Quotes about Paul

The universal sin Saint Paul pinpoints in Romans 1:18 is to suppress the truth.

When Paul talked about his present situation, he did not discuss his personal discomfort. He was not occupied with the inconvenience that imprisonment had caused him. His concern was for the gospel and its advance.

As the conditions of our world worsen, Jesus said we shouldn't hang our heads in depression or shake our heads in confusion. We should lift up our heads in expectation, for our redemption draws near (Luke 21:28). After Paul told the Thessalonians about the sudden return of Christ for His people, he said, "Comfort one another with these words" (1 Thessalonians 4:18).

The apostle Paul had much to say about the immorality of individual church members, but little to say about the immorality of pagan Rome. He did not rail against the abuses in Rome—slavery, idolatry, gladiator games, political oppression, greed—even though such abuses surely offended Christians of that day every bit as much as our deteriorating society offends Christians today.

if we do not believe that, and if our Christian hope, tempered by sophistication, does not allow us to offer that truth to a dying, convulsing world then we are indeed, as the apostle Paul said, of all men most miserable.

Unlike many television evangelists, the apostle Paul seemed to expect from the Christian life not health and wealth, but a measure of suffering. He told Timothy, "In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (2 Timothy 3:12).

The young church was nourished spiritually by apostles who set down their beliefs and messages in a series of letters. The first 13 such letters (Romans through Philemon) were written by the apostle Paul, who led the advance of Christianity through the non-Jewish world.

Paul harped on grace because he knew what could happen if we believe we have earned God's love. In the dark times, if perhaps we badly fail God, or if for no good reason we simply feel unloved, we would stand on shaky ground. We would fear that God might stop loving us when he discovers the real truth about us. Paul—"the chief of sinners" he once called himself—knew beyond doubt that God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are.

The apostle Paul, writing in the New Testament, reminds us that the difference between the relationship we have with the one true God and the relationship pagans have with their idols is that their gods are silent (see 1 Corinthians 12:2).

Paul argues for holy anger when he repeats the advice of Psalm 4:4: "In your anger do not sin" (Ephesians 4:26).

Paul admitted to knowing fear, but it never stopped him. "I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling," he reported in 1 Corinthians 2:3, but the verb is came. He did not stay home out of fear for the journey.

It never occurred to Paul that a gospel might be true for one man and not for another; the blight of pragmatism had never fallen upon his soul. Paul was convinced of the objective truth of the gospel message, and devotion to that truth was the great passion of his life. Christianity for Paul was not only a life, but also a doctrine, and logically the doctrine came first.