The Apostle's Defense - Renewing Your Mind

Renewing Your Mind — “The Apostle’s Defense”

Podcast by Ligonier Ministries
Episode Date: December 20, 2025
Speaker: Dr. Derek Thomas
Host: Nathan W. Bingham

Overview of the Episode

This episode explores the Apostle Paul’s defense of his apostleship and message in Galatians 1:11–24. Dr. Derek Thomas discusses Paul’s dramatic past, the sovereignty of his conversion, and the divine origin of his gospel. The episode aims to deepen listeners’ understanding of the nature of God’s grace, the authenticity of Paul’s ministry, and the importance of maintaining the true gospel as taught by the apostles.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Paul’s Past and Reputation

Historical Context: Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus) was once a zealous persecutor of the early Christian church.

“We cannot overemphasize the degree to which Saul of Tarsus almost extinguished the early church. He had it within his power, or at least almost from a human point of view, to actually put out, to snuff out the Christian church at its very infancy.” (Dr. Thomas, 00:00)
Common Knowledge: Paul’s history was well known to the early church. His reputation as a former “radical anti-Christian activist” cast suspicion on him, especially among Judaizers.
Defending His Authority: Judaizers attacked Paul’s character, calling him a “Johnny-come-lately” and questioning his right to instruct the Galatians.

2. Conversion by Sovereign Grace

The Source of Paul’s Change:

“But when he who had set me apart before I was born….” (Dr. Thomas quoting Galatians 1:15, 07:55)
Paul grounds his apostleship and faith in God’s sovereign choice, not in a personal decision or heritage. He highlights being “set apart before birth” and “called by his grace.”
The Doctrine of Effectual Calling:
Dr. Thomas draws parallels between Paul’s “called” language and the Reformed tradition’s doctrine of effectual calling.

“When Paul thinks about his conversion, he is gripped by the sovereignty of God. … The reason he is a Christian is not because he made a decision… Who enabled him to will? Who enabled him to be drawn to Christ? It was the gracious sovereign hand of my heavenly Father.” (11:30)

3. The Gospel’s Divine Origin

Paul’s Gospel Was Not Derived from Others:
The Judaizers claimed Paul’s gospel was incomplete and questioned its authenticity since he was not one of the original apostles.
Paul’s Independence and Revelation:

“The gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel.” (Dr. Thomas quoting Galatians 1:11, 01:40)
Paul emphasizes he did not receive the gospel from Peter, John, or James, but through a direct revelation from Christ.
Paul’s Time in Arabia and Meeting Peter:
After his conversion, Paul went to Arabia, then Damascus, and only after three years did he meet Peter for fifteen days.

“He still had to get the approval of the supremos: James, the Lord’s brother, John, the one whom Jesus loved, and Peter. … Paul’s point is that this gospel that he preaches, it’s actually not Peter’s gospel. It’s not John’s gospel. It’s not of man, is the point that he wants to make.” (20:40)

4. Clarity on Paul’s Relationship to the Other Apostles

Unique Role, Not Second-Class Apostle:
Paul isn’t a lesser apostle; his commissioning and message come directly from Christ.
Personal Application and the Glory of God:
Dr. Thomas encourages listeners to see themselves as “called ones” by God’s grace, just as Paul was, and reinforces the Reformation principles of grace alone and faith alone.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Paul’s Conversion and God’s Sovereignty:

“There is something about my understanding of the gospel that has sovereignty written all over it.” (08:13, Dr. Thomas) “I was found of Thee.” (09:33, quoting an anonymous hymn)
On the Difference Between “Born Again” and “Called”:

“But for Paul, Paul sees it using a different metaphor. It’s not being born again, it is being called.” (12:45)
On James Calling Jesus ‘Lord’:

“That’s one of the reasons why I’m convinced by the truth of the New Testament that Jesus is divine. Because his brother James … calls him Lord … the Greek equivalent of Yahweh. I have an older brother and it never dawns on me to call him Lord.” (18:30)
On the Centrality of God’s Initiation:

“It is a story of grace from beginning to end.” (12:10)

Important Segment Timestamps

Paul’s reputation and past as persecutor – 00:00–04:45
The challenge of the Judaizers – 04:45–07:45
Paul’s understanding of his conversion and God’s calling – 07:45–14:00
Effectual calling in Reformed theology – 14:00–15:30
On Paul’s gospel not being of man, but from God – 17:30–21:00
Paul’s visit to Peter, the earliest apostles, and his authority – 21:00–22:30

Tone and Style

The episode maintains a reverent, didactic tone, blending historical scholarship with pastoral exhortation characteristic of Reformed teaching. Dr. Thomas delivers thoughtful, structured analysis aiming to both educate and edify the listener.

