Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God – the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. (Romans 1:1-6)

Paul was a Jew, and a Pharisee. The Jews, and especially the Pharisees, claimed that they believed Moses, but they did not. If they had believed Moses, they would have believed in Jesus, since Moses predicted the coming of Jesus and told the people to follow him. Rather, they wanted to believe doctrines that they invented in order to protect their unbelief and wickedness. They claimed that they defended and enforced the Scripture, but they did not. Instead, they worked around God’s law by inventing traditions that were supposedly designed to facilitate obedience to the commandments, but in fact provided excuses for ignoring them and violating them. They were religious hypocrites. Indeed, Jesus repeatedly called them this in his ministry, and at one point, using a fig tree as a figure, he cursed the entire Jewish religious system and doomed it to a permanent end. The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple occurred soon after.

Before Paul became a Christian, he was such a religious hypocrite. He was arrogant and hard-hearted, and he zealously pursued a righteousness that was of his own making, that underestimated man’s depravity, and that spurned the mercy of God. He thought that he was gaining a righteousness that was according to the law, when the law itself could only condemn but rather pointed to the grace and truth of Jesus Christ. Remember, the Jews did not really believe or practice the law, but they believed and practiced the doctrines and traditions that they invented for themselves so that they could claim obedience to the law without actually rendering it. And that was how Paul lived.

When a man like this is exposed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, and his whole belief system, his way of life, and his ultimate destiny is threatened with this powerful message, he can become angry, and even violent. He had been pretending, so thoroughly and without reservation that he convinced himself, that he served God by the doctrines and traditions that the elders invented, and in this zealous hypocrisy he would cut down anyone who tells him otherwise.

So Paul was there when the Jews murdered Stephen, approving his death. Afterward he began to unleash his fury against the followers of Jesus Christ. He obtained authority to travel to Damascus so that he could hunt down the Christians there and take them as prisoners back to Jerusalem. But on his way there, Jesus appeared to him and astounded him with a blinding glory. The Lord commissioned him to serve the Christian faith and gave him orders about what he must do with his life.

Then the Lord sent a certain disciple named Ananias to follow up. Although Ananias was not an apostle or called anyone special, he was appointed to initiate one of the most significant figures in church history. As far as we can tell, he was a believer like any other believer, but when he placed his hands on Paul, the apostle received his sight, since he was blinded by the glory of Christ, and then he was also filled with the Spirit (Acts 9:17), since until then he had been only regenerated and converted by his encounter with the Lord.

A man may be zealous for the Jewish system. He may be a hardened atheist. Or a man may be a devout follower of some non-Christian religion. But no resolve, upbringing, indoctrination, or previous commitment can withstand the power of Jesus Christ when the Lord decides to seize a person’s soul. Paul was bent on destroying Christians, but Jesus made him a Christian and commissioned him to promote the Christian faith. God is the master of all souls, and Jesus Christ is the captain of ours. No man is free to decide his own destiny. We are grateful that he has chosen us to be recipients of his mercy, and to become messengers of his compassion and his judgment.

It was Jesus Christ who declared that Paul would be an apostle and to preach the gospel. Paul did not decide this for himself, and this also meant that other people had no authority to say that Paul was not going to be an apostle and to preach the gospel. Just as I do not decide my own destiny, because it has been foreordained and revealed by the Lord, neither can anyone dictate or interfere with it. My soul belongs to Jesus Christ, in sweet captivity to the gospel. No man can control me, and no one can impose his wish upon me to supplant the Lord’s command.

I am thankful that God does not subjugate my soul to imperfect authorities and religious hypocrites. Although I must render proper respect to those placed in positions of power, my soul is subject to Christ alone. I am free to believe and perform all that he has commissioned me, so that even when I face opposition and criticism, I regard them only as part of my service to him. Before God’s throne, I will not need to explain myself to detractors, because Christ is the one who judges me. God himself calls a person to believe. God himself sets a person apart for the work of the gospel. This is the basis of our boldness to condemn unbelievers, to dismantle all the science, philosophy, and religion that they trust in, and to rebuke and depart from cults, traditions, churches, and denominations that do not serve the Christian faith, so that we may follow Christ.

The gospel has its enemies from both non-Christians and those who claim to be Christians. Just as the Jews pretended to believe and follow the law, but in reality invented traditions and customs to work around God’s commandments, the same sinful nature that inspired this also works in those who claim to be Christians, who uphold their traditions, churches, and denominations rather than the freedom and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But if our calling and authority come from God and not from men, then men cannot hinder us. In the face of their threats and maneuverings, we can laugh at them and spit at them, and move on to fulfill our mission.

The prophets and apostles were in themselves ordinary men, but who were conceived, foreordained, and then created by God for the work that he prepared for them. They ministered by the Spirit of God, and whenever God willed it, they performed their work with perfection. They spoke to their generations and accomplished the things that God wanted to be done at those points in history. For our purpose, we will consider their role in the writing of Scripture, or the Bible.

