You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
13 For[gar] ye have heard[akouo] of my[emos] conversation[anastrophe] in time past[pote] in[en] the Jews' religion,[Ioudaismos] how that[hoti] beyond[kata] measure[huperbole] I
persecuted[dioko] the church[ekklesia] of God,[theos] and[kai] wasted[portheo] it:[autos] KJV-Interlinear
13 For you
have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the
church of God beyond measure, and tried to destroy it; NASB
Paul continues with his explanation of how he acquired his scholarly knowledge in Bible doctrine. And here he explains that it was not from anything he did or acquired in his former, pre-Christian life.
Quite the contrary. Paul was raised up and educated in the tradition of Judaism of his day.
This is not the religion or faith of Moses, to whom they look as the foundation of their teachings.
The faith of Moses day, was one of grace and instruction. This was accomplished through the teaching aids of the various sacrifices.
We learn the same spiritual principles in our current day, through the instruction of our daily studies from the written word. These principles namely salvation through the sacrifice of the Lord, salvation through faith, confession for known and unknown and forgotten sins, and the principle of grace. And all of this repeated through repetitive studies, day after day, week after week, year after year.
The belief system of Pauls day had changed dramatically since the time of Moses. Wherein Moses wrote just five books, the system of Judaism compiled volume after volume of rules for daily life conduct. Human works became the priority and prerequisite for salvation and the spiritual life.
These volumes of regulations accumulated after the time of Solomon and had reached gargantuan proportions over the centuries by the time Jesus birth.
Paul was raised up and educated in this system.
And as such he explains here that he was more than enthusiastic in destroying the Christian belief and Christians, in an outright rejection of Christ as the savior as well as grace as Gods policy.
The phrase persecuted and wasted, refer to the attempt to totally destroy Christianity. And Paul was at the top of his class in that effort. He persecuted the Church with great enthusiasm.
The point of this is that he did not learn anything of the nature of Gods grace, or of the true gospel from his previous education or learnings. It simply was not taught.
And this is how far off, Judaism had departed from the fundamental teachings of Moses, as well as the writings of the prophets. Judaism had developed its own system of works leaving the scriptures on the sidelines as forgotten.