Summary Takeaway

Dr. Derek Thomas’s message emphasizes the dramatic transformation of Saul—the church’s tormentor—into Paul, God’s chosen apostle. Paul’s authority and gospel rest not on tradition or human institution, but on God’s sovereign grace and call. The episode calls believers to hold fast to the apostolic gospel: salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Transcript

A (0:00)

We cannot overemphasize the degree to which Saul of Tarsus almost extinguished the early church. He had it within his power, or at least almost from a human point of view, to actually put out to snuff out the Christian church at its very infancy.

B (0:26)

If we were to put it in modern terms, the Apostle Paul was a radical angel, anti Christian activist, but he did much more than stage protests. He actually rounded up Christians to be imprisoned or killed, which is why his conversion on the road to Damascus is such a dramatic story. And when a man like that gets saved, it's hard not to pay attention. Welcome to this Saturday edition of Renewing youg Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. We're spending some time on Saturdays with Derek Thomas in the book of Galatians. These messages are from his series no Other Gospel. And if you'd like to study Galatians more in the new year, respond today@renewingyourmind.org with a year end donation. And to thank you, we'll send you this series on dvd, unlock the messages and study guide in the free Ligonier app, and also send you a hardcover edition of R.C. sproul's commentary on Galatians. Well, here's Dr. Thomas to consider what the conversion of the Apostle Paul teaches us about the nature of God's sovereign grace.

A (1:37)

