Paul’s Passion and My Task
- Connie Cartisano
- Aug 3, 2023
- 5 min read
I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me - the task of testifying to the Gospel of God's grace.
Acts 20:24
I have always admired the apostle Paul's passion for ministry, and no doubt this verse captures its essence.
How did Paul know it was his task to be an apostle to the Gentiles?
In the account of his conversion in Acts 9, Jesus called Paul "a chosen instrument... to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel" (Acts 9.15)
This sounds like a generic elaboration on what he told the disciples just before he ascended. You know, "You will be my witnesses..." Which in itself is an extension of the Great Commission from Matthew 28: "Go into all the world and make disciples of all men, baptizing them... teaching them..."
I never imagined that Jesus took these words, spoken first to the disciples who walked with him during his public ministry, and tailored them specifically for Paul. And I certainly never expected a similar task-assignment in my own life.
Not until recently, that is. I now believe that we all share Paul's same task. No matter what we do with our lives, it must boil down to this: testifying to God's grace.
But what exactly does that mean?
I don't know if this is the whole answer, but we can learn a lot from how Paul lived. The grace of God in sparing his life so captivated him that he counted his life as forfeit. He said so repeatedly in his letters.
How did he find such selflessness? I'll tell you.
From the time of the early church in the days after Pentecost, Paul was so convinced that Christians were Jewish heretics that he determined to stamp out the movement entirely. To do this he became their persecutor, a murderer of Christians.
When he discovered that the one he had been persecuting, Jesus, was God in the flesh, he realized he deserved a literal death sentence. That is why he calls himself the worst of sinners. Not out of false humility but because he was deeply aware of how wrong he had been, how far short he fell of the righteousness he thought to uphold.
He had gotten it all wrong, when he thought he was so, so right. He regretted his mistake every day for the rest of his life. No punishment or hardship that came his way could ever expunge his guilt in his own eyes. At the same time, he understood that, in the only eyes that mattered, Jesus had wiped his slate clean.
God had not only forgiven him and received him as a son, he had offered him a life-work. Go tell the Gentiles about Jesus, about access to the God of Israel, who was really the God of all, the One True God.
Sometimes my little mind wonders if it might have been appropriate to send Paul to the Jews. After all, who knew their religion better, inside and out, than he, a “Hebrew of Hebrews”? Who could reason with them better from their own Scriptures?
I think maybe Paul thought a little like this himself, for in every new city he entered, where Christ had not yet been named, he went first to his brother Jews. He explained the gospel to them even though synagogues universally rejected his message, and punished him with the 39-Lashes, and stoning, and jail, and whatever else they could think of.
That was Paul’s choice. He took every opportunity to share the good news of Jesus the King. God did not require this method of reaching a city, but to Paul’s mind, he deserved everything he got, if not for the reasons they dished it out.
Still, God is merciful, and he understood Paul, that he would die trying to make amends. He took what could have been a misery for Paul—and no doubt was at times—and turned it into a joyous means of redemption for an unworthy enemy-turned-son.
After all, the Jewish religion was not God’s end game. The Jews had their chance. They alone had privileged access to God for centuries. Theirs are the patriarchs, theirs the promises and the Scriptures. The Messiah was their own, and he came to them first and only. They missed him, to their shame and the world’s good.
Jesus aimed his followers at “the ends of the earth,” and Paul was to be the tip of their spear.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the Jews, given his promise at the very beginning of his dealings with Abraham, that God had his eye on the whole earth. He wants all people everywhere to be saved, that his eternal throne should be surrounded by people from every tongue and tribe and nation.
The fact that Jesus did not execute him on the Damascus Road was grace to Paul. It became the overwhelming definition of his identity. He even changed his name.
He considered his life was no longer his own. It had been purchased at the price of Jesus's blood. Being a devout Jew, Paul understood sacrifice and atonement. From that day forward, in Paul's mind Jesus owned him. The way they said it in those days was to call the new owner, "Lord."
And now that Paul had become a slave of the Christ, he set about his assigned task with all the zeal that had prospered him as a Pharisee. Off he went and never looked back, counting everything as loss, forgetting what was behind, straining forward to what lay ahead.
So I ask, Does Jesus still assign tasks today? Maybe there will never be another Paul, yet my soul longs for significance in the kingdom of God.
One evening not so long ago, with no more details than he gave Paul, the Christ said to me, "Tell my story." He didn't say to whom, and he didn't say how or through what medium.
Like Paul, I have taken the command seriously. I now write and publish what I can, including the Tales from Eternity series, the Why Is Life So Hard? series, Bible studies and blog posts. I speak and I teach about God, his ways, his Word. Oh, what if these can be translated into world languages?! This is life to me, and I will never look back at what was, or what might have been.
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