Was Paul Really the World’s Worst Sinner?
00:00:00.000 | (music)
00:00:04.500 | The Apostle Paul, writing in 1 Timothy 1:15,
00:00:07.400 | declared himself to be the world's worst sinner.
00:00:11.500 | The world's worst sinner.
00:00:14.700 | So is that hyperbole?
00:00:16.200 | Or is that apostolic self-deprecation?
00:00:19.200 | Or is that true?
00:00:20.200 | Was Paul really the world's worst sinner?
00:00:23.300 | You want to know?
00:00:24.600 | I want to know?
00:00:25.900 | A listener named Joel wants to know,
00:00:27.600 | and so we ask Pastor John.
00:00:30.400 | Joel writes this, "Pastor John, hello to you.
00:00:32.200 | Paul makes this claim in 1 Timothy 1:15,
00:00:34.800 | the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance,
00:00:37.900 | that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,
00:00:40.600 | of whom I am the foremost."
00:00:43.400 | The foremost.
00:00:45.600 | Must be true, because this is the authoritative word of God.
00:00:48.800 | But is Paul exaggerating his claim here?
00:00:51.500 | The context seems to suggest that
00:00:53.400 | Paul meant he was truly the worst sinner.
00:00:56.100 | He goes on to say in verse 16 that he was saved as an example,
00:00:59.300 | that if he, the chief of sinners, was saved,
00:01:02.300 | then surely others can be saved as well.
00:01:04.800 | So was Paul really the world's worst sinner?
00:01:09.800 | Paul said, "The saying is trustworthy
00:01:13.200 | and deserving of full acceptance,
00:01:15.500 | that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,
00:01:19.100 | of whom I am foremost.
00:01:23.500 | But I receive mercy for this reason,
00:01:26.900 | that in me, as in the foremost,
00:01:30.900 | Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience
00:01:33.500 | as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life."
00:01:38.200 | So the claim really does seem to mean
00:01:42.000 | foremost among all sinners, not just a little group,
00:01:46.800 | because he is comparing himself
00:01:50.200 | with all those whom Christ came to save.
00:01:55.200 | He says, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,
00:02:00.700 | and among that group, I'm the foremost."
00:02:05.600 | That's all sinners, at least all at that time.
00:02:10.600 | The word behind foremost,
00:02:13.400 | the Greek word behind the English word foremost,
00:02:16.900 | is protos, which simply means first.
00:02:20.500 | I'm first.
00:02:21.800 | It's used 155 times in the New Testament,
00:02:24.700 | almost always meaning first temporally.
00:02:29.000 | Well, Paul doesn't mean that.
00:02:30.100 | He doesn't mean temporally,
00:02:32.000 | as if there were no sinners before him,
00:02:33.900 | like I'm the first sinner.
00:02:35.200 | He doesn't mean that.
00:02:36.400 | He means first in line, measured on some other scale,
00:02:43.200 | not temporally, but some other scale.
00:02:45.700 | So the task is to figure out from the context what scale.
00:02:50.600 | I mean, how is he the first, the foremost,
00:02:55.300 | before others in what way, what criteria?
00:02:58.900 | And Paul gives us three scales, so to speak.
00:03:03.600 | In verse 13, "Formerly I was a," number one,
00:03:08.400 | "blasphemer," number two, "persecutor,"
00:03:12.000 | number three, "insolent opponent."
00:03:14.800 | Let's just take those one at a time and see how he measures,
00:03:17.400 | how he's thinking about his firstness.
00:03:20.700 | "Blasphemer."
00:03:22.100 | This means he spoke.
00:03:23.900 | He spoke.
00:03:24.900 | "Blasphemer" means something you do your mouth.
00:03:27.300 | He spoke demeaning lies about Jesus, the Son of God.
00:03:32.500 | His words directed people away from the truth about Jesus.
00:03:37.400 | His words tarred and feathered Jesus with false descriptions.
00:03:42.900 | They belittled Jesus and mocked Jesus.
00:03:46.400 | His words treated Jesus as a pretender, in effect, a liar.
00:03:53.100 | Paul could not argue with any credibility that Jesus did not exist.
00:03:59.200 | Good grief, he lived at the same time.
00:04:01.900 | So he had to argue that Jesus put himself forward as something he wasn't.
00:04:07.500 | He was a hoax.
00:04:09.300 | And when you treat someone that way, the seriousness of the sin rises with the glory and dignity of the person you're demeaning.
00:04:18.600 | So Paul considered his slanderous language about Jesus as the first thing to be mentioned in his unworthiness.
00:04:27.200 | So that's where he starts.
00:04:28.500 | Second, "persecutor."
00:04:31.500 | He went way beyond words.
00:04:34.100 | Now, these are cumulative.
00:04:35.200 | He's mounting things up here.
00:04:36.800 | And I think the third one's going to be the climax.
00:04:38.900 | But here we are at number two.
00:04:40.400 | He's a persecutor.
00:04:41.600 | He went way beyond words.
00:04:43.800 | He pursued people to prison.
00:04:45.500 | He oversaw the murder of Christians.
00:04:48.600 | Here's the way Luke puts it in Acts 9.
00:04:51.100 | Saul, still breathing out threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest,
00:04:58.800 | asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus so that he could, if he found any belonging to the "way"—that's Christianity—men or women,
00:05:08.100 | he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
00:05:12.500 | And what would happen there?
