“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,”
“by the will of God”
Paul is an apostle by the will of God, not by his own self appointment. He did not choose the career of an apostle. He became an apostle because he came into confrontation with the Lord of Glory. He was on his way to arrest Christians when the Lord arrested him and dispatched him to dispense the gospel.
He did not earn nor deserve the right of apostleship. It was clearly within God’s domain to place him in this special privilege within Christianity. It is not by his own merit or strength or sufficiency. God’s sovereign choice is the basis for his apostleship.
Principle:
The Christian does what he does “by the will of God.”
Application:
People often rationalize themselves into a course of action and then say, “This is the will of God.” When things fall apart, they say, “Why did God do this to me? It is God’s fault that I am in this situation.” Their course of action came from themselves, not God.
Others blame Satan for their difficulties, whereas the problem was self-induced. We make foolish decisions and say foolish things and then blame it on Satan, whereas it is not Satan at all.
We all make decisions that have nothing at all to do with the will of God. We blame Satan but is our own foolish mistake. For example, a person may say, “I lost my job because of my testimony for Christ.” But it was not his testimony at all; he lost his job because he was loafing on the job. He had the attitude that the world owed him a living. He did not view his job as part of his Christian service. Instead of doing his job as unto the Lord, he was a sloppy worker. Satan does not have a thing to do with this. Satan’s system does attack Christians, but not in this kind of incident.
