Who was Paul?

Bible People & HistoryIn theological review

The short answer

Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles: a Pharisee who persecuted the church, met the risen Jesus on the Damascus road, and spent the rest of his life planting churches around the Roman world and writing the letters that fill much of the New Testament. No other figure explains how a crucified Jewish Messiah came to be worshipped from Jerusalem to Rome within one generation.

The fuller answer

Paul, first known as Saul of Tarsus, was a Pharisee of fierce ability who made it his business to destroy the young church, until the risen Jesus stopped him on the road to Damascus. The commission he received there defines the rest of his life: this man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings, and before the people of Israel.

“Go!” said the Lord. “This man is My chosen instrument to carry My name before the Gentiles and their kings, and before the people of Israel.

Acts 9:15 (BSB)

What followed was the most travelled life in the New Testament: journeys across Cyprus, Asia Minor, Greece, and eventually to Rome; churches planted in Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Ephesus; opposition from synagogues, mobs, magistrates, and once a storm and a shipwreck; and thirteen letters that now form a large share of the New Testament, including Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians. Peter himself refers to those letters as beloved and as Scripture.

Near the end, under arrest and expecting execution, he summed his life in sporting language: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. His full profile, verse by verse, is in Bible Characters on this site.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

2 Timothy 4:7 (BSB)

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

Review status: in-theological-review. Every Contend page passes a human theological review against the Statement of Faith before it is published as approved teaching. This section is in that queue.

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Who was Moses?Moses was the Hebrew prophet who led Israel out of slavery in Egypt, received the Law of God at Mount Sinai, and led the people through forty years in the wilderness to the edge of the promised land. The Bible's verdict on him is unmatched for an Old Testament figure: no prophet has arisen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.Who wrote the Bible?People did, and God did, and the Bible insists on both. On the human side it has many authors across many centuries, from Moses to John. On the divine side, Peter says men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, and Paul calls all Scripture God-breathed. Real writers, real styles, one intention behind them.Was Jesus a real person?Yes. Whatever a person concludes about his claims, the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth is confirmed by sources outside the Bible, including one that hated his followers. The Roman historian Tacitus records that Christus suffered the death penalty under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, and the Jewish historian Josephus wrote about him within the same century. The debate worth having is not whether he lived, but who he was.Bible Character: PaulThe Pharisee who persecuted the church until the risen Jesus stopped him on the Damascus road, and who became his apostle to the Gentiles, travelling the Roman world and writing many of the New Testament letters.On the map: DamascusFind it in the Lands of the Bible, with the verses that place it there.