Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Corinthians 15:9
For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
9. because I persecuted the church of God ] Act 7:58; Act 8:3; Act 9:1. Cf. Gal 1:13; 1Ti 1:13.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For – A reason for the appellation which he had given to himself in 1Co 15:8.
I am the least of the apostles – Not on account of any defect in his commission, or any lack of qualification to bear witness in what he saw, but on account of the great crime of his life, the fact that he had been a persecutor. Paul could never forget that; as a man who has been profane and a scoffer, when he becomes converted, can never forget the deep guilt of his former life. The effect will be to produce humility, and a deep sense of unworthiness, ever onward.
Am not meet to be called an apostle – Am not fit to be regarded as a follower of the Lord Jesus, and as appointed to defend his cause, and to bear his name among the Gentiles. Paul had a deep sense of his unworthiness; and the memory of his former life tended ever to keep him humble. Such should be, and such will be, the effect of the remembrance of a life of sin on those who become converted to the gospel, and especially if they are entrusted with the high office of the ministry, and occupy a station of importance in the church of God.
Because I persecuted the church of God – See Acts 9. It is evident, however, that deeply as Paul might feel his unworthiness, and his unfitness to be called an apostle, yet that this did not render him an incompetent witness of what he had seen. He was unworthy; but he had no doubt that he had seen the Lord Jesus; and amidst all the expressions of his deep sense of his unfitness for his office, he never once intimates the slightest doubt that he had seen the Saviour. He felt himself fully qualified to testify to that; and with unwavering firmness he did testify to it to the end of life. A man may be deeply sensible that he is unworthy of an elevated station or office, and yet not the less qualified to be a witness. Humility does not disqualify a man to give testimony, but rather furnishes an additional qualification. There is no man to whom we listen more attentively, or whose words we more readily believe, than the modest and humble man, the man who has had abundant opportunities to observe that of which he testifies, and yet who is deeply humble. Such a man was the apostle Paul; and he evidently felt that, much as he felt his unworthiness, and ready as he was to confess it, yet his testimony on the subject of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus ought to have, and would have, great weight in the church at Corinth; compare the note on Act 9:19.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 9. I am the least of the apostles] This was literally true in reference to his being chosen last, and chosen not in the number of the twelve, but as an extra apostle. How much pains do some men take to make the apostle contradict himself, by attempting to show that he was the very greatest of the apostles, though he calls himself the least! Taken as a man and a minister of Christ, he was greater than any of the twelve; taken as an apostle he was less than any of the twelve, because not originally in that body.
Am not meet to be called an apostle] None of the twelve had ever persecuted Christ, nor withstood his doctrine: Saul of Tarsus had been, before his conversion, a grievous persecutor; and therefore he says, , I am not proper to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God, i.e. of Christ, which none of the apostles ever did.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The least, not in dignity, or gifts, or labours; (he tells us, that he had laboured more than all, he had made the gospel to abound from Jerusalem to Illyricum; he hath in this Epistle let us know, that he spake with tongues more than they all); but deserving the least esteem, as he afterward expoundeth himself, telling us, that he was not worthy of the name of an apostle. He gives the reason, because he had before been a persecutor of the church of God, the history of which we have, Act 9:1-3.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
9. leastThe name, “Paulus,”in Latin, means “least.”
I persecuted thechurchThough God has forgiven him, Paul can hardly forgivehimself at the remembrance of his past sin.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For I am the least of the apostles,…. Referring not to the littleness of his stature, but to the figure before used, and as expressing not the opinion of others concerning him, but the true and real sense he had of himself, for which he himself gives the strongest reason that can be given; and by “apostles” he means not only the twelve, but all other ministers of the Gospel that were sent forth by Christ to preach it: nor need this be wondered at, when he says, that he was less than the least of all saints, Eph 3:8 though when his person and doctrines were traduced by false teachers, and attempts were made to disgrace his ministry, and render it useless, in vindication of himself, and without vanity, he does not stick to assert, that he was not a whit behind the very chiefest of the apostles, 2Co 11:5 and yet here adds,
that am not meet to be called an apostle; not only to be one, but to bear the name of one. No man was meet or fit for such an office of himself; none of the apostles were any more than himself; but his meaning is, that though he was chosen, and called, and qualified by the gifts and grace of God for this office, yet he was unworthy to be called by the name of an apostle of Christ, for the reason following,
because I persecuted the church of God: he not only consented to the death of Stephen, the first martyr, and held the clothes of them that stoned him; but he made havoc of the church, haling men and women to prison, and continued to breathe out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord; and had letters of commission from the high priest in his pocket, to seize any of this way at Damascus, and bring them bound to Jerusalem, when Christ met him in the way, and was seen by him: according to his own account, he shut up many of the saints in prison, gave his voice against them when they were put to death, punished them oft in every synagogue, compelled them to blaspheme, and being exceeding mad against them, persecuted them to strange cities; see Ac 7:1. This he mentions both for his own abasement and humiliation, and to magnify the grace of God, to which he ascribes all he was, had, and did, as in the next verse.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The least ( ). True superlative, not elative. Explanation of the strong word just used. See Eph 3:8 where he calls himself “less than the least of all saints” and 1Ti 1:15 the “chief” () of sinners. Yet under attack from the Judaizers Paul stood up for his rank as equal to any apostle (2Cor 11:5; 2Cor 11:23).
