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I’ve wondered about the Apostle Paul’s emotional state when he wrote, “Jesus came to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15b, ESV).
Most people experiencing discouragement spiral downward in doubt and despair through the years, getting increasingly worse. And Paul expresses this negative spiraling in his writings.
In the early years of his ministry, Paul says, “I’m the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle” (1 Corinthians 15:9a).
Okay, I get this. Paul had an inferiority complex in comparison to the other apostles. After all, he did persecute the church, and he didn’t walk three years with Jesus.
About halfway through his ministry, Paul takes another step downward when he writes, “I am the very least of all the saints” (Ephesians 3:8).
Wow, the great Apostle Paul now considers himself the least of all saints. My response, if I were Luke traveling with Paul, would be to sit down with Paul and give him my patented pastoral “everything is going to be okay” pep talk.
However, as previously mentioned in 1 Timothy, late in his ministry, Paul goes from “least of all the apostles” to “least of all the saints” and then to “worst of all sinners.”
I guess my pep talk didn’t work.
Paul has every reason to be depressed and discouraged. After years of working at Corinth, Paul experienced such grief from the Corinthians after he left the city that he defended his role as an apostle to them. With the Galatians, the focus of his first and second missionary journeys, their leaning toward false doctrine forced Paul to call them foolish. In the Thessalonian church, their false understanding of the return of Jesus caused them to sit around all day doing nothing while waiting for the Lord to return, which motivated Paul to command, “If a man doesn’t work, then he doesn’t eat.”
I know. . . a long paragraph for Interruptions.
But you get the point: Paul had every right to be frustrated with his ministry. Maybe that’s why he went from “worst apostle” to “least of the saints” and finally to “worst of all sinners,” as he blamed himself for all this failure.
Let’s read the pressure that Paul felt in this verse. . .
And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches (2 Corinthians 11:28).
Even with these indications of discouragement in Paul’s ministry, I don’t think he was depressed. Why? In each of his statements about apostles, saints, and sinners — Paul also mentions grace.
For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am.
To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.
The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
Let me give all of us a pep talk — grace grants us the power to overcome anything!