Did Paul ever meet Jesus in person?
Paul was not one of the twelve, and he was persecuting Christians while the others were following Jesus through Galilee. So when he later writes that the risen Christ "appeared also to me," the question is what kind of meeting that was — and whether he had ever seen Jesus before it.
Never in the days of His flesh
Commentators are agreed that Paul missed the earthly life of Jesus entirely. He was not among the crowds, not among the disciples, and not among those who saw the Lord during the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension. His claim to apostleship rests on something else.
T. B. BainesEven 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.)
The meeting on the Damascus road
The one personal meeting came after the ascension, on the road to Damascus, while Saul was still on his way to arrest believers. Darby stresses that it was a genuine sighting of a Person, not an impression shared by the group.
J. N. DarbyThey 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 eyewitness of the glory of the Lord, and someone who could testify to the words which He had personally spoken to him.
Beginning at the glory, not at the manger
Because Paul met Christ only after He was exalted, his starting point was different from the twelve. They watched Jesus in humility first and worked their way slowly toward the glory; Paul was handed the glory first and had to ask who it belonged to.
J. N. DarbyIt was not, as with the twelve, the patient tracing with slow understanding of the unfolding glory of the Man Jesus living among them... but the sudden and unlooked-for sight of the heavenly glory of the Lord, brighter than the sun, and finding that this was Jesus. That is, beginning at the glory, the heavenly glory, and aware that he saw and heard the Lord speaking from heaven, he asks and finds that this glorified One, this glorious Lord, was Jesus whom he was persecuting.
The answer that changed everything: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting"
The words spoken to Saul did more than identify the speaker. They tied the Lord in heaven to the very people Saul was dragging to prison.
J. N. DarbySaul had not known Jesus on earth... It is not a Jesus who goes up into heaven where He is out of sight; it is 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 he knows. His gospel (as he expresses it himself) is the gospel of the glory... But there is yet another important principle found here. The Lord of glory has His members on earth. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." It was Himself: those poor disciples were bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh.
Out of time, and out of place
Paul himself felt the oddness of arriving so late. Older translations render his phrase in 1 Corinthians 15:8 as "one born out of due time" (ESV: "as to one untimely born"), and the writers take it to mark how irregular his calling was.
J. G. BellettBut his apostleship was out of due time, as well as out of due place (1 Cor. 15:8). 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 arranged by the Lord at the beginning, was complete again; and Paul's apostleship is therefore a thing born "out of due time."
Later visits from the same Lord
Damascus was not the last time. There was a trance in the temple, and later a night in a Roman prison in Jerusalem, where the same Lord came to him again.
G. C. WillisThe Lord Himself comes and stands by him. He does not call to him out of heaven. He does not use a vision, or send an angel to carry His message. No! He Himself comes right down into that prison, and stands by His grief-stricken servant: not to scold him — no, indeed! — but to say once again that well-known and well-loved word, "Cheer up, Paul!"
Darby adds a caution about how much weight such later episodes carry: "Paul saw Him afterwards in a trance in the temple, but these visions prove nothing as to the place He is holding in the dispensations of God."
Summary
- Missed. Paul never saw Jesus during His earthly life, nor in the forty days after the resurrection — he was on the other side, persecuting.
- Met. He met Him once, personally, on the Damascus road: alone among his companions, he saw the Lord and heard His voice.
- Reversed. The twelve moved slowly from the lowly Man to the glory; Paul began at the glory and only then learned it was Jesus.
- Joined. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" told him the Lord in heaven counts His people on earth as Himself.
- Late. His apostleship came out of due time and out of due place — after the twelve were complete — yet it rested on the same qualification: he had seen the risen Lord.