Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope.  1 Timothy 1:1

I have lived in Paul’s second letter to Timothy for the past two months or so now. I did not realize when I began to seriously read the letter that my eyes and heart would be opened to spiritual realities that I knew by experience but did not verbalize.

As I lay my own life alongside Paul’s experience I am struck with the similarity.  Of course, I do not dare compare my life with that of the honored Apostle Paul, but I learn much from seeing the template of his life and my own.

A basic truth emerged.  It is imbedded in the very first verse.  We know, as did Timothy, that this young Saul of Tarsus hated the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth with all his being.  He had no equal in his determination to wipe off the face of the earth those who loved Jesus.  His fellow Pharisees loved him and encouraged him in his crusade to destroy the church. He was the darling of radical Judaism.

While enjoying his notoriety, something happened to him that changed everything.  He met Jesus Christ himself, risen from the dead, but active in establishing his Kingdom on the earth. Saul melted.  His personal dreams were shattered.  The compelling hate was gone, replaced by a love for Jesus that dominated all his thinking.

What happened to him? In opening this second letter to Timothy, Paul states clearly that God commanded him to be not only a believer but a follower of Jesus Christ.  He says that he is “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the Command of God.”  Saul was, in a sense, captured as a leader in persecuting the church to serve the very church he was trying to destroy.

As for myself, I was not hostile to the church.  I was simply a nobody trying to find out who I am.  I was not seething with anger, but was acutely aware of my lostness.  Jesus met me when sixteen years of age.  I thought I needed Him, an obvious fact.  But as I look back on my life something else was happening, God needed me!  This became more and more apparent as the years went on and even more so as I could look back over my life as Paul did his, and proclaim, God commanded me!  I would have never used that word but Paul did.  Now I am comfortable with it.  If asked why I am who I am, I have a ready answer, “God commanded me.”

So be it now and forever.