The NXR Podcast - October 05, 2023


DAILY TRUTH - I “AM” (Not “WAS”) The Chief Of Sinners

Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
Paul Jesus Christ Timothy Peter James John
DAILY TRUTH - For Those Who Think Hell Is Not Fair DAILY TRUTH - Continually Growing In Conviction Of Sin

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

131.94

Word count

563

Sentence count

29


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Paul, the apostle, calls himself the chief of sinners. In the King James Version, he does not say in the past tense that he was the chief or chief of all sinners, even though he certainly had a wicked past. And yet, when it comes to categorizing himself, to label himself and to give himself a name, he uses the present tense.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:28 Paul, the apostle, calls himself the chief of sinners in the King James Version. He does not
00:00:35 say in the past tense that I was the chief of sinners, even though he certainly had a wicked
00:00:40 past. And that's precisely what Paul is calling to people's attention. He's not speaking of present
00:00:48 sin, although he is still a sinner, he's speaking of past sin. He's speaking of the worst things
00:00:54 that he's ever done over the course of his life. The fact that he was a blasphemer, persecutor,
00:01:00 and an insolent opponent. That he was persecuting the very church of Jesus Christ. And yet,
00:01:07 when it comes to categorize himself, to label himself, to give himself a name,
00:01:13 he uses the present tense not that i was the chief of senators but i am
00:01:20 and paul does not make this statement as a new believer as i've already said he makes this
00:01:30 statement and the dating of this writing arguably a decade or more after faithfully serving christ
00:01:38 we can actually trace a chronological progression, and this is interesting to do, of Paul's statements
00:01:45 about himself throughout his epistles in the New Testament. Now, there's some contention with this
00:01:51 in the dating of various New Testament books, but I think that this is probably accurate and
00:01:56 generally true. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 9, Paul says, I'm the least of the apostles.
00:02:04 In Ephesians chapter 3 verse 8, written a few years later, he says, I'm the very least of all
00:02:10 the saints. And then here in 1st Timothy chapter 1 verse 15, written even still later, Paul says,
00:02:17 I'm the chief of all sinners. And notice that Paul begins chronologically by saying, I'm the worst of
00:02:25 the best, right? The least, but of the apostles. So top shelf, but bottom rung. I'm the worst
00:02:35 of the best. But then, you know, he's gaining in his humility. He begins to defend himself
00:02:40 or describe rather himself by saying, well, I'm not just the least of the best, the least of the
00:02:46 apostles, but I'm the least of the Christians, not merely the apostles, but anyone who bears
00:02:51 the name of Christ. All those saints, all those born again by grace and faith in Jesus, not just
00:02:56 Peter and James and John, but of all the saints, I'm the least even of them. But then later on,
00:03:03 as he's writing to Timothy, the language shifts from being the worst of the best to being the
00:03:09 chief of the worst. He's no longer arguing, I'm the least of the apostles or the least of the saints,
00:03:16 But I'm actually, I'm actually the gold medal prize winner of the wretches, of sinners, the worst of the worst.
00:03:29 See, the closer a person walks with God, the more they become aware of God's holiness and again, the severity, degrees and depths of their own sinfulness.
00:03:46 We'll be right back.