Did Paul ever meet Jesus in person?

Nothing is said about the continuance of these gifts, and we must look at them separately to see how far they were meant to be permanent or only temporary. As to the apostle, the distinguishing feature was his ability to bear testimony to Christ's resurrection. Thus in the case of the new apostle chosen by lot, the object, as explained by Peter, was that he might "be a witness with us of His resurrection." (Acts 1:22.) And even Paul, who had never seen Jesus either during His life or in the forty days before His ascension, rests his apostleship on the same ground. "Am I not an apostle?" he asks. "Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?" (1 Cor. 9:1.) And afterwards, speaking of Christ's resurrection, he says, "Last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle" (1 Cor. 15:8-9), thus again associating his apostleship with his having seen the risen Christ. Since this, then, was a condition of apostleship, it is clear that no one who has not seen Christ risen could be an apostle; or, in other words, that apostles were only temporary gifts. But again, apostles and prophets were, so to speak, the foundation course of the Church; for we are "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone." No doubt the foundation is permanent, and in this sense the gift is permanent. But this very fact precludes the thought of a succession of apostles; for how could there be a succession of foundations to the same building? The idea of a succession or revival of apostles is therefore a mere fancy of the mind of man, entirely opposed to Scripture, and subversive of all that is there taught concerning apostolic qualifications and functions.

Other important points are brought out here. Saul had not known Jesus on earth. He had not a testimony because he had known Him from the beginning, declaring that He was made Lord and Christ. It is not a Jesus who goes up into heaven where He is out of sight; but the Lord who appears to him for the first time in heaven, and who announces to him that He is Jesus. A glorious Lord is the only one whom he knows. His gospel (as he expresses it himself) is the gospel of the glory. If he had known Christ after the flesh, he knows Him thus no more. But there is yet another important principle found here. The Lord of glory has His members on earth. "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest." It was Himself: those poor disciples were bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh. He looked upon them and cherished them as His own flesh. The glory and the oneness of the saints with Jesus, their Head in heaven, are the truths connected with the conversion of Saul, with the revelation of Jesus to him, with the creation of faith in his heart, and that in a way which overthrew Judaism in all its bearings in his soul; and that in a soul in which this Judaism formed an integral part of its existence, and gave it its whole character.

Saul of Tarsus, on the way to Damascus, saw "a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun" (Acts 26:13), and it gave him the knowledge of God in Jesus, and it characterised the testimony he bore to Jesus, speaking of it as "the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God," and as "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:4, 6). Paul had not known Christ on earth, but he was called by Him from heaven, and the testimony that he bore was to an exalted, heavenly Son of God.

We may next notice a remarkable development of this unity in connection with the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, a new instrument of the sovereign grace of God. (Acts 9) Saul never knew Christ personally after the flesh; now he sees Him for the first time in heavenly glory. This was a new revelation of the Son. Most blessed and gracious truth for the heart! though the Lord of glory He declares Himself to be Jesus. "And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest."

The Apostle Paul declares therefore that the source of his authority and his ministry was higher than man. He received his commission "through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from among the dead." On the way to Damascus the risen Christ appeared to him in glory and made him an apostle. God the Father, who had raised His Son from the dead and gave Him glory (1 Peter 1: 21) also made Paul an apostle. To be one of the twelve apostles it was necessary to have been an eyewitness of His deeds and a listener to His words (Acts 1: 21). Matthias met this requirement and was therefore divinely chosen to fill the place of Judas. Some teach that Paul should have been put in the apostolate as the twelfth. But Paul could not have been one of the twelve apostles for he did not follow the Lord Jesus during the days of His earthly ministry. He did not know Christ after the flesh, but his acquaintance with Him began when he beheld Him in resurrection-glory. All his ministry, the gospel he preached, the glorious truths he taught, had their blessed source in the risen and exalted Christ. He therefore owned no other source, no other authority, but God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

He was indeed an apostle; and he had full liberty as to the matters just discussed. He had not been with Christ in the days of His flesh, as had the twelve, but he had seen the Lord in His glory. Moreover the Corinthians themselves were the fruit of his apostolic labours. Verse 2 delivers a crushing answer to any among them who, influenced by the adversaries, were inclined to question his apostleship. Why, they were themselves the proof of the validity of his work! To throw doubt on the reality of his work was to throw doubt on the reality of their own conversion. At the end of his second epistle he reverts to this argument, and he amplifies it. See 2 Cor. 13:3-5.

The same principle embraced the other apostles no doubt: because they on the day of Pentecost were made gifts of grace in the highest degree to the church from the now ascended Lord, its Head But there is fresh and brighter light in the case of Paul, who was not more truly "as one born out of due time," compared with all those that went before, than he furnishes in the strongest colours the unmistakable intimation of the mind and will of the Lord as to the future.

