking. His life was in absolute turmoil. Why? Because God needed to cast out the boundaries that Paul had placed around God and re-established the foundation of truth. When Paul gained the understanding of who Jesus was and how Jesus actually is revealed through Adam, through Noah, through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob—all those scriptures he knew so well that the prophets spoke, he began to see how those scriptures spoke of the coming Savior and he saw that Jesus was that Savior and God began to work in Paul. You see, Paul’s world was shaking when the Christians started “getting too great in number,” as Paul would see it. He says to himself, This man Jesus dies and now they are saying He rose again. No! That is not right! And he took a stand and dug his heels in deep.

You see, when Paul received the truth that day and over the course of the next few days when God began to reshape and remold him, something happened in Paul—the veil was pulled back from his eyes. Paul came to know the truth and he spent his life, striving to reveal this truth to his fellow Jews, as well as the Gentiles. Paul’s purpose for living was revealed once the veil was removed, and during that three days God was able to anchor him in the truth and he would go forth from that point forever a changed man. Not even willing to carry the name he was born with, because he was that transformed. He was entering into the fulfillment of the covenant promise. He understood what God did and understood that Jesus was a fulfilment of the law.

We learned in our covenant study, a name change often occurs with entering Covenant with God. Saul cast off the old man, and put on the new man and he became known as Paul. (Of course, he also knew that his name was associated with a man who murdered Christians.) When Paul entered into covenant with Jesus and he saw how Jesus fulfilled the law and he knew he was going to have to change his passion and his focus. He finally knew the reason he was created and understood his purpose for living. 

That’s who we have here writing the Book of Romans; it’s two-decades of a man who has been walking with Jesus, who understands the covenant promise—understanding what it means to live a life of a believer and he sees the dangers that are presented with the Church in this hour and he sees the Jews and Gentiles living in Rome—many of whom had come to know Jesus and were trying to figure things out—“alright, how do we make things fit, because we have generation upon generation of understanding the way we live our life and you cannot expect us to just throw that all away?”

Jesus was a Jew. I mean, sometimes we forget that. Jesus was a Jew, but not to a level of external pressure and rigidity. He did it because He loved God so much that He just wanted to obey, but in His life He fulfilled the law, which is the same law that is supposed to be fulfilled in us. We are to be like Christ. What is the law? It is obedience. 

Paul sees this conflict happening. Being that he himself was on the other side, Paul understands what the enemy is trying to do by this conflict arising between the Jew and Gentile believers in Rome. Remember several weeks ago we studied that there is this thing residing in a place inside each of us that draws us closer to God? This thing that all of creation is waiting for— the sons and daughters of God to be revealed. It has no gender and no race affiliated with it. It is God revealed, it is Christ revealed, it is the power, authority, love and the unity of God, all revealed in the sons and daughters of God. It’s the fulfillment of the Heavenly plans here in this earthly realm. It’s a power everyone can experience, yet few have. All of creation is waiting for this moment. 

Paul knows this is in jeopardy and he sees how the enemy is trying to bring strife to the level where these two bodies: the Jew and the Gentile, are becoming fractured. I fully believe that Paul saw this as a plan of the enemy to stop the Body of Christ in its tracks and to bring it down. 

You see, they thought by killing Jesus they would stop this fellowship of followers that Jesus of Nazareth had, and then all those people would just fade away. However, it only caused it to grow. When the Holy Spirit came, look out—because a move of God began to flow like never before. So, the enemy says: Ok, well I could not stop the growth of the Church here, so what do I do? Let us cause conflict between the races. Let us cause conflict between the various religious areas and between man. Paul tells them in Romans 9 that God wants unity between the Jew and the Gentile. He’s teaching them about the unity that God is creating in His body.

To be continued next week…

Blessings and Love, 

Ricci