God wanted to produce a perfect book to be his word and witness to humanity. It would be a tool for teaching the truth, for defining the standard of right and wrong, for exposing sin and rebellion, and for ruling the hearts of men. Since this book would be an expression of God’s mind, it would reflect something of his nature in that it would be intelligent and infallible. Therefore, he inspired the words and actions of his prophets and apostles. To ensure that these would be performed with perfection whenever he willed, he carried them by his Holy Spirit, and controlled all things to guarantee that their words and actions were recorded in the exact form that he wanted.

Along with the fact of divine inspiration, there is often the concern to affirm the human differences in the text. Although all the words and thoughts are said to come from one divine mind, and there is a perfect harmony in the doctrines, promises, and predictions of Scripture, the documents were physically set down in writing by men, and their various vocabularies, backgrounds, and personalities seem to come through. So it is assumed that there needs to be an explanation on how divine inspiration worked through the human writers.

I have never regarded this question as necessary; in fact, it is rather foolish to consider it a pressing issue, as if there is a glaring problem with the doctrine of inspiration unless an explanation is provided concerning the so-called human element in Scripture. Given the existence and omnipotence of God, a matter like this is dissolved into the limitless possibilities of divine power. God can make rocks to speak with different vocabularies and personalities if he wishes. It has never been necessary to provide an explanation on how divine inspiration worked with the backgrounds and personalities of men.

The issue seems pressing only when people harbor a fetish for human freedom and independence, or something along this line. To desire to learn more about how God operates is one thing, but for one to think that the answer is needed to maintain the coherence of the doctrine of divine inspiration shows that he is a theological pervert. The pervert asks, “How can God speak and write his words perfectly through a man and allow the man to retain his freedom?” The answer is that the man never had freedom in the first place. No one has freedom from God, and no one has his “own” personality as if it is something independent from God.

Rather, the explanation is the same one that we would offer if rocks were to speak – if a man has his own background and personality, God conceived it, foreordained it, and created it in him. It is not that God worked with the man so that the man could write Scripture; instead, God “wrote” out the man, and then he carried the man by his Spirit and “wrote” Scripture using him as if a man would use a pen. The coherence of the doctrine of inspiration is preserved not by maintaining a tension between divine sovereignty and human freedom, but by affirming an absolute divine sovereignty and by denying human freedom.

Paul’s gospel was not a manmade invention, nor did he learn it from a man, but he received it by revelation from Jesus Christ, who appeared to him and showed him the truth, and continued to teach him and guide him. Nevertheless, it was through the Scripture, and not in the flesh, that Paul knew the prophets, just as we know the prophets and the apostles through the Bible. This is not an inferior way of knowing, because the faith of a Christian is an intelligent grasp and belief of revelation. It is a matter of truth and wisdom, and not of sensation or encounter.

The message was not something entirely new, but God had long been speaking about it through the prophets before the time of Christ. Paul told the Galatians that God preached the gospel to Abraham. And Peter wrote that the prophets spoke by the Spirit of Christ, who revealed to them even the time and circumstances of the incarnation and work of Jesus. In fact, God revealed the gospel promise almost at the very beginning of human history, albeit in a succinct fashion, when he told Eve that her seed would crush the head of the serpent.

God created faith in his chosen ones and imputed righteousness to them as he causes them to believe the promise. They believed in the Christ who would come. In this sense, all those who were saved through faith before Jesus Christ came in the flesh could be called Christians, whether they were Jews or non-Jews. Thus Christians before the Son of God appeared in the flesh were saved by believing in the promise of the gospel, and Christians after the incarnation, the atonement, and the resurrection of Christ are saved by believing the fulfillment of the gospel.

The promise of the gospel was fulfilled by Jesus Christ. When Paul refers to Jesus as the fulfillment, he has in mind both the divine-human nature of Christ, as well as the work that he accomplished and the position that he gained as the Messiah. He says that the gospel promise was about God’s Son, who would be born as a descendant of David. Thus the promise was that there would be an incarnation of deity. He was born into the royal lineage of David, and he was vindicated and exalted to the highest place when God raised him from the dead. Jesus Christ was what God promised, and Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the promise. Through him we have received righteousness, and through him we have received power from God to declare the way of salvation.

The preaching of the gospel is often wrongly understood and characterized. We do not beg people to give God a chance or to try Jesus, but we tell them that Jesus Christ is the only way that God has provided for anyone to receive salvation, and that it is not even up to them to receive Jesus, but it is up to God to enable and to cause them to receive. Thus to God belongs all power, to him belongs all grace, and to him belongs all the glory. To preach the gospel is to summon those that God has chosen to become obedient to the Christian faith, that is, to agree to its doctrines and to submit to its demands. As Jesus said in the Great Commission, it is to teach the nations to obey everything that he commanded.

The Christian faith requires people to believe its doctrines. They must change their thoughts and opinions. They must abandon their science, their philosophy, and their religion, because non-Christian science, philosophy, and religion are always false and foolish, and they are always against God, reason, and righteousness. They must affirm the truth instead, and affirm that only the Christian faith is correct and rational. And the Christian faith requires people to follow the lifestyle that it teaches. They must change their actions and habits. If this means that they must denounce their cultures and customs, and to walk away from their heritage, then they must do it with joy and relish. Anyone who looks back is not worthy to be a follower of Jesus Christ.