Who is Apostle Paul

Who Was Saul Before Damascus?

Saul was no ordinary opponent of the church. He was a Pharisee trained under Gamaliel, one of the most respected Jewish teachers of the day (Acts 22:3). He was a Roman citizen by birth (Acts 22:28), fluent in both the Jewish world and the Greco-Roman world. And he was zealous — zealous enough to arrest Christians, vote for their death, and travel to foreign cities to hunt them down.

He was present at the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, guarding the cloaks of those who threw the stones and giving his full approval (Acts 22:20).

Saul’s Vision of Christ

Saul was breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and asked why he was persecuting him. The vision left Saul blind, and his sight was restored only after he was baptized. [1]

The man who had approved the killing of Christians for believing Jesus was risen had now encountered the risen Jesus himself.

Saul was Also Called Paul

The name did not change at his conversion. About fourteen years later, as Saul began his first missionary journey into Gentile territory, Scripture introduces his Roman name:

”… Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit …” (Acts 13:9)

“Paulus” was likely his Roman family name, used alongside his Hebrew name his whole life. As his mission shifted toward Gentiles across Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome, “Paul” became the name the world would know.

Why Paul Matters in the Early Church

Paul’s significance in the early church is hard to overstate:

He wrote 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament — and his letters are the earliest Christian writings we have, predating the Gospels.
He carried the gospel to Gentiles across the Roman world, transforming Christianity from a Jewish sect centered in Jerusalem into a faith for all nations.
His theological contributions — justification by faith alone, the church as the body of Christ, resurrection as the center of Christian hope — became the doctrinal foundation that Luther and the Reformers would later recover and build upon.
He trained and mentored the next generation of church leaders, including Timothy and Titus.

The arc of Paul’s life is itself a testimony: the man most violently opposed to the gospel became its most tireless ambassador. As he wrote to Timothy near the end of his life, “I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him” (1 Timothy 1:16).

The Antipauline Tension in Matthew

Not everyone in the early church read Paul the same way. The Gospel of Matthew, written for a Jewish-Christian community, contains passages that scholars describe as “antipauline” — not attacking Paul directly, but reflecting a tradition that pushed back against his teaching on the Law.

The sharpest example is Matthew 5:17-19:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets … whoever sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:17-19)

The phrase “sets aside… and teaches others” matches precisely what Paul was accused of — releasing Gentile converts from circumcision, dietary laws, and Jewish observance. Scholar W.D. Davies argued Matthew was positioning itself against both rabbinic Judaism (after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD) and the Pauline Gentile mission.

Matthew 7:21-23 adds weight: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father.” The emphasis on doing reads as a corrective to any faith-without-obedience reading of Paul.

The important caveat: Matthew is not simply anti-Paul. The Magi, the Roman centurion, and the Great Commission to “all nations” all align with Paul’s vision. The tension is real but not the whole picture.

How Lutherans read it: The law/gospel distinction resolves the apparent conflict. The Sermon on the Mount does not contradict Paul — it shows the depth of the Law to expose our need for grace. Luther read Matthew through Paul, not against him. Both insist that the Law cannot save; only Christ can.

The fact that this tension exists in Scripture is itself instructive. The early church was wrestling with the same questions Paul’s converts wrestled with: What does faith require? What does grace cost? Paul’s answer — and the church’s answer — is that grace is free, but it is never cheap.