successful in ridding Jerusalem of Christians that he had to find a new city in which to
express his zeal for the Lord and to vent his hatred of the new movement (see also Acts
22:4
5; 26:9
11).
In Galatians 1:14, Paul puts it this way: I was advancing in Judaism beyond
many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
And in his speech before Agrippa (Acts 26:11), Paul refers to his earlier life with the verb
ejmmaivnomai,
which Danker defines as to be filled with such anger that one appears
to be mad. In other words, Paul admits that during this period of his life, he was acting
like a maniac.
After Paul became a believer on the way to Damascus, of course, his rage against
the Christian church dissipated, but I do not believe his personality suddenly became soft
and mellow. While salvation changes a person's direction in life, it does not necessarily
destroy a basic personality type. And we know that this is true for Paul from the pages of
the New Testament. He remained zealous and opinionated, and when you ruffled his
feathers, watch out! Let's look at some examples.
In Acts 15:36
40, Paul is ready to set out on his second missionary journey, and
he makes the proposal to Barnabas. Barnabas wants to give his cousin John Mark another
chance and have him come along with them again, but Paul vetoes the suggestion
because [Mark] had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the
work (Acts 15:38). Was this a five-minute disagreement followed by a handshake as
Barnabas set out with Mark and Paul with Silas? Absolutely not! They had such a sharp
disagreement that they parted company. The word Luke uses here (
paroxusmov^
) is
defined in Danker as a state of irritation expressed in argument. For Luke to use this