Remember our previous post on the Damascus-road-experience?
Someone reads the subsequent part in Acts 9:29: and speaking boldly in the Name of the Master יהושע and disputed with the Hellenists, but they undertook to kill him and this someone says: "See, the words and prophecy of Jesus in verse 16 was coming true!"
... but was it?
The worst thing is if this same someone says that we should take our example from Paul and suffer likewise for the Gospel.
Does Jesus need our suffering?
If Paul was required to suffer, then why did Jesus suffer?
Could Paul be expected to add to the sufferings of Jesus?
Was the full price that Jesus paid not enough?
Was God's plan for Paul really to suffer for His Name sake as was translated in many of our perverted translations?
No!
Verse 16, as translated, says : “For I shall show him how much he has to suffer for My Name.”
The word used in the original Greek is the word paschō which was badly translated into the English word suffer. The word can be much better and more accurately translated into the English word passion.
Look at Paul! Did he have a passion for Christ? Wasn't there such passion with him that he wrote one third of the new testament? Didn't he experience such passion for Christ that he traveled the world, the seas, hostile nations, the ends of the earth, face the religious ministers of his time and on and on ... to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
What made Paul stand up and go back into the city immediately after he was stoned and left for dead?
Was it to get more suffering? ... or was it the passion and love, all stirred up inside him?
What made Paul stand up and go back into the city immediately after he was stoned and left for dead?
Was it to get more suffering? ... or was it the passion and love, all stirred up inside him?
I submit to you that Paul had passion, and excitement, and delight and affection stirred up by the Spirit of Jesus so deep and so intense in his heart that he faced whatever the enemy would bring to him.
It was not about the suffering. It was about the paschō, the True Passion that lived inside of him!
Did Paul suffer?
Yes!
But Paul's suffering has the name of the devil written all over it. It was not the provisional will of Jesus!
Yet, Paul's paschō (passion) has the name of Jesus written all over it!
HalleluYAH!
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