Persecutor to Preacher 2

God’s glorious purposes were established before you were born! No matter what you face today, you can be assured that God has a deeper plan than what meets the eye.

Today’s Text: “But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone;” (Galatians 1:15–16, ESV)

The conversion and call of Paul is pivotal in the history of the world.

Lloyd Ogilvie, the former Chaplain of the Senate, expressed it succinctly:

“Paul is the most important human being who ever lived… The most crucial event of history, for which Jesus Christ lived, died, was resurrected, and glorified, was His infilling of a new humanity, the Body of Christ. The second most strategic event was the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.”^[1]

The conversion of Paul was inextricably linked to the commission of Paul. We minimize the Gospel if we limit it to being about praying a sinner’s prayer, accepting Jesus, and then just knowing that you are going to heaven. God’s saving force through the Gospel is much bigger and much more powerful than we can conceive.

Paul was saying that God called him by His grace, and that the call was at work long before he went to Damascus – long before he was born. God was not caught off guard by the events of Saul’s life. He knew every moment and every detail of that life.

You may not feel like you have a beautiful, dynamic, living relationship with the Lord Jesus right now, but He is already at work in your life.

Your whole life is linked, not just with a saving moment in which you pray a prayer, but with a predestined commission. You are saved not only so you’ll one day go to heaven. You are saved so that the purpose and destiny of your life may unfold. And that’s the Gospel!

[1] Lloyd John Ogilvie (ed.), Acts: The Preacher’s Commentary, Vol. 28, (paperback), (Nashville, Nelson, 2002) 161.