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.
24 And [kai] they glorified [doxazo] God [theos] in [en] me. [emoi] KJV-Interlinear
24 And they
were glorifying God because of me. NASB
And in order to make sure that no one is of the opinion that Paul is taking credit for all of these things, he completes this chapter with the credit going to God.
Paul did not provide salvation to himself.
Paul did not go into Arabia to teach himself or to enlighten himself, by himself.
Paul did not avoid the apostles in order to advance himself, or to invent an even newer gospel.
And people in general, when they heard the news of the phenomenal conversion of one so enthusiastic in destroying Christianity, but was in fact converted to Christianity, that this could only have been accomplished by God and God alone.
Paul did not take credit to himself. Paul did not attempt to self-promote. Paul did not go on tour to market himself.
Paul did what every believer should do once they have been saved, and that is to learn doctrine.
You cannot use what you do not know. And when you attempt to use something that you do not know, then you can only botch it all up and pervert it with delusional ideas.
Paul had already had an extensive education. Paul already knew the scriptures, but he did not understand them correctly. Paul had to be re-trained. He had to re-learn.
Paul had to be taught, and in his case, Jesus Christ taught him personally, so that he could fulfill Gods intent for his life.
You and I do not have that option. We have the completed scriptures and there is no further communication from God with respect to teaching or writing doctrine.
All of our learning occurs by means of the process God has put into place to help each one of us learn and understand and use doctrine.
And that process is to confess our sins in order to enter into Gods spiritual environment. And then to be taught, to listen, to learn and to understand, so that we can grow up in our spiritual lives. And that really requires a life-long commitment in order to get it right and complete.
