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.