Because I persecuted the church of God ( ). There were times when this terrible fact confronted Paul like a nightmare. Who does not understand this mood of contrition?
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1) “For I am the least of the apostles,” (ego gar eimi ho elachistos ton apostolon) “For I exist as the least of the apostles.” The term (elachistos) rendered least” more accurately means “last,” of the apostles, called late, as an aborted one, to humble him, Eph 3:8.
2) “That am not meet to be called an apostle,” (hos ouk eimi hikanos kaleisthai apostolos) “Who am not sufficient to be addressed as or called an apostle.” Paul’s apostleship ministry is marked by a humility proceeding from a continuing consciousness of his former sinful life, 2Co 3:5; 1Ti 1:12-15.
3) “Because I persecuted the church of God.” (dioti edioksa ten ekkiesian tou theou) “because I persecuted the church, congregation, or assembly of God,” a remorse which never quite left the great apostle, Act 26:9; Gal 1:13; Gal 1:22.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
9. For I am the least It is not certain whether his enemies threw out this for the purpose of detracting from his credit, or whether it was entirely of his own accord, that he made the acknowledgment. For my part, while I have no doubt that, he was at all times voluntarily, and even cheerfully, disposed to abase himself, that he might magnify the grace of God, yet I suspect that in this instance he wished to obviate calumnies. For that there were some at Corinth that made it their aim to detract from his dignity by malicious slander, may be inferred not only from many foregoing passages, but also from his adding a little afterwards a comparison, which he would assuredly never have touched upon, if he had not been constrained to it by the wickedness of some, “Detract from me as much as you please — I shall suffer myself to be cast down below the ground — I shall suffer myself to be of no account whatever, (24) that the goodness of God towards me may shine forth the more. Let me, therefore, be reckoned the least of the Apostles: nay more, I acknowledge myself to be unworthy of this distinction. For by what merits could I have attained to that honor? When I persecuted the Church of God, what did I merit? But there is no reason why you should judge of me according to my own worth, (25) for the Lord did not look to what I was, but made me by his grace quite another man.” The sum is this, that Paul does not refuse to be the most worthless of all, and next to nothing, provided this contempt does not impede him in any degree in his ministry, and does not at all detract from his doctrine. He is contented that, as to himself, he shall be reckoned unworthy of any honor, provided only he commends his apostleship in respect of the grace conferred upon him. And assuredly God had not adorned him with such distinguished endowments in order that his grace might lie buried or neglected, but he had designed thereby to render his apostleship illustrious and distinguished.
(24) “ Estre estime moins que rien;” — “To be esteemed less than nothing.”
(25) “ Par ma petite et basse condition;” — “By my little and low condition.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(9) For I am the least of the apostles.Paulus Minimus. Here the mention of his conversionthe thought of what he had been before, what he had become sinceleads the Apostle into a digression, occupying this and the next two verses. The two thoughts of his own inherent nothingness and of his greatness by the grace of God are here mingled together in expressions of intense personal feeling. While he was a persecutor he had thought that he was acting for the Church of God; he was really persecuting the Church of God. The Christian Church had completely taken the place of the Jewish Churchnot merely abolished it, but superseded it.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
9. For While the other apostles were following Jesus and hearing his divine wisdom, Paul was sitting at the feet of the rabbins and hearing their traditions. While the other apostles were preaching the crucified and arisen Saviour, he persecuted the Church of God. He was, therefore, a crude material to make into an apostle. And he still feels the terrible dwarfing and deforming effect of that crime of persecuting the Church resting upon his being. It was from this distorted history that he was the last of all to see the risen Saviour. Had he been in timely and regular manner chosen by Jesus with the twelve he would have seen him with them at his resurrection.
Not meet Viewing himself in that light, he felt as fully as his assailants could wish that he was unfit to be an apostle. Of this fact they fully availed themselves to the last. But there was another side to the matter which he will next give.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Co 15:9. For I am the least of the Apostles, &c. “For how much soever I be now enriched, and advanced to gifts and graces, and in the honours of the apostolate; and how eminent and successful soever my labours and sufferings have been in the execution of that office, I really am in myself, and in my own account, the very least and most contemptible of all the Apostles of Christ; yea, less than the least of all saints, (Eph 3:8.) utterly unworthy of any favour, much more of so high and honourable a station in the church: Nay, on the contrary, I justly deserved to have an eternal brand of infamy set upon me; because I was all along, in the days of my unregeneracy, and blind zeal for judaism, a most obstinate unbeliever, and a most bitter enemy to, and outrageous persecutor of, the church (Act 8:3; Act 9:1,) which God has erected as a peculiar people to himself, and which he owns and blesses, and will be glorified in and by.”
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
1Co 15:9 . Justification of the expression . 1Co 15:9-10 are not a grammatical, though they may be a logical parenthesi.
] has emphasis: just I , no other. Comp. on this confession, Eph 3:8 ; 1Ti 1:15 .
. . .] argumentative: quippe qui , etc. Comp. Od. ii. 41, al. ; Xen. Mem . ii. 7. 13; Matthiae, p. 1067, note 1.
