and last of all, as to an abortion, he appeared to *me* also.
Paul ends the list of resurrection witnesses by adding himself, and the word he picks for himself is one of self-contempt. Why did the risen Christ appear last of all to His fiercest enemy, and what does Paul mean by calling himself "untimely born"?
Just before this verse, Paul lists witness after witness who saw the risen Lord. Then he adds himself, and his evidence stands apart from the rest.
He has lined up all this earlier testimony to the fact of the Lord's resurrection. Now he offers himself as a new and decisive witness. What he had seen of the Saviour with his own eyes was of a completely different sort. To the former witnesses He had shown Himself on earth... But to Paul He had revealed Himself from heaven.
The other appearances came to believers. This one came to a man who hated Him.
One more remained, the most extraordinary of all, and long after the others: "Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." It was from heaven, in broad daylight, as he drew near to Damascus. He was not only an unbeliever, but the hottest of enemies, and he was surrounded by a band of companions who thought as he did. All were struck down, all saw the light and heard the sound, but he alone saw Jesus, he alone heard the words of His mouth.
The word Paul chooses means a birth that goes wrong. It is not the normal arrival of a child, but a birth forced out ahead of its hour. Commentators read the force of it in two directions. One takes it of timing:
He was raised up, however, as he himself tells us, before the time... Things were not yet ripe for the unfolding of the new revelation he was given to preach as its special minister. So he calls himself one born before the time, for that is the real force of the original word. And how was he before the time? Because Israel was not yet finally set aside.
Another notes that the apostolic circle was already closed when he was added:
But his apostleship was out of due time, as well as out of due place. It not only did not come from Jerusalem, but it arose after the apostleship there had been completed. Judas' forfeited place had been filled by Matthias, and so the body of twelve, as ordered by the Lord at the beginning, was complete again; and Paul's apostleship is therefore a thing born "out of due time."
(The older translation reads "born out of due time"; the ESV has "as to one untimely born.")
One writer presses the picture further and says why Paul was no ordinary birth:
Comparing the group of apostles to a family, he declares himself the last, and a miscarriage rather than a true birth. He had not, like the rest, acknowledged Jesus of Nazareth as the hope of Israel... He was called to the work out of the very depth of spiritual darkness.
Paul's name for himself is not false modesty. No one had less claim on the risen Lord than he did.
"The least of the apostles," as he calls himself, not fit even to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the assembly of God. Yet here grace gained its fullest expression, and Christ His sweetest victory. "By the grace of God," he says, "I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them." Still, that was grace. He claims nothing for it.
Paul rests his own standing as an apostle on this single fact — that he saw the risen Lord. That test shuts the door behind him.
The mark of an apostle was that he could bear witness to Christ's resurrection... Paul had never seen Jesus during His life on earth, or in the forty days before He was taken up to heaven. Yet he rests his apostleship on the same ground. "Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?"... Since this was a condition of apostleship, no one who has not seen Christ risen could be an apostle. In other words, apostles were only temporary gifts.
Paul's odd position in time turns out to be the position every later believer shares.
Paul speaks of being "born out of due time"; that is, he was too late for the Gospel and too soon for the day of manifested glory. It is the same with each of us. Like Paul, we begin with a glorified Christ. We are so favoured to be called into blessing in the most important day of all God's dealings with man on earth.
- Last — Paul closes the chain of witnesses, but what he saw was different. Not the risen Christ on earth, but the Lord revealed from heaven.
- Least — the man who saw Him was His fiercest enemy. He was struck down in daylight near Damascus, and his companions saw only the light.
- Untimely — the word means a birth forced ahead of its hour. Commentators differ: some point to Israel, not yet set aside; others to the twelve, already complete.
- Grace — the least qualified apostle laboured more than all the rest, and claimed none of it for himself.
- Ours — seeing the risen Lord was what made an apostle, so that office ended with them. But Paul's starting point, a Christ already in glory, is where every believer since begins.
For *I* am the least of the apostles, who am not fit to be called apostle, because I have persecuted the assembly of God.
In a list of witnesses to the risen Christ, Paul turns to himself — and what he says is not a credential but a confession. Why does he rank himself last, and how can a man call himself unfit for the office he holds?
Paul measures himself against the men who had been with Jesus. The comparison goes against him.
"For I am the least of the apostles," etc. This low estimate of himself is both natural and sincere. He could not help rating himself far below those who had been with Jesus in His trials. The thrones of Israel's kingdom are reserved for them. In their presence he would not call himself their equal. What they had preached and suffered for, he had persecuted to the death. He could not, and ought not, to forget this.
He does not say he persecuted saints or believers. He picks the name that makes his act as heavy as it can be. (In the quote below, "assembly" translates the word the ESV gives as "church.")
Paul has left on record, in the first letter to the Corinthians, what it meant to him. Writing of his grievous sin before his conversion, he states that he persecuted the assembly of God. They were saints. They had shown themselves to be believers on the Lord Jesus. Yet he does not call them saints or believers. He writes of the assembly of God, exposing his former open and unrelieved hostility to the company gathered to God. Could he have expressed more strongly what he did in mistaken zeal for God?
The persecution was not a slip. It came out of his religion, and that is what makes it so serious.
"Concerning zeal, persecuting the Church," was Paul's own account afterwards of the state in which divine grace found him (Phil. 3:6). It did not change his conviction that he was the chief of sinners... A man's religion may be the worst thing about him. His sincerity in it will not stop its effect on him. Sincerity makes that effect more certain.
Later he saw what the church is. The memory grew sharper, not softer.
There was a special sorrow in Paul's feeling when he said, "Unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God." He was behind no one in service or in suffering for Christ. But he could not forgive himself that, before grace came, he had persecuted the church. Then he learned to see God's wonderful and wise thought about the church, the heavenly bride. He saw its beauty as the expression of God's thought. After that, how could he forgive himself? How could he ever get rid of the memory that he had been a persecutor of it?
Thinking little of himself never made Paul timid. The same man who called himself unworthy still knew how to stand up for his office.
Humility in the apostle did not mean weakness. When the occasion called for it, he knew how to magnify his office. He could write to another and say, "Let no one despise you for your youth." But of himself as a worker he could say, "To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given." On another occasion he said, "I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle... But by the grace of God I am what I am."
Christ appeared to Paul last of all, and out of the ranks of His enemies. So the confession does not end in shame.
Paul stood apart from all the rest in time and in character. He came "last of all," "as to one untimely born," as he says, when the number of the apostles might have seemed closed. Out of the middle of men filled full of Jewish hostility, Paul himself saw Him — a notable witness of divine grace, the grace that he was to be, above all, the witness of. "The least of the apostles," as he calls himself, not fit even to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the assembly of God. Still, grace here gained its fullest expression, Christ His sweetest victory.
- Crime. He names his past by its worst title — he attacked not just believers, but the church of God.
- Cause. His religious zeal drove it; sincerity did not soften the damage but made it more certain.
- Conscience. The memory stayed with him for life; the more he saw the church's beauty, the less he could forgive himself.
- Confidence. Low thoughts of himself never made him weak. He still knew how to stand up for his office.
- Conclusion. Grace found its fullest expression in the man least fit for the place.