But then it will be objected that after all there was a miracle in Paul's conversion and call, which takes the case out of just application to ordinary ministry. A miracle most striking and significant there was, when the Lord in glory revealed Himself as the Jesus he was persecuting in the members of His body. Notwithstanding it rested mainly on the apostle's testimony; and there were not wanting, even in the church of God and among his own converts, it would seem, those who questioned the apostleship of Paul. His call far from Jerusalem, his isolation from the other apostles, the very fulness of grace manifested toward him, the emphatic heavenly stamp imprinted on his conversion and testimony, all tended to make the case peculiar and irregular and unaccountable, wherever the old earthly order so prevailed as to cast suspicion on any display of the Lord's ways beyond or different from the past. Personally a stranger to the Lord during His manifestation here below, there was no question of his candidateship, like a Joseph or a Matthias, on the ground of his having companied with the twelve from the baptism of John till the ascension. There was no decision by lot in his instance, nor any formal numbering with the twelve. He was a witness of Christ's resurrection no less than the rest, yet it was from no sight of Him after His passion upon earth. He had seen the Lord, but it was in heaven. His was the gospel of the glory of Christ no less than of God's grace. Thus carefully was the great apostle made the witness of non-succession, that is of a ministry direct from the Lord independently of man 1 No doubt the highest expression of that ministry was in Paul, who thenceforward becomes the most illustrious exemplar of its source and character.

And thus he found himself on the road to Damascus, accompanied by his travelling companions. But the Lord had His eye upon him; and suddenly, as he drew near to the city, there shined round about him a light from heaven They all fell to the earth; they all saw the sudden light; Saul alone saw the Lord. All heard a sound, but not the voice of Him who spoke to Saul. They were to be witnesses that the heavenly vision had appeared to Saul, but it was for him alone to receive the revelation from the Lord. He was to be an eye witness of the glory of the Lord, and a testifier of the words which He had personally spoken to him. For him, it was a revelation of the Lord and of His will, a direct and personal revelation; he must be able to say, "Have I not seen the Lord?" (1 Cor. 9:1). But it was the glorified Lord. He bad not known the Lord in His humiliation, he was to begin with the glory.

Verse 16 springs out of this, as the first word, "Wherefore," bears witness. Because Christ is no longer among us in the life of this world, and because we also now live in connection with Him, a new order of things has come in. Even Christ Himself is known by us in a new way. Paul had not been amongst those who knew Christ "according to flesh" in the days of His flesh. But even if he had been, he would have known Him thus no longer. But also we know no man after the flesh. That is not because men are not in the old condition according to flesh; for the great mass of them are. It is because of the subjective change wrought in ourselves. The Christian learns to look at men in a new way, not because of what has been wrought in them but because of what has been wrought in himself.

Verse 16. "So that we from henceforth know no one after the flesh," etc. There will seem no strangeness in this language to one who has rightly estimated what precedes. Men know and judge, according to the light in which they personally are, and the language of true faith will represent the truth on which faith lives. But that truth is Jesus, as the Spirit now reveals Him to His own. As men already dead with Christ, the apostles, who gloried only in His cross, had lost their natural fellowship with flesh; as risen with Him, they see natural objects with an altered eye, and return to natural relationships in a new and different spirit and power, as well as with another aim. But if apostles tell us their experience, it is that we also may have fellowship with them (1 John 1:3-4). Mankind are now contemplated by those who are spiritual, according to the new power of discernment which has been conferred on them through the unction which they have received (1 John 2:20, 27). They are known, therefore, as "of God," or "of the world," as "within," or "without," as brethren beloved in Christ, or as strangers, if not enemies, to the truth of God; as believers or as unbelievers, as confessors or deniers of the faith of God's elect; and being thus distinguished, they are owned or disowned, accordingly — the practical decision of the spiritual man being proportioned always to the measure of his faith, while the sole standard of comparison is Christ.

And as with our fellow-creatures, so also with the Lord. This is strongly expressed in the latter part of the verse. "If even," says the apostle, "we knew Christ after the flesh, yet now know we Him no more." He is evidently contrasting here, in the first place, a natural knowledge of Messiah — such as a well-trained Israelite might have received by tradition from his fathers, and of which Paul, as a disciple of Gamaliel, had drunk largely — with the true and divinely-given knowledge of Jesus as the Christ, according to the discerning power of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 12:3). But there is a further meaning in his words. They relate also to the changed condition of the risen Lord. Paul had not, like the first apostles, known Him in that companionship in which nature had so large a part; when they saw, and heard, and touched the word of life, with but little knowledge of the excellency of that Presence which was all their joy (John 16:6), and which ended by them all forsaking Him. His discipleship did not begin until the marred visage of the Man of sorrows had put on the brightness of that ancient glory which, for a while, He had veiled under a servant's form for our sakes (John 17:5; Heb. 1:3).