OUR MISSIONAL PURPOSE

God saves us to send us. Every Christian serves Christ's mission from the moment of conversion to the last breath of life. We must not live aimlessly but purposefully. Paul illustrates the urgency of this mission in Galatians when he tells us that God revealed Christ to him "so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles" (Gal. 1:16). The purpose of saving was sending! Paul did not go up to Jerusalem to be credentialed by the apostles but went straight to Arabia before returning to Damascus (Gal. 1:17). Arabia was Christ's first missionary assignment for Paul. He served on mission immediately upon conversion! The same is true for us.

The backstory for Paul's testimony in Galatians 1 is found in Acts 9:19-25. Luke says nothing about Paul's trip to Arabia, but it must have occurred in the middle of verses 19-20. The remainder of Luke's account is the story of Paul's return trip to Damascus nearly 3 years after his conversion. Traditionally, Christians have believed that Paul went into Southern Arabia near Mt. Horeb (Sinai) following in the footsteps of Elijah. The region is isolated, desolate and bleak - the perfect place to commune with God, meditate in silence and learn theology in the school of Christ before going out to preach the gospel to the Gentiles.

WHERE AND WHAT?

Where is Arabia and what was Paul doing in Arabia for 3 years? Paul would have understood Arabia to be the Nabatean Kingdom ruled by King Aretas IV (F.F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 81-82). The Nabatean Kingdom was easily accessible from Damascus and extended southward to Petra and the Red Sea. The territory covered the region east of Galilee and ran along the eastern shore of the Jordan River. Josephus refers to this region as Arabia belonging to Petra (Witherington, The Paul Quest, 308).

Paul did not go to Arabia for private meditation and reflection. He went to preach the gospel to the Arabians. Paul immediately began doing what God had called him to do. I believe that Paul's visit to Arabia was missional for two reasons (See Bruce, 81-82; Witherington, 307-309).

First, Paul slips in a little nugget of information about why he was forced to escape from Damascus in a basket lowered from a window in the wall (2 Cor. 11:32). The ethnarch of Damascus was under the control of King Aretas who apparently sought the arrest of Paul after he had returned to Damascus from Arabia. Why would Aretas, the Nabatean King, be upset with Paul enough to arrest him if he had been in solitude for 3 years? No! Paul was stirring up trouble in Arabia by his preaching, and Aretas didn't like it.

Second, the whole point of Paul's argument in Galatians 1:16-18 is that he was discharging his call to preach the gospel to the Gentiles before he ever went up to Jerusalem to meet the apostles. His claim of apostolic independence would lose its force if he were in solitude for 3 years before being credentialed by the apostles in Jerusalem.

WHY?

God called Paul to preach Christ to the Gentiles (Gal. 1;16). Paul understood his calling immediately upon conversion and looked for a way to fulfill his mission. Interestingly, there was a long history of ethnic animosity between the Nabateans and the Jews. The Aretas family had engaged in numerous political fights with Jewish rulers over who owned sections of land in the region (Witherington, 309). Arabs and Jews were fighting over land even in Paul's day! 

Paul, the Jewish nationalist zealot, chose to carry out his first mission to Arabs with whom he and other Jews harbored ethnic hatred. He went to a people who hated him. Aretas, ruling from Petra, would have resented a Jew coming into his kingdom trying to convert his people. No wonder, he wanted Paul arrested! Christ had transformed Paul so radically that he put aside all his ethnic differences with the Arabs and sought to win them for Christ. He understood his new mission as a citizen of Christ's kingdom was to win people for that kingdom, so he resolutely focused his eyes on his purpose.

What about us? Paul didn't need to wait for special instructions or 3 years of prayer and meditation before evangelizing, and neither do we. If we have been changed by His grace, we can preach His gospel. Changed lives are the greatest testimony to the power of God's grace. God saves us to send us. Our mission is to make disciples of all nations. We must not go just to people who are like us or who like us. We must go to those who hate us and with whom we may share cultural and ethnic differences. Sadly, we often get distracted by our national and cultural loyalties and lose sight of our mission. Our missional purpose in life is to preach Christ as a people changed by grace to a hostile world in need of grace.