] sufficiently fitted , Mat 3:11 ; Luk 3:16 ; 2Co 3:5 .
] to bear the name of apostle , this high, honourable name.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
XVI
SAUL, THE PERSECUTOR
Act 7:57-60
In a preceding chapter on Stephen we have necessarily considered somewhat a part of the matter of this chapter, and now we will restate only enough to give a connected account of Saul. In our last discussion we found Saul and other members of his family residents in Jerusalem, Saul an accomplished scholar, a rabbi, trained in the lore of the Jewish Bible and of their traditions, a member of the Sanhedrin, an extreme Pharisee, flaming with zeal, and aggressive in his religion, an intense patriot, about thirty-six years old, probably a widower, stirred up and incensed on account of the progress of the new religion of Jesus.
In considering this distinguished Jew in the role of a persecutor, we must find, first of all, the occasion of this marvelous and murderous outbreak of hatred on his part at this particular juncture, and the strange direction of its hostility. On three all-sufficient grounds we understand why Saul did not actively participate in the recent Sadducean persecution. First, the issue of that persecution was the resurrection, and on this point a Pharisee could not join a Sadducean materialist. Second, the motive of that persecution was to prevent the break with Rome, and Saul as a Pharisee wanted a break with Rome. Third, the direction of that persecution was mainly against the apostles and Palestinian Christians, who, so far, had made no break with the Temple and its services and ritual, or the customs of Moses. To outsiders they appeared as a sect of the Jews, agreeing, indeed, with the Pharisees on many points, and while they were hateful in their superstition as to the person of the Messiah, they were understood to preach a Messiah for Jews only and not for Gentiles. That is why Saul did not join the Sadducean persecution because of the issue of it, because of the motive of it, and because of the direction of it.
1. Five causes stirred him up to become a persecutor: First, the coming to the front of Stephen, the Hellenist, whose preaching evidently looked to a Messiah for the world, and not only looked to a break with Jerusalem and the Temple, but the abrogation of the entire Old Covenant, or at least its supercession by a New Covenant on broad, worldwide lines that made no distinction between a Jew and a Greek. That is the first cause of the persecuting spirit of Saul.
2. Stephen’s Messiah was a God-man and a sufferer, expiating sin, and bringing in an imputed righteousness through faith in him wrought by the regenerating Spirit, instead of a Jewish hero, seated on David’s earthly throne, triumphant over Rome, and bringing all nations into subjection to the royal law. This is the difference between the two Messiahs. So that kind of a Messiah would be intensely objectionable to Saul.
3. Stephen’s preaching was making fearful inroads among the flock of Saul’s Cilicean synagogue, and sweeping like a fire among the Israelites of the dispersion, who were already far from the Palestinian Hebrews.
4. Some of Saul’s own family were converted to the new religion, two of them are mentioned in the letter to the Romans as being in Christ before him, and his own sister, judging from Act 23 , was already a Christian.
5. Saul’s humiliating defeat in the great debate with Stephen.
These are the five causes that pushed the man out who had been passive in the other persecution, now to become active in this persecution. They account for the vehement flame of Saul’s hate, and the direction of that hate, not toward the apostles, who had not broken with the Holy City, its Temple, its sacrifice, nor the customs of Moses, but against Stephen and those accepting his broader view. We cannot otherwise account for the fact that Saul took no steps in his persecution against the apostles, while he did pursue the scattered Christians of the dispersion unto strange cities.
We may imagine Saul fanning the flame of his hate by his thoughts in these particulars:
1. “To call this Jesus ‘God’ is blasphemy.
2. “To call this convicted and executed felon ‘Messiah,’ violates the Old Testament teaching of David’s royal son triumphing over all of his enemies.
3. “That I, a freeborn child of Abraham, never in bondage, must be re-born, must give up my own perfect and blameless righteousness of the law to accept the righteousness of another, is outrageous.
4. “That I must see Jerusalem perish, the Temple destroyed, the law of the Mosaic covenant abrogated, and enter into this new kingdom on the same humiliating terms as an uncircumcised Gentile, is incredible and revolting.
5. “That this Hellenist, Stephen, should invade my own flock and pervert members of my own family, Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen [Rom 16:7 ], and my own sister [Act 23:16 ], and shake the faith of my other kinsmen, Jason and Sosipater [Rom 16:21 ], is insulting to the last degree.
6. “That I, the proud rabbi, a member of the supreme court of my people, the accomplished and trained logician, should be overwhelmed in debate by this unscholarly Stephen, and that, too, in my own chosen field the interpretation of the Law, Prophets, and Psalms, is crucifixion of my pride and an intolerable public shame. Let Stephen perish!
7. “But more humiliating than all, I find myself whipped inside. This Stephen is driving me with goads as if I were an unruly ox. His words and shining face and the Jesus he makes me see, plant convicting pricks in my heart and conscience against which I kick in vain; I am like a troubled sea casting up mire and filth. To go back on the convictions of my life is abject surrender. To follow, then, a logical conclusion, is to part from the counsel of my great teacher, Gamaliel, and to take up the sword of the Sadducee and make myself the servant of the high priest. Since I will not go back, and cannot stand still, I must go forward in that way that leads to prison, blood, and death, regardless of age or sex. Perhaps I may find peace. The issue is now personal and vital; Stephen or Saul must die. To stop at Stephen is to stop at the beginning of the way. I must go on till the very name of this Jesus is blotted from the earth.”
