44 2 4 Through the Bible with Les Feldick PAUL -- FIRST IN THE BODY OF CHRIST

I Timothy 1:13 "...a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: (In other words, to Jewish believers who would embrace Jesus as the Messiah.) but (Flip-side—even though he was the greatest enemy of Christ on the earth at that time--) I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief." Again, remember that the Grace of God was poured out on this man without merit. He had no reason to spare him. God could have just as well zapped him and taken him off the scene. Instead, He decides, or He chose, to use this man to become the Apostle of this Gospel of Grace. Now never lose sight of the fact that Saul of Tarsus was intensely religious. Saul lived and breathed his religion. In the name of his religion he thought nothing to put the adversaries of that religion to death. He hated the name of Jesus of Nazareth, because he thought Jesus was an imposter. Saul thought that Jesus was something that went against Judaism. Consequently, Saul was, as he says here, a persecutor of those Jews who had believed who Jesus was. Now verse 14: I Timothy 1:14a "And the grace..." Now no writer of Scripture uses that word as often as the Apostle Paul. Just check me out. Go to a good concordance and you'll find that Paul uses the word grace almost more than all the rest of Scripture together. And so he says: I Timothy 1:14 "And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus." Let's go back and take another look in Acts, if you will. Go back to Acts 26. I think we looked at it in our first program this afternoon. But I want you to see the thinking of this man as he was headed to Antioch up in Syria to gather in those Jews who had become believers of Christ's Messiahship, even though they were living outside of the land of Israel. Now that tells me something. That tells me that the Jewish leadership had enough clout with Rome that Rome would actually extradite these Jewish people whom the Jews wanted to arrest.