Galatians 1 and this time verses 11 through 24 larger segment. And I want to draw attention immediately to verse 11. For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel, as we saw in the first lesson. Paul is writing this letter to the Galatians because there are certain folk in the church, just call them Judaizers for now, who are insisting that it's not enough to believe in Jesus. You need to believe in Jesus plus be circumcised plus obey the dietary laws plus plus plus and Paul has said this is a damnable plus. And anyone who preaches a gospel of this nature is not preaching the true biblical gospel and should be anathematized. And he was very passionate in that opening introduction. Now he wants to open this up a little bit more because not only are these Judaizers suggesting that Paul's gospel is insufficient, they're actually questioning Paul himself. That's not a new tactic to go after the person and to make an ad hominem argument in effect. So who is the Apostle Paul? Well, of course we know who the Apostle Paul is. We have the benefits of hindsight. And we know that Paul, his Greek name Saul, His Hebrew name. Some people think that Saul was given that name by Jesus on the Damascus road. That's probably not true. He always had these two names. One is a Hebrew name and one is a Greek name. And I think that Paul, when he's ministering now in Hellenist Greek places like Galatia, he uses Paulus, he uses his Greek name. It would be a point of entry for him to advance the gospel. We know that he is the author of 13 of the New Testament books, but the Galatians didn't know that. Indeed, their minds were filled with prejudice as to who Saul of Tarsus was. And Paul is now on the defensive. And he has to defend his name and he has to defend his reputation, and he has to defend his right to impose on the Galatian church a certain view of the Gospel. He's not Peter, he's not John, he's not James. He's not one of Jesus disciples. He's a Johnny. Come lately, these Judaizers are suggesting Paul does this in a number of epistles. You'll find Paul doing something similar in 2 Corinthians, for example, where the church is being influenced by a group within it calling Paul's authority into question as an apostle of Jesus Christ. So let's look at this section, verses 11 through 24. The first thing I want us to see is that Paul has a past. He talks in verse 13 of his former life. You have heard of my former life in Judaism. That's an interesting expression, isn't it, that he's already distancing himself from Judaism. There's a certain sense in which the early church, it still has a foot in two camps. It's Christian, but it's also still in synagogues. And so until that moment when they're put out of the synagogues, and by the turn of the first century, they're no longer under the aegis of Judaism. And that gets them into trouble with the Roman Empire and brings in all kinds of persecution against the Christian church. It was a very definitive moment, the end of the first century, the turn into the second century, when the church, as it were, has to stand on its own two feet in the Roman Empire. Well, Paul is talking about a former life. And the context, of course, is that Paul is being accused of being a charlatan, a Johnny. Come lately, his views about the law, about circumcision, about fraternizing with the Gentiles has all now been called into question. The Judaizers might have been saying, this man, you know, this man's a Liberal. This man is from out west somewhere and he's come into the church and he's forgetting the traditions of the church. And he may well have been a conservative in the past, but now he's something of a religious liberal and Paul has to defend himself. I have a former life and you know all about it. It's not as though some reporter has done some investigation and has now published a kind of scoop on the Apostle Paul revealing his past that no one was ever aware of. Everybody knew Saul of Tarsus past, you have heard, he says in verse 13. And what is it that they have heard? How I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. We cannot overemphasize the degree to which Saul of Tarsus almost extinguished the early church. He had it within his power, or at least almost from a human point of view, to actually put out, to snuff out the Christian church at its very infancy. And Luke, for example, gives us more than one account of Paul's conversion. And this is another one. So we have lots of information here about Paul's past. Going after men, women and children, writing letters of authority to Jewish henchmen who would arrest and try and even in some cases kill these early Christians. I suppose, I guess, that not a night went by when Paul lay his head on a pillow that he didn't think about his involvement in that violent past. We see examples of it in our own time in terms of religious zealotry and so on that involve acts of violence. It's been part of Christian history, it's part of Islamic history in our own time, for example, that there is this violent section given to implementing their understanding of scripture or holy books or laws to the point of putting men and women and children to. To death. And this is Paul's past. This is what he was. It's not that he met someone and, you know, he used to be a conservative, but now he's kind of loosened up and he's more tolerant and so on. That's not the case. Paul is still a conservative. He's still passionate about God. He's still passionate about God's law. He's still passionate about Torah, about the Ten Commandments, about the need for Christians to repent of their sins and to flee to a righteous way of living. He's still a conservative in that sense. But something has happened to the Apostle Paul in his understanding of the gospel. That obedience to the law and obedience to Jewish traditions or boundary markers or whatever you call them, that is not a part of the gospel. So Paul has a past, and it was a violent past, and something has happened. And so in the second place, there's his conversion. He has a past, but he was converted. And in verse 15. But when he who had set me apart before I was born. Isn't that an interesting way of seeing it? He doesn't refer to the time on the Damascus road. He doesn't refer to the moment in which he saw and encountered the risen Jesus so much. He goes all the way back before he was born and into eternity. I was set apart before I was born. And Paul is saying, there's something about the understanding of who I am. There is something about my understanding of the gospel that has sovereignty written all over it. Paul is a man who has encountered and been shaped by the sovereignty of God. The reason why Paul is a Christian, the reason why he is an apostle to the Gentiles, is because God has had a plan for him from before he was born. It is an anonymous hymn. I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew he drew my soul to seek him seeking me. It was not I that found, O Savior. True, no. I was found of Thee. And that's a hymn, and we sometimes sing it in our church. But it's a beautiful way of describing we sought the Lord. I was converted in December 28, 1971, 11:30 or so at night after reading John Stott's Basic Christianity. But within days I realized that something had been at work. Someone had been at work in my life years before, in fact, had been shaping my life and the contours of Providence from the moment of my birth. And the more I read Scripture beyond, further back than the moment of my birth, into the councils of eternity. When Paul thinks about his conversion, he is gripped by the sovereignty of God. The reason he is a Christian is not because he made a decision. He made a decision. He