That is given as imagined, but you must bring in psychology in order that you may understand the working of this man’s mind to account for the flaming spirit and the desperate lengths of the persecution which he introduces.
Seven things show the spirit of this persecution, as expressed in the New Testament:
1. In Act 8:3 (Authorized Version), the phrase, “making havoc” is used. That is the only time in the New Testament that the word “havoc” is found. It is found in the Septuagint of the Old Testament. But it is a word which expresses the fury of a wild boar making havoc a wild boar in a garden: rooting, gnashing, and trampling. That phrase, “making havoc,” gives us an idea of the spirit that Saul had, which is the spirit of a wild boar.
2. In Act 9:1 , it is said of Saul, “Yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter.” How tersely expressed that is! The expiration of his breath is a threat, and death. Victor Hugo, in one place, said about a man, “Whenever he respires he conspires,” and that is the nearest approach in literature to this vivid description of the state of a man’s mind that the very breath he breathed was threatenings and slaughter.
3. The next word is found in Act 26:11 . He says, “being exceedingly mad against them.” That is the superlative degree. He was not merely angry at the Christians, but it was an anger that amounted to madness; he was not merely mad but “exceedingly mad.” So that gives you the picture of that wild boar.
4. “He haled men and women.” “Haled” is an old Anglo Saxon word. We don’t use it now, but it means “to drag by violence.” He didn’t go and courteously arrest a man; he just went and grabbed men and women and dragged them through the streets. Imagine a gray-haired mother, a chaste wife, a timid maiden, grabbed and dragged through the streets, with a crowd around mocking, and you get at the spirit of this persecution.
5. The next word is “devastate.” Paul used this word twice, and Ananias used it once (Act 9:21 ). That word is the term that is applied to an army sweeping a country with fire and sword. We say that Sherman devastated Georgia. He swept a scope of country seventy-five miles wide from Atlanta to the sea, leaving only the chimney stacks not a house, not a fence with fire and sword. And that word is here employed to describe Saul’s persecution.
6. Twice in Galatians he uses this word in describing it: “I persecuted them beyond measure,” that is, if you want to find some kind of a word that would describe his persecution, in its spirit, you couldn’t find it; you couldn’t find a word that would mean “beyond measure.”
7. The last phrase is in Act 22:4 , “unto death.” That was objective in spirit, whether men or women. These seven expressions, and they are just as remarkable, and more so, in the Greek, as they are in English, give the spirit of this persecution.
The following things show the extent of this persecution:
1. Domiciliary visits. He didn’t wait to find a man on the streets acting in opposition to any law. He goes to the houses after them, and in every place of the world. The most startling exercise of tyranny is an inquisition into a man’s home. The law of the United States regards a man’s home as his castle, and only under the most extreme circumstances does the law allow its officers to enter a man’s home. If you were perfectly sure that a Negro had burglarized your smokehouse, and you had tracked him to his house, you couldn’t go in there, you couldn’t take an officer of the law in there, unless you went before a magistrate and recorded a solemn oath that you believed that he was the one that did burglarize your place, and that what he stole would be found if you looked for it in his house.
2. In the second place, “scourges.” He says many times I have scourged them, both men and women, forty stripes save one; thirty-nine hard lashes he put on the shoulders of men and women. Under the Roman law it was punishable with death to scourge a Roman citizen. Convicts, or people in the penitentiary, can be whipped. Roman lictors carried a bundle of rods with which they chastised outsiders, but on home people they were never used. Cicero makes his great oration against Veres burn like fire when it is shown that Veres scourged Roman citizens. Seldom now do we ever hear of a case where a man is dragged out of his house and publicly whipped by officers of the law, just on account of his religion.
3. The next thing was imprisonment. He says, “Oftentimes I had them put in prison.” A thunderbolt couldn’t be more sudden than his approach to a house. Thundering at the door, day or night, gathering one of the inmates up, taking him from the home and taking him to jail. What would you think of somebody coming to your house when you were away in the night, and dragging your wife and putting her in jail, just because she was worshiping God according to the dictates of her conscience? We live in a good country over here. We have never been where these violent persecutions were carried on.
4. He says that when they were put to death he gave his voice against them. He arrested them and scourged them, and then in the Sanhedrin he voted against them.
5. In the next place he compelled them to blaspheme. The Greek doesn’t mean that he succeeded in making them blaspheme, but that he was trying to make them blaspheme. For instance, he would have a woman up, and there was the officer ready to give her thirty-nine lashes in open daylight: “You will get this lashing unless you blaspheme the name of Jesus,” Paul would say. Pliny, in writing about the Christians in the country over which he presided when he was ordered to persecute the Christians, says, “I never went beyond this: I never put any of them to death if when brought before me he would sprinkle a little incense before a Roman god. If he would Just do that I wouldn’t put him to death.”
6. Expatriation, ex , from, patria terra , “one’s fatherland” exiled from one’s country. It was an awful thing on those people at a minute’s notice either to recant or else just as they were, without a minute’s preparation, to go off into exile, father, mother, and children. The record says, “They were all scattered abroad except the apostles.”
