The life and work of St. Paul

SAUL THE PHARISEE. 41
the days, indeed, when he thus writes, he had at last found peace ; he had
wrung from the lessons of his life the hard experience that by the works of
the law no man can be justified in God's sight, but that, being justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And though,
gazing on his own personality, and seeing it disintegrated by 5 miserable
dualism, he still found a law within him which warred against that inward
delight which he felt in the law of God-^-though groaning in this body of
weakness, he feels like one who is imprisoned in a body of death, he can still,
in answer to the question, " Who shall deliver me ? " exclaim with a burst of
triumph, " I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." i But if the Apostle,
after he has found Christ, after he has learnt that " there is no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus " 2 still felt the power and continuity of the
inferior law striving to degrade his life into that captivity to the law of sin
from which Christ had set him free, through what hours of mental anguish
must he not have passed when he knew of no other dealing of God with his
soul than the impossible, unsympathising, deathful commandment, " This do,
"
and thou shalt live ! Could he " this do " ? And, if he could not, what
hope, what help ? "Was there any voice of 3
pity among the thunders of Sinai ?
Could the mere blood of bulls and goats be any true propitiation for wilful
sins ?
But though we can see the mental anguish through which Saul passed hi
his days of Parisaism, yet over the events of that period a complete darkness
falls ; and there are only two questions, both of them deeply interesting, which
it may, perhaps, be in our power to answer.
1. The first is, Did Saul in those days ever see the Lord Jesus Christ P
At first sight we might suppose that the question was answered, and
answered affirmatively, in 1 Cor. ix. 1, where he asks, " Am I not an Apostle P
Have I not seen Jesus, our Lord ? " and still more in 2 Cor. v. 16, where he
eays, " Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth
know we Him no more." *
But a little closer examination of these passages will show that they do not
necessarily involve any such meaning. In the first of them, St. Paul cannot
possibly be alluding to any knowledge of Jesus before His crucifixion, because
such mere external sight, from the position of one who disbelieved in Him, so
far from being a confirmation of any claim to be an Apostle, would rather have
been a reason for rejecting such a claim. It can only apply to the appearance
1 See Bom. vl., vii., viil., passim.
2 Rom. viii. 1. The rest of this verse in our E. V. Is probably a gloss, or a repetition,
since it is not found in . B, C, D, F, G.
3 "That man that overtook you," said Christian, "was Moses. He spareth none,
neither knoweth he how to show mercy to them that transgress his law." (Pilgrim's
Progress.)
*
tl icai
eyvu>Ka.tJLtv. It is perfectly true thatcixoi (quamqiiam, "even though," wenn
auch) in classical writers though perhaps less markedly in St. Paul concedes a fact,
whereas