Apostle of the Heart Set Free

What the apostle Paul looked like no one really knows, though artists and forensic archeologists have made educated guesses based on his heritage and family background.

Paul was born in Tarsus, a city in modern-day Turkey to a Jewish family of the tribe of Benjamin. His father was a Roman citizen, so he was Roman by birth. In Jerusalem, he was educated by Gamaliel, one of the most famous rabbis in Jewish history. He would have been fluent in at least three languages: Hebrew, Greek and Latin. In a sense, you could call Paul the first “multicultural” person. He was brilliant intellectually, but he also was a person of deep feeling, a characteristic often ignored today which sometimes leads critics to misunderstand the deep, profound change his encounter with the Lord Jesus made in his life.

Though he would describe himself as “the worst of sinners” and “a fool for Christ’s sake,” he writes elegantly of the effects of grace, hope and joy in his life. He ends some of his letters with the names of early Christians he loved. He writes to defend a former slave, and works to free women imprisoned by an unjust economic system. He proclaims the unity and equality all Christians will experience in community because of Christ. He mourns the betrayal of a friend, and the coldness of a prison cell.

Scholar F. F. Bruce called him, the “Apostle of the Heart Set Free” – and he was. The multicultural person with the brilliant mind found peace and a future when, as the old time preachers of my childhood used to say, Jesus came into his heart. However he looked physically, I wouldn’t be surprised if those who knew then noticed that, over time, he began to look more and more like the Lord he loved.

Grace and peace,

Bob Guffey

(Image: “Saint Paul” Mosaic, late 5th century, Chapel of the Archbishop, Ravenna, Northern Italy)