7. Following them into exile into strange countries, and cities, getting a commission to go after them and arrest them, even though they had gotten as far from Jerusalem as Damascus.
8. The last thing in connection with the extent of this persecution is to see, first, the size or number of the church. Let us commence with 120 (that is, before Pentecost), add 3,000 on the day of Pentecost, add multitudes daily, add at another time 5,000 men and women, add twice more, multitudes, multitudes, then we may safely reach the conclusion that there were 100,000 Jewish communicants in that first church at Jerusalem. That represents a great many homes. This man Paul goes into every house, he breaks up every family. They are whipped; they are imprisoned; they are put to death or they are expatriated; and over every road that went out from Jerusalem they were fleeing, the fire of persecution burning behind them. The magnitude of the persecution has never been fully estimated.
There are eight distinct references by him in two speeches and four letters that show his own impressions of this sin. One of them you will find in the address that he delivered on the stairway in Jerusalem when he himself was a prisoner (Act 22 ); another one is found in his speech at Caesarea before King Agrippa (Act 26 ). You will find two references in Gal 1 of the letter to the Galatians (1:13, 23) ; there is one in 1Co 15:15 ; another in Phi 3 ; still another, and a most touching one, when he was quite an old man (1 Timothy). We may judge of the spirit and the extent of a thing by the impression that it leaves on the mind of the participator.
Everything that he inflicted on others, he subsequently suffered. He had them to be punished with forty stripes save one; five times he submitted to the same punishment. He had them put in prison; “oftentimes” he was imprisoned. He had them expatriated; so was he. He had them pursued in the land of expatriation; so was he. He had them stoned; so was he. He attempted to make them blaspheme; so they tried to make him blaspheme under Nero, or die, and he accepted death. He had them put to death; so was he. Early in his life, before a great part of his sufferings had yet commenced, we find his catalogue of the things that he suffered in one of the letters to the Corinthians, and just how many particular things that he had suffered up to that time.
Two considerations would naturally emphasize his unceasing sorrow for this sin:
1. His persecution marked the end of Jewish probation, the closing up of the last half of Daniel’s week, in which the Messiah would confirm the covenant with many. From this time on until now, only an occasional Jew has been converted. Paul did it; he led his people to reject the church of God and the Holy Spirit of God, the church which was baptized in the Spirit, and attested by the Spirit. He, Saul, is the one that pushed his people off the ground of probation and into a state of spiritual blindness judicial blindness from which they have not yet recovered.
2. The second thought that emphasized this impression was that he thereby barred himself, when he became a Christian, from doing much preaching to this people. In Rom 9 he says, “I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” “I bear them witness,” he says in the next chapter, “that they have a zeal for God,” and in Act 22 he says that when he was in the Temple wanting to preach to Jews, wanting to be a home missionary, God appeared to him, and said, “Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem; because they will not receive of thee testimony concerning me.” That was one of the most grievous things of his life, and we find it, I think (some may differ from me on this), manifested in the last letter of his first Roman imprisonment the letter to the Hebrews. He wouldn’t put his name to it. He didn’t want to prejudice its effect, and yet he did want to speak to his people.
Let us compare this persecution with Alva’s in the Netherlands, and the one following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In a few words, it is this: There were two great bodies of Christian people, so-called, in France the Romanists and the Huguenots. Henry of Navarre was a Huguenot. He became king of France, outwardly abjuring his Huguenot principles, but on the condition that liberty of conscience should be allowed to the people. His grandson, Louis XIV, revoked that great edict of toleration, and by its revocation, in one moment, commanded hundreds of thousands of his people to adopt the king’s religion. If they didn’t, troops or soldiers were placed in their homes with the privilege of maltreating them, and destroying their property, without being held responsible for any kind of brutal impiety that they would commit. Their young children were taken away from the mothers and put in the convents to be reared in the Romanist faith; the men had their goods confiscated, and in hundreds of thousands of instances were put to death. They were required to recant or leave France at once. Before they got to the coast an army came to bring them back, and when some of them did escape, my mother’s ancestors, the Huguenots, when that edict was revoked, came to South Carolina. Some of them went to Canada, some to other countries where there was extradition. The Romanists pursued them, and when they were able to capture them, brought them back to France to suffer under the law. Some of those that reached Canada left the settlements and went to live among the Indian tribes. There they were pursued.
When Alva came into the Netherlands (Belgium and Holland), the lowlands, under Philip, the King of Spain, the inquisition was set up and he entered the homes; he made domiciliary visits; he compelled them to blaspheme; he put to death the best, the most gifted, those holding the highest social and moral positions in the land, to the astonishment of the world. With one stroke of his pen he not only swept away all of their property, but anyone that would speak a kind word to them, or would keep them all night in the house, such a person was put to death. All over that country there was the smoke going up of their burning, and the bloodiest picture in the annals of the world was what took place when Alva’s soldiers captured a city. I would be ashamed before a mixed audience to tell what followed. The devastation was fearful.
