Not According to Man

Every man-made religion, without exception, gives you something to do to earn its god’s favor. Paul makes the point almost casually: search the world’s religions and you’ll find a checklist in every one of them, something to perform, maintain, or achieve. That’s simply what a human mind invents when left to design a path to God. Paul’s gospel didn’t come from a human mind. He didn’t receive it from any person, and he wasn’t taught it in a classroom the way he’d studied Judaism at the feet of Gamaliel. It came directly, by revelation of Jesus Christ Himself.

And Paul had every reason not to receive that revelation gladly. Before his conversion, he wasn’t a curious skeptic weighing the evidence — he was actively trying to destroy the church, dragging believers to prison, “advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries.” This wasn’t a man predisposed to embrace a gospel of grace apart from law-keeping. He was its fiercest enemy. Which makes his testimony land harder: the same grace that saved people he’d imprisoned reached back and saved him too, entirely apart from anything he’d done — in fact, in spite of everything he’d done. Grace doesn’t wait for a soft heart to work on. It can meet you mid-persecution.