GRACE'S GRIP

All we are, have, do, or gain is the result of God's grace, not our merit! Our salvation and our service are first for God's pleasure, not for our benefit. Paul makes this truth clear in his testimony about God's call (Gal. 1:15-16). Paul writes, "But when God, the one who marked me off from my mother's womb and called me by His grace, delighted to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the nations, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood."

God's delight (εὐδόκησεν) drove God's revelation (ἀποκαλύψαι) of His Son to Paul. God's pleasure drives our salvation. In between God's delight (v.15) and God's revelation (v.16), we see God's choice and God's call. Paul describes the God who delighted to reveal Himself as the God who marked him (ἀφορίσας) and called him (καλέσας). The two verbs are grammatically connected by a conjunction (καὶ) and governed by one article (ὁ). Both participles describe the actions of God. No one deserves God's choice or God's call. It is all about Him, not about us.

THE MARK OF GOD

Paul uses a verb meaning to set apart or mark off (ἀφορίσας) to describe God's appointment of him from birth. The verb always carries the force of separation. For example, God sends His angels to separate (ἀφοριοῦσιν) the wicked from the righteous at the end of the age (Mt. 13:49). Paul uses this word later in Galatians to accuse Peter of separating himself from the Gentiles at meals after the Judaizers arrived in Antioch (Gal. 2:12). So God separated Paul for the ministry of the gospel as he says in Romans 1:1 (ἀφωρισμένος εἰς εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ), and God did so from his "mother's womb" (ἐκ κοιλίας μητρός). God's choice predates man's choice. God chooses us before we choose Him.

The verb to separate or mark off (ἀφορίζω) comes from the verb to appoint or determine (ὁρίζω). To appoint or determine (ὁρίζω) is used eight times in the New Testament, while to separate (ἀφορίζω) is used ten times. There is a close connection between the two concepts in the New Testament (NIDNTT, 1:472-474. To separate and to appoint are sometimes difficult to distinguish from one another, particularly as it relates to God's call. Luke records that the Holy Spirit commanded the church in Antioch, "Separate" (ἀφορίσατε) "for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called (προσκέκλημαι) them." Long before Paul met Jesus on the Damascus road, God appointed him to preach Christ among the Gentiles (Gal. 1:16). Paul was marked off for ministry from birth.

THE CALL OF GOD

God not only marked off Paul, but He also called (καλέσας) him to preach Christ. This concept of calling is rooted in the Old Testament usage of the term where it is often used to describe someone higher in rank calling someone lower in rank. In this case, the call is never just an invitation but rather a command, particularly when used of God's call to humans. Two Old Testament passages are instructive as background for God's call of Paul. First, God's call of Samuel (1 Sam. 3:4-10) uses the verb "call" (καλέω) eleven times in the Septuagint. Humans must hear and recognize the call of God before they can obey it. Often, like Samuel and even Paul, humans do not hear the call of God or even seek to avoid it. Second, God's call of the servant in the Servant Songs of Isaiah is important (Isaiah 41:8; 42:6; 43:1, 10; 45:3). God's call to service (καλέω) is often linked to the frequent use of God's choice of the servant (ἐκλέγομαι) so that the calling and the choosing are inseparable just as in Galatians 1:15 (NIDNTT, 1:272-273).

God's call is rooted in God's grace. Paul writes that God called him "through His grace" (διὰ τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ). The means by which God calls is always grace. Paul didn't deserve to be chosen or called, and neither do we. There is nothing intrinsic in us that induces the call of God. The calling and choosing are always grounded in grace. The expression points us back to Galatians 1:6, where Paul wrote that the Galatians were "called by the grace of Christ." God's grace and Christ's grace are the same because God and Christ are united in the gracious call (Longenecker, Galatians, 30). Paul ties the call of God to the choice of God in the opening words of Romans (1:1) but in reverse order from Galatians 1:15. God called Paul as an apostle, and God separated Paul for the work of the gospel. We should not try to deduce an order of events from the order of these words.

God in His grace marks us off from the world and calls us to preach Christ. We deserve nothing but gain everything. We are nobody's, but He makes us somebody's by His grace. No matter what we face in ministry for Him - opposition, discouragement, sacrifice, hurt, betrayal, rejection - we know that His call is grounded in His grace. We are held in the grip of His grace forever!