did make a decision. His will was engaged, his volition was engaged, his affections were engaged. But who enabled him to will? Who enabled him to be drawn to Christ? It was the gracious sovereign hand of my heavenly Father. You notice again in verse 15, when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace. There's that word grace again. We saw it in the first lesson. And here it is again as he thinks about who he is and what he is. It is a story of grace from beginning to end. Who called me by his grace? I want to pause there. When we think of who we are as Christians, we tend to use John 3. We tend to use Jesus words to Nicodemus about being born again. I was born again. I was regenerated. I was given a new heart. You must be born again. Jesus said to Nicodemus. But there's a sense, and that's a John way of seeing it, if I can put it that way. But for Paul, Paul sees it using a different metaphor. It's not being born again, it is being called. When he writes to the Corinthians, the very opening verses, he refers to the Christians in Corinth as called to be saints. They were called to be saints. Or you can also translate that, the holy called ones. Next time you think about yourself as a Christian, you could say this about yourself. I'm somebody who has been called. I've received a call. I've received a sovereign, effectual call that drew me to Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. And so for Paul at this stage, when he's writing to the Galatians, the reason why he's a Christian is because he answered the call. He received a call and he answered the call. And that call was powerful, that call was sovereign, that call was effectual. That way of thinking will be dominant in St. Augustine, for example. It will be dominant in the Reformers. It will be dominant in the puritans of the 17th century. The doctrine of effectual calling. As we record these sessions, it's the anniversary of the Synod of Dort, the five points of Calvinism, one of which is effectual calling. We've been called sovereignly and powerfully by God. And then he goes on to say in verse 16, was pleased to reveal his Son to me. There's a little footnote in some of your versions that to me can also be translated in me. Not just that the Lord Jesus was revealed objectively to him, as a reference to the Damascus Road incident where he saw the risen Jesus. But he was revealed in Paul close to his heart, convincing his heart. So the real reason why Paul is a Christian is because Jesus was revealed in him. A French atheist by the name of Renan said about the Damascus Road experience of the Apostle Paul that Saul of Tarsus had an uneasy conscience. He was unstrung in his nerves. He was fatigued, his eyes inflamed by the hot sun, feverish, hallucinating all the time. And that's just a humanistic way of trying to explain the experience of the conversion of the Apostle Paul. And Paul, of course, would laugh in his face and say to him, you weren't there. I know what I saw, and I wasn't hallucinating or feverish or sick in any way, he was in full possession of his faculties. And in the course of his journey to snuff out the Christian church, he was arrested in every faculty of his being by the reality of the risen ascended Jesus, and it changed his life entirely. So he had a past and he had a conversion. And then he tells us about his Gospel. The accusations are that Paul never learned this gospel from the apostles in Jerusalem. Now you have to go back to around 50 AD and who are the important people? You know there are important people. There are people with names and influence in the church. And who are they? And they are of course, the disciples of Jesus. You can't beat the card that says, you know, I was one of his disciples. I lived with him for three years. I listened to. I listened to him preach. We slept on the side of a road, under trees, on a journey. We ate together, we talked together, we journeyed together. I was there when Jesus fell asleep in the storm at sea. I was there when he raised Lazarus from the dead. Paul had none of that. He had no firsthand knowledge of Jesus. Had he seen Jesus, perhaps there's every possibility that at some point in Saul of Tarsus rabbinical training, he would have been in Jerusalem. And he may well have been there when Jesus was in Jerusalem. We have no evidence of that. But that's not completely fantasy language. But he can't speak like John could speak. He can't speak like James, the Lord's brother, by the way. That's one of the reasons why I'm convinced by the truth of the New Testament that Jesus is divine. Because his brother James in his epistle says so. He calls him Lord. He calls him Kurias. He calls him the Greek equivalent of Yahweh. I have an older brother and it never dawns on me to call him Lord. I respect him. He's four years older than me. I was even fearful of him as a teenager, but no way would I ever call him Lord. But James does. James worships his older brother and calls him Lord, but Paul had none of that. It's an interesting question and scholars debate it at length. You know, what is the origin of Paul's religion? There's a wonderful book written over 100 years ago now by Gresham Machen called the Origin of Paul's Religion. And it's outdated now because of advance in knowledge and so on over the last hundred years. But. But that's what Grisham Machen was addressing. Where did Paul get all this Doctrine from. We know that after his conversion he goes immediately to Arabia, he says in verse 17. Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me. But I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. He actually, Luke tells us in Acts that he went and preached in some synagogues before he actually arrived in Arabia. And then he returned again to Damascus. And then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him 15 days. Now, that reads as a very matter of fact, bit of history, but that's absolutely huge. Who is the most important man around in A.D. 50? And the answer is Cephas. Peter. Peter is way more important than Paul. In the first 12 chapters of Acts, for example, it's not Paul. It's all about Peter. To whom did Jesus say, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it? Peter, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. Peter wasn't the first pope of Rome, of course, but he was the supreme apostle. He was the supreme disciple. He was the one, this broken individual who had denied Jesus. You would have picked John before you would have picked Peter, the one whom the gospels refer to as Jesus. Friend, isn't it a wonderful thing that God uses broken people like Peter to build his church? Who is the great preacher on the day of Pentecost? It's Peter. So there's a sense in which Saul of Tarsus, now, the apostle Paul, he's gone away to Arabia. He studied like crazy. I'm sure when he was there, the Holy Spirit gave him revelation and insight and knowledge and understanding. But he still had to get the approval of the supremos. James, the Lord's brother, John, the one whom Jesus loved, and Peter. And he spends 15 days with Peter. Wish there were tape recorders, wish there were microphones. Love to know how that went. Cephas and Paul, two huge personalities. And Paul's point is that this gospel that he preaches, it's actually not Peter's gospel. It's not John's gospel. It's not of man, is the point that he wants to make. It's not of man. It doesn't get the approval of man. It's not man's Gospel. Verse 11. I would have you to know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. It's a gospel that is revealed by the Holy Spirit and given to this individual, Saul of Tarsus. Now, the apostle Paul, it's from God. And that's why you should believe it.