00:05:13.600 | Perhaps stoning.
00:05:15.400 | In Galatians 1, verse 13, he says, "You have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.
00:05:29.500 | And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers."
00:05:40.300 | So when he connects his aim to destroy the church with his advancing beyond any other zealous peers in Judaism,
00:05:52.000 | I think he meant nobody went after the church like I did.
00:05:55.900 | Nobody.
00:05:56.900 | My murderous, imprisoning, persecuting efforts to destroy the church were literally unsurpassed.
00:06:05.200 | I think that's just literally true.
00:06:06.800 | I think Paul said that, meant it, and there's no reason to think it's not the case.
00:06:11.600 | Now, here's the third one.
00:06:13.500 | He calls himself not only a persecutor and a slanderer of Christ, but an insolent opponent.
00:06:22.900 | Now, the word is in Greek hubristain, and you can hear in English the word hubris, right?
00:06:29.400 | Hubristain.
00:06:30.600 | Hubris.
00:06:31.200 | We get hubris from it.
00:06:32.200 | Arrogance, haughtiness, pride.
00:06:34.400 | This may be the key.
00:06:36.000 | I think this is the key to understanding how literally Paul meant it when he said he was the foremost first of sinners.
00:06:49.400 | To be a blasphemer or a slanderer, we can measure that by a person's words.
00:06:55.800 | To be a persecutor, we can measure that by a person's actions.
00:07:00.200 | But how do you measure proud insolence, haughty, arrogant insolence?
00:07:09.000 | Only God could see this evil perfectly, and only Paul could feel it extensionally.
00:07:17.000 | And Paul perhaps knew it and felt it more than all the rest of his sins.
00:07:24.100 | On the Damascus Road, the words that Jesus used to convict Paul were, "Saul, Saul"—that
00:07:30.700 | was his Hebrew name—"Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"
00:07:37.200 | And he said, "Who are you, Lord?"
00:07:38.800 | And Jesus said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."
00:07:43.300 | This put all of Paul's blasphemy, all of his persecution, all of his arrogance in a new light.
00:07:50.800 | Now Paul had to measure his blasphemy and persecution and arrogance not by itself, but
00:07:58.000 | in relation to the one he was sinning against—the risen, living Son of God.
00:08:04.000 | And my guess is that this set Paul to thinking not just about the greatness of Christ as
00:08:10.400 | the one he was persecuting, but also about the privileges that he was sinning against.
00:08:19.100 | Just think of it.
00:08:20.100 | I think this is what stirred up the sense of the depth of his arrogance.
00:08:24.600 | One, he was sinning against his own destiny because God had set him apart from his mother's
00:08:31.700 | womb to be an apostle.
00:08:33.300 | Two, he was sinning against the greatest Bible knowledge of his time.
00:08:37.800 | He was a Pharisee of Pharisees, he said in Philippians 3.
00:08:41.500 | That is, he was a great Bible scholar.
00:08:45.200 | He was sinning against all that knowledge.
00:08:47.900 | Third, he was sinning against the nearness, the historical nearness of the historical Jesus.
00:08:54.900 | Paul was alive when Jesus, the Son of God, was on planet Earth.
00:09:00.600 | He knew this was not myth.
00:09:03.400 | Hundreds of eyewitnesses to the miracles and the words of Jesus existed.
00:09:09.100 | Paul was sinning against great evidence.
00:09:12.300 | Four, he was sinning against the beautiful love and mercy of martyrs.
00:09:18.600 | Paul was there face to face with Stephen.
00:09:23.400 | When he was stoned to death, they lay their garments at his feet, it says in the book
00:09:28.360 | of Acts.
00:09:29.360 | He heard Stephen say, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
00:09:33.500 | Lord, do not hold this sin against them."
00:09:36.800 | He saw that beautiful demonstration of Christlike mercy.
00:09:42.360 | He was sinning against that.
00:09:44.480 | So when Paul considered all that he was sinning against and that his blasphemy and his persecution
00:09:54.200 | were in the face of all that truth and beauty, the insolence, the arrogance, the pride of
00:10:02.200 | his own heart was so terrible in his eyes that he pronounced himself the foremost.
00:10:10.720 | And if we wonder, how could he know that no one was worse?
00:10:16.480 | How could he know that no one was worse?
00:10:20.440 | The ultimate answer, I think, is Jesus revealed this to him.
00:10:27.920 | And this seems right, because this very firstness in sin was part of the inspired writing with
00:10:40.000 | which God intended to encourage others who despaired that they could never be saved,
00:10:46.480 | because they were that insolent, almost.
00:10:49.480 | So it seems right that to say that God would see to it that Paul realized, felt this about
00:10:58.520 | his own arrogant heart.
00:11:00.520 | You, Paul, are the least deserving of my mercy, so I'm going to save you so that when you
00:11:09.480 | write 1 Timothy, no one will ever be able to say, "I am too undeserving."
00:11:17.960 | Absolutely humbling and hope-giving for all of us sinners.
00:11:20.360 | Thank you for drawing those gospel reminders out for us from the life and testimony of
00:11:25.240 | Paul.
00:11:26.240 | And Joel, thank you for the clear and concise email.
00:11:29.640 | And thank you all for joining us today.
00:11:30.920 | You can ask a question of your own.
00:11:32.160 | You can search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast all at askpastorjohn.com.
00:11:39.800 | I am your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:41.200 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
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