Minor lesson
Paul
Not one of the twelve. Sent by the risen Christ. The letters that name him, and the death Acts does not tell.
September 25, 2026
He is not a replacement for Judas. Matthias is that. Paul is an on another sending. He says so. He is Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for of God (). He is an apostle not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father (). He says he is the least of the apostles, unfit because he persecuted , and that the risen Christ appeared to him last of all ().
He is a Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, from Tarsus, a Roman citizen, taught in Jerusalem under Gamaliel (, , ). He ravages the church. On the Damascus road he is stopped. The years after that, the three journeys, the custody, and the ship are Journeys of the Apostles, not this note.
The letters that name him are Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. Thirteen. Some of those are argued by modern readers, especially the letters to Timothy and Titus, and Ephesians. The argument is about style, and about whether a man in Acts could have written them. The letters name Paul. This lesson does not retry them. It will not treat a scholarly split as if the books were unsigned.
Hebrews does not name Paul. It does not name anyone. Later churches sometimes assigned it to him. The book will not support the assignment. It is not counted here as his.
His death is not in Acts. The book ends with him alive in Rome, two years, preaching without hindrance (). 2 Timothy, if it is his, says the time of his departure has come (). Later memory says he was beheaded on the Ostian way under Nero, as a citizen, not crucified. Clement, writing to Corinth, says Paul suffered to the utmost and was taken from the world, after reaching the farthest bounds of the west. "The west" is often read as Spain, which Romans 15 hopes for and Acts never tells. Clement does not describe the death. The New Testament does not film it.
What he taught is not this page. The road and the letters' places are and .
This is a deeper teaching under The Apostles. Its home is Sermons and Series.