This persecution illustrates the proverb, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Whenever Saul put one to death, a dozen came up to take the place of that one. Indeed, he himself caught on his own shoulders the mantle of Stephen before it hit the ground, as God put the mantle of Elijah on Elisha, and as God made John the Baptist the successor in spirit to Elijah. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
The effect of this persecution on the enlargement of the kingdom, and on missions, was superb. Those Jewish Christians in Jerusalem those terrapins would never have crawled away from there, if Saul hadn’t put fire on their backs, but when the fire began to burn and they began to run, as they ran, they preached everywhere. It was like going up to a fire and trying to put it out by kicking the chunks. Whenever a chunk is kicked it starts a new fire. When that persecution came, then Philip, driven out, preached to the Samaritans. Then men of Cyrene, pushed out, preached to Greeks in Antioch, and they opened up a fine mission field. Peter himself, at last, was led to see that an uncircumcised Gentile like Cornelius could be received into the kingdom of God. So it had a great deal to do with foreign missions.
The effect of this persecution in bringing laymen to the front was marvelous. They never did come to the front in the history of the world as they did in this persecution. The apostles were left behind. The preachers right in the midst of the big meeting in which 100,000 people had been converted, were left standing there, surrounded by empty pews, with no congregation. The congregation is now doing the preaching. A layman becomes an evangelist. These people carry the word of God to the shores of the Mediterranean, into Asia Minor, to Rome, to Ephesus, to Antioch, to Tarsus, to the ends of the earth, and laymen do an overwhelming part of this work.
It is well, perhaps, in this connection to explain how Saul, in this persecution, could put to death Christian people, since they, the Jews, had no such authority. In the case of Christ we know that it was necessary for the Jews to obtain Roman authority in order to put to death, but just as this time Pontius Pilate was recalled, the Roman Procurator was withdrawn, and a very large part of the Roman military force and the successor of Pilate had not arrived, so the Jews were left pretty much to themselves until that new procurator with new legions came to the country.
QUESTIONS 1. What of Saul already considered in a preceding chapter?
2. Why did not Saul participate actively in the Sadducean persecution?
3. What five causes stirred him up to become a persecutor?
4. How may we imagine Saul fanning the flame of his bate by his thoughts?
5. What seven things show the spirit of this persecution as expressed in the New Testament?
6. What things show the extent of this persecution?
7. What eight distinct references by him in two speeches and four letters which show his own impressions of this sin?
8. What were his own sufferings, in every particular? Were they such as he inflicted?
9. What two considerations would naturally emphasize the unceasing sorrow for this sin?
10. Compare this persecution with Alva’s in the Netherlands and the one following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
11. How does this persecution illustrate the proverb, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”?
12. What was the effect of this persecution on the enlargement of the kingdom, and missions?
13. What was the effect of this persecution in bringing laymen to the front?
14. How do you explain that, in this persecution, Saul could put to death Christian people, since they, the Jews, had no such authority?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
9 For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
Ver. 9. I am the least of the apostles ] Not come to my just size, as one born out of due time, and not without violence. Paulus quasi Paululus, saith one, because he was least in his own eyes, “less than the least of all saints,” Eph 3:8 . Melancthon was of a like self-denying spirit, insomuch as Luther thought he went too far this way; Certe nimis nullus in hae est Philippus, Philip is too low conceited.
Not meet to be called ] True humility, as true balm, ever sinks to the bottom of the water, when pride, like oil, ever swims on the top.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
9, 10 .] Digressive, explanatory of .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
9. ] The stress is on , ‘ I, and no other .’
] ‘ ut qui :’ assigns the reason.
] see reff.
] ‘to bear the honourable name of an Apostle.’
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
1Co 15:9 . corresponds to (1Co 15:8 ); “the least” properly comes “last”: cf. Eph 3:8 , which enhances this expression; also 1Ti 1:15 . . . ., “who am not fit to bear the name of apostle”. (lit [2292] reaching up to, hinreichend ), as distinguished from ( worthy : 1Co 16:4 ), denotes adequacy, competence for office or work ( cf. 2Co 3:5 ); the words are interchangeable “where the capacity to act consists in a certain moral condition of mind and heart” (Ed [2293] : cf. Mat 3:2 , and Joh 1:27 ). ( propterea quod , Bz [2294] ) . . ., “because I persecuted the Church of God” a remorse which never left the Ap. ( cf. Gal 1:13 , 1Ti 1:13 ff., Act 26:9 ff.); the prominence of this fact in Luke’s narrative is a sign of Paul’s hand. The Church of Jerus., whatever opposition to himself might proceed from it, was always to Paul “the church of God” (Gal 1:13 ; Gal 1:22 ): on this phrase, see note to 1Co 1:2 . For , in this sense, cf. Rom 9:25 f., Heb 2:2 . This ver. explains how P. is “the abortion” among the App.; in respect of his dwarfishness , and the unripeness of his birth into Apostleship.
[2292] literal, literally.
[2293] T. C. Edwards’ Commentary on the First Ep. to the Corinthians . 2
[2294] Beza’s Nov. Testamentum: Interpretatio et Annotationes (Cantab., 1642).
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
least. Figure of speech Meiosis (App-6).
church. App-186.
God. App-98.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
9, 10.] Digressive, explanatory of .
