Quotes about Paul

The despicable modern resort to playing the victim card or charging one's opponent with being "phobic" in one way or another was not for Paul. If

Paul felt a debt of service to that person until he did come to know Him. But the chief motivation behind Paul's service was not love for others but love for his Lord. If our devotion is to the cause of humanity, we will be quickly defeated and brokenhearted, since we will often be confronted with a great deal of ingratitude from other people. But if we are motivated by our love for God, no amount of ingratitude will be able to hinder us from serving one another.

Paul was not given a message or a doctrine to proclaim. He was brought into a vivid, personal, overpowering relationship with Jesus Christ. Acts 26:16 is tremendously compelling "to make you a minister and a witness." There would be nothing there without a personal relationship. Paul was devoted to a Person, not to a cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ's.

Paul states here that the call of God is to preach the gospel. But remember what Paul means by "the gospel," namely, the reality of redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ. We are inclined to make sanctification the goal of our preaching. Paul refers to personal experiences only by way of illustration, never as the end of the matter. We are not commissioned to preach salvation or sanctification—we are commissioned to lift up Jesus Christ (see John 12:32).

The marvel of the Redemptive Reality of God is that the worst and the vilest can never get to the bottom of His love. Paul did not say that God separated him to show what a wonderful man He could make of him, but "to reveal His son in me.

Paul was devoted to a person, not to a cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ's. He saw nothing else and he lived for nothing else.

We must not offer people a system of redemption, a set of insights and principles. We offer people a Redeemer.

True humanity is always connected to glory, and true glory can only be found in the One who is glory, the Lord.

Hope isn't a thing. Hope isn't a set of circumstances. Hope isn't first a set of ideas. Hope is a person, and his name is Jesus.

This is perhaps the most profound meaning of the book of Job, the best example of wisdom.

If this Jesus is God's answer, what is the question? Paul eventually came to the conclusion that God was answering a question that gets at the core of not simply the Jewish drama, but the human drama, a question that no one was yet asking in quite the same way.

We should linger here for a moment, for it summarizes a main theme of Paul's letters: God's unexpected move—Jesus's death and resurrection—places Jews and Gentiles on equal footing with God.