On This Day: Attaching to the Apostle Paul

   Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, (Romans 1:1)

   I need to “think outside the box” about this apostle Paul stuff (the box to the left, not the box of Scripture!). There were just too many things to think about in reference to Paul’s calling to “be an apostle” and I don’t want to miss any of them!

   On one side, it’s because I have this new urge to feel relational with Paul on this present journey through Romans.

   On the other side, there’s such a growing trend to criticize Paul, to claim authority to challenge his authority, and to change his God-breathed teachings, that rebuking error and falsehood is a never-ending part of “fight the good fight of the faith”, as Paul described it.

   I think the biggest thing in this, perhaps the most “foundational” thing, is that Paul was called to be “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God” (Ephesians 1:1). That’s what a call is in the Bible, a calling by God to fulfill some God-designed place in Jesus’ kingdom. Paul was called as “a servant of Christ Jesus” to be “an apostle” by the will of God.

   I am finding that parallels from Ephesians are happily joining me on this journey through Romans. Ephesians 2 contains an architectural diagram of the church Jesus said he would build. So many people seem to know the teaching that, 

   “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9),

but not the teaching that follows describing what we have been saved by grace through faith INTO!

   In short, Paul is telling both Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus Christ that Jesus’ work was to “create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace” (Ephesians 2:15-16). It was never his design to make Jewish churches for Jewish believers and Gentile churches for Gentile believers. Neither did he ever intend that Gentiles would become Jewish or Jews would become Gentilish. This “one new man” is “in place of the two”.

   That’s why Paul, being as Jewish as they come, was appointed as “an apostle to the Gentiles” (Romans 11:13). Jesus was showing that “There is neither Jew nor Greek” in his church (Galatians 3:28) even though there are still Jews and Greeks among the believers. The “one new man” gives us a new identity that supersedes any earthly identities.

   The thing that most relates to us today about Paul and the other 11 apostles is that Jesus’ church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets”. That means that what we have in the apostles’ letters to the churches has foundational authority. Whatever is built on that foundation is to express what is in the “rock” of that foundation.

   What this means is that anyone who tampers with what Paul has written in his letters as Scripture (Peter said so in II Peter 3:16) is one of those Paul warned about who “practice cunning or to tamper with God's word” (II Corinthians 4:2). For Paul to be in our lives as “a servant of Christ Jesus”, and writing to us as “called to be an apostle” by God’s will, means what Jesus told the apostles, 

   “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me” (John 13:20).

   Do you feel the “serious business” of reading Paul’s letter to the Romans? And not just reading it, but receiving it, meditating on it, believing it, applying it, and living in “the obedience of faith” it talks about. How we respond to Paul and his letters is how we are responding to Jesus and the Father.

   It is a huge comfort to me that there are no apostles today. Why? Because God’s “breathed-out” words are already in the Scriptures. No one today has apostolic authority to continue adding to the foundation that Jesus, the Cornerstone, already built through the 12 apostles. We already have “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). The apostles’ teaching through the whole book of Acts is referred to as “the word of God,”¹ and since it is God’s word, it has authority over Jesus’ whole church all through these end times.

   Considering how necessary Paul’s letters are to us understanding who we are in Christ, and who we are in Jesus’ church, it is no wonder that Satan is stirring up church folk to denigrate his writings. Popular speakers are claiming they have a new story about Paul because the one Jesus gave us isn’t good enough.

   Paul himself warned about this when he told the Ephesian elders, 

   “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30).

If he knew it would happen in the years immediately following his departure, how much more now that we have had a couple of millennia of battles over the authority of God’s word, the Bible.

   And the whole while we have an apostle Jesus himself chose to go to us Gentiles with the message of the gospel, the message of Jesus’ kingdom, and the message of how to be the church, the one body of Christ, so that we could live “by every word that comes from the mouth of God” today, just as Paul and the other apostles were leading the church to live by God’s word in the beginning.

   Folks, whatever you’re reading in the Bible is Scripture. All Scripture is breathed-out by God. Its authority is in God our Creator, Savior, and Lord. So, even if you are not presently meditating your way through one of Paul’s letters, let the apostolic authority of those letters remind you how to apply anything else you are hearing from God’s word so that your “obedience of faith” is all to the glory of God.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

Note 1: references in Acts to the preaching of the gospel as the word of God:

Summary: 

·         Acts 2:22 - “these words” (5:24)

·         Acts 2:40 – “with many other words”

·         Acts 2:41 - “So those who received his word” (Peter’s word)

·         Acts 4:4 - “the word” (6:4; 8:4; 10:44; 11:19; 14:25; 16:6; 17:11; 18:5)

·         Acts 4:29 - “your word”

·         Acts 4:31 - “the word of God” (6:2,7; 8:14; 11:1; 12:24; 13:5; 13:7; 13:46; 17:13; 18:11)

·         Acts 5:20 - “all the words of this Life”

·         Acts 8:25 - “the word of the Lord” (13:44,48,49; 15:35,36; 16:32; 19:10,20)

·         Acts 9:25 – “preaching the gospel” (15:7)

·         Acts 14:3 - “the word of his grace” (20:32)