Galatians 1:13-17 “For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. (14) And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. (15) But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, (16) to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, (17) nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.”
The final witness quoted above, is the apostle Paul. In this passage, the apostle Paul reveals to us how it is that he came to believe the message of the gospel, for in this passage he tells us that God revealed it to him. In other words, before God opened Pauls understanding to the truth of the gospel, he couldn’t see it. Some would argue that it was impossible for Paul not to understand the gospel message, for the Lord Jesus Himself appeared to him on the road to Damascus. That is true, but in order to understand Pauls’ comment that he made in the above passage, we need to understand Paul’s journey up until that point, for Paul had been exposed to the gospel message many times before the Lord Jesus appeared to him. Beginning with the witness of the Lord’s martyr Stephen, for Paul was present on the day that Stephen preached the gospel in front the Jewish council. And then Paul had been exposed to the same witness of the gospel message time and again, whenever he arrested the Lord’s saints, charged them and condemned them. And yet every time Paul heard the same witness, his heart remained hardened to the truth of the gospel, until this day when God finally allowed him to see the truth of the gospel, which he had tried so hard to destroy. And so, again we very clearly see that the method that God uses to predestine the lives of believers is that He opens their understanding to the truth of the gospel, so that they can believe it and thus be saved. Clearly all three witnesses in this section state the same truth, i.e. that the method God uses to predestine the believers to receive salvation, is that He opens their understanding to the truth of the gospel so that they can believe and thus be saved.
Michael E.B. Maher
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