Fuente: The Greek Testament
1Co 15:9. ) in Latin Paulus, minimus.-, who) The language increases in strength.-, I persecuted) Believers even after repentance take guilt to themselves for the evil, which they have once perpetrated.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
1Co 15:9
1Co 15:9
For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle,-Paul keenly felt his guilt in persecuting the church, often spoke of it, always confessing his sinfulness, and on account of it he felt that he was the least of all the apostles, and was not worthy to be called an apostle.
because I persecuted the church of God.-This sense of wrong done the church of God became a spur to increased sacrifice for Christ.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
the least: 2Co 11:5, 2Co 12:11, Eph 3:7, Eph 3:8
because: Act 8:3, Act 9:1-19, Act 22:4, Act 22:5, Act 26:9-11, Gal 1:13, Gal 1:23, Phi 3:6, 1Ti 1:13, 1Ti 1:14
Reciprocal: Deu 9:7 – Remember Jdg 6:15 – the least 1Ch 29:14 – who am I Job 42:6 – I Mat 11:11 – he that Mat 15:27 – Truth Luk 7:43 – I Luk 15:19 – no Luk 17:10 – General Luk 18:11 – God Act 8:19 – General Act 20:19 – with all Act 20:28 – the church Act 26:10 – I also 1Co 1:1 – an 1Co 9:1 – I not an 1Co 11:22 – or Phi 2:3 – but 1Ti 1:15 – of whom 2Pe 1:1 – an apostle
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
1Co 15:9. This verse explains the feeling of inferiority that Paul expresses in the preceding verse. He specifices it to mean his record as a persecutor of the church of God. The extent of his persecution is indicated by the relief that his conversion brought to the churches throughout Palestine (Act 9:31).
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
1Co 15:9. For I am the least of the apostlesthough still I am one. While deprecating the occupant, he magnifies the office.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Observe here, 1. The profound humility of this great apostle, and how low he was in his own thoughts: he calls himself the least of the apostles, nay, not meet or worthy to be called an apostle, because he had persecuted the church of Christ with so much fury and fierceness. Elsewhere he styles himself less than the least of all saints; not that any thing can be less than the least; but the original being a double diminutive, his meaning is, that he was as little as could be.
O admirable humility! The more we know of God and ourselves, the more humble apprehensions we shall have of ourselves; a good man’s thoughts are always lowest of himself; the more holiness any man has, the more humility he has. Humility is a great evidence of our holiness, it being indeed a great part of our holiness.
Observe, 2. How the apostle ascribes all that he was, wherein he differed from others, to the grace of God: By the grace of God I am what I am. As we receive our natural being from the power of God, so we derive our spiritual being from the grace of God. If I forbear what is evil, it is from restraining grace; if I follow what is spiritually good, it is from sanctifying grace: therefore not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy grace be the praise.
Observe, 3. The blessed fruit which the grace of God produced in St. Paul: it caused him to labour, (grace is an active principle,) to labour abundantly, to labour more abundantly than all the apostles; not more than all of them put together, but more than any one of them that were his fellow apostles separately considered. Such as receive most grace and favour from God, are holily ambitious to do the utmost services for God.
Observe, 4. Lest he should seem to be too assuming, and to arrogate any thing to himself, he adds, Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Behold how the holy apostle ascribes the fruit of all his endeavours to the grace of God, to the influences and assistances of the Holy Spirit of grace, exciting him, assisting him, working in and with him, and succeeding of him in all his enterprises and undertakings for the glory of God, and the good of souls. I laboured, yet not I, but divine grace that went along with me.
Observe, 5. The inference which the apostle draws from the whole: Therefore, whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed. That is, whether it were I, or any other of the apostles, who laboured most in the preaching of the gospel, the doctrine is the same; namely, that Christ died for our sins, rose again, and will raise us.
This is the doctrine which we apostles preached, and which you Corinthians believed and received; therefore why should any of you now stagger in the faith, and disbelieve the resurrection of the body? which is a blow made at the root of Christianity.
Alas! what have we to carry our spirits through all the rugged passages and cross dispensations of this life, but only our hopes in reversion, only our hopes of a glorious resurrection, and blessed immortality.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
1Co 15:9-11. I am the least of the apostles, because I persecuted, &c. True believers are humbled all their lives for the sins they committed before they repented and believed. But by the grace of God I am what I am A Christian and an apostle; and his grace upon Or toward me, in raising me to so high a dignity, and so happy a state; was not in vain But produced, in a great measure, its proper fruit. For I laboured more abundantly than they all That is, more than any of them, from the peculiar love God had showed me; yet To speak more properly; not I, but the grace of God which was with me This it was which at first qualified me for the work, and still excites me to zeal and diligence in it. As to Pauls labouring more than any of the other apostles, it must be observed that they confined their preaching, for the most part, to the Jews, Gal 2:9 : but Paul preached the gospel to all the Gentile nations, from Jerusalem, round about to Illyricum, Rom 15:19, and also to the Jews who lived in those countries; and by his labours he converted great numbers both of the Jews and Greeks. Moreover, as his success in spreading the gospel exceeded the success of the other apostles, so his labours, if we may judge of them from his own account, 2Co 11:23-28, greatly exceeded theirs likewise. Therefore whether it were I or they Whose doctrine you own and adhere to; so we preach, and so ye believed We agreed in our doctrine concerning the particulars above mentioned: all of us spake, and still speak the same thing.
