Was Paul a saint? I don’t mean in the Biblical sense of the word saint, but more in the Catholic and Protestant sense of the word. See we are trained to picture the men of the Bible as supermen; people who were above our weaknesses, superior to us; untouchable.And while we may academically admit that they were men like us - as the Bible clearly records Paul saying “We also are men of like passions with you” (Acts 14:15) - still, it’s hard to realize that if they are on a pedestal, it is because they earned it. And that they had the same faults, the same temptations, and above all the same self-doubt, as we do.
If we don’t realize that they were like us, then we have no hope of attaining to their level. So today, I am going to prove that Paul was not a saint in the current religious sense; that he was a flawed human whose example should be followed only where he himself followed Christ.
1 Corinthians 11:1 Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.
God is honest about His heroes. He records history in the Bible, both flattering and unflattering incidents. Most historians trying to prove a point would have left out the story about David and Bathsheba - David himself would probably have preferred it were left out - but God included it, because we needed to know that great men make mistakes too, and are punished for it.
God didn’t need to mention that Abraham had weak faith and lied about his wife being his sister - well, half-lied since she was a half-sister - but God did. And Abraham did it twice, once after his conversion! (Genesis 12:13-19, 20:2-12) Even then the fear of his life prompted Abraham, father of the faithful, to lie to save his own hide!
And God didn’t have to record that Peter, who opened the gospel to the gentiles, was sinning and shunning the gentiles in order to favor the Jews (Galatians 2:11). The point is, God’s heroes were men; men subject to all the same weaknesses and stupidities that we are. But this article is about Paul… Read the rest of this entry »