1Co 15:12-13. Now if Christ be preached, By all of us, and that upon such infallible grounds as I have mentioned; that he rose from the dead, how say some of you Or rather, how can some among you say; that there is no resurrection of the dead? With what face can any who allow of Christs resurrection, pretend to deny the resurrection of his disciples, whether it be from an attachment to Sadducean or philosophical prejudices? For, if there be no resurrection of the dead If that doctrine be, in the general, altogether incredible; then is Christ not risen The apostle hath not expressed the ideas, by which the consequent in this hypothetical proposition is connected with its antecedent. But when these ideas are supplied, [as follows,] every reader will be sensible of the connection. Christ promised, repeatedly, in the most express terms, that he would raise all mankind from the dead, Mat 16:27; Joh 5:28-29. Wherefore, if there is to be no resurrection of the dead, Christ is a deceiver, whom no person in his right senses can suppose God to have raised, and to have declared his Son. And if Christ hath not been raised, the gospel being stripped of the evidence which it derives from the resurrection of its Author, the whole of the preaching of the apostles, as is observed 1Co 15:14, is absolutely false; and the faith of the Corinthians in the divine original of the gospel, and of all Christians, from the beginning to the present hour, is likewise false. Such are the consequences of denying the resurrection of the dead.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Vv. 9, 10. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. 10. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.
The for bears on the repulsive figure which has just been used. It by no means justifies the explanation of , which we have set aside; its whole force falls on the sequel of our verse on to the , I persecuted. The apostle cannot think of that decisive moment of his life without remembering that at that very time he was playing the part of a persecutor. For this it was which necessitated the violent operation to which he was subjected. On , comp. Eph 3:11.
The word , capable, when a moral act is in question, takes the meaning of morally capable, and thus becomes synonymous with , worthy; comp. Mat 3:11 with Joh 1:27 (see Edwards). , to bear the title of…
On the whole passage, comp. 1Ti 1:12-14.
Vv. 10. The is strongly adversative; it contrasts with what Paul was, when he was yet left to himself, what grace made him.
By the expression: what I am, Paul means first a saved believer, then an apostle, finally, the apostle of the Gentile world. It is this last idea which he specially develops in the following words.
The word , empty, applies to the intrinsic power of the grace which was shown toward him.
If with the Greco-Lats. the were omitted after the word , the might depend on the verb: was not in vain toward me; but this idea does not suit the context so well as that of the ordinary reading, which preserves the : The grace shown toward me was not in vain.
The word , I laboured, denotes not only labour properly so called, effort, toil, sufferings, journeys, prayers, but also the fruits obtained; comp. Joh 4:38. The inward power of grace in Paul was demonstrated by its fruitfulness. Indeed, it is only from the viewpoint of the works accomplished that Paul can add without presumption, and as appealing to a patent fact, more than they all. These words might signify: more than any one of them in particular. But they should rather be understood, with Meyer, Osiander, Edwards, in the sense of: more than all of them together. The first meaning would be too weak; the second contains no exaggeration; comp. Rom 15:19. After thus suddenly rising to the full height God gave him, he abases himself again, as if he were alarmed at what he has just declared. This extraordinary labour was not, strictly speaking, his own, but that of the grace which wrought with him. The art. , which is here read by the Byz. before , connects this regimen closely with the word : The grace which is with me, it was that which wrought. But the omission of the article in the other two families leads us to apply the regimen with me to the verb laboured (understood), which is better: It was not I, however, who laboured, but the grace of God laboured with me. It seems as if by me would have been more logical, as corresponding better to the absolute negative: not I. But Paul cannot overlook all the intensity, good-will, and personal devotion which he has thrown into this immense labour. And hence, notwithstanding all his humility, the with me forces itself into his thought. If he had not been open to the impulse and power of grace, how could it have produced such effects by him!
Evidently these two verses are a digression, but for the digression there is a good reason. We have already seen at the beginning of chap. 9 that there were people at Corinth who were making inquiries as to the reality of Paul’s apostleship, and who said: He has not seen the Lord; therefore he is not really an apostle. Paul does not in this First Epistle enter upon a direct discussion with such opponents, as he will be forced to do later. He restrains himself, till the latent evil shall be unmasked. But he makes certain allusions to the accusations which he cannot yet combat. His object in this passage is to show that although he has been called quite differently from the Twelve, God has nevertheless certified him to be a true apostle, and that consequently he is entitled to join his testimony to theirs. It is precisely this parity with them, in the matter of bearing witness to the resurrection, which is expressed in the following verse, the conclusion of 1Co 15:3-10.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. [Comp. Act 7:57; Act 8:1-3; Act 9:1; 1Ti 1:13; Gal 1:13]
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
The apostle probably used their view of him as a "freak" to comment on his view of himself in this verse and the next one. Evidently Paul felt himself the least worthy to be an apostle. He did not regard his apostleship as inferior to that of the other apostles, however (cf. 2Co 10:1 to 2Co 13:10; Gal 1:11 to Gal 2:21). The reason he felt this way was because while the other apostles were building up the church he was tearing it down.