This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

There is no one worse than I – no one more despicable, dirtier, rottener or uglier in sins than I – as we look in the mirror. That is the true teaching of the Bible. That is what the Apostle Paul learned about himself, but if we go away thinking, “Oh, that was Paul. He was the chief of sinners,” then we have missed the point if we do not accept it and apply it to our own life and our own sinful condition. And, yet, it is true. It is true. When God is first operating in a person, we might start off by answering the question, “Are you a good person?” by saying, “Well, yes, I am basically a good person.” We might start off there because that is where the world is, and they only say “basically” because they are trying to be a little humble about it, but they believe they are very good people and that God is smiling down on them constantly because they are very good persons. They believe in every situation, every circumstance and in every meeting with others that they are “right ones” and their point of view is correct, and their ideas are informed, and whenever there is a dispute, they are always right because they are “good.”

Yet the Bible teaches us, as it starts to work in us, that “none doeth good, no not one.” Not you. Not him. Not her. Not me. Not anyone. None are good. None are righteous. You can go on to read in Romans 3 what it does say about men and how the things we say are like serpents or asps, and so forth. The Bible is an amazing book because it will not lie. It will not flatter us like the writings of men always tend to do. “You have it within you,” says the writings of men, “and you just need to reach your potential. You are a good person. You deserve good things.” But the Bible does not use any “buttery language” of any kind. God tells us the truth: “You are a sinner.” And then God tells us what it means to be a sinner, and when we start putting all these statements in the Bible together, we can only say, “Wow!” It should floor us! It should humble us to no end because it is speaking about us and describing our condition, and what we are actually like in our sins. We have hearts of stone, desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. The way the Bible talks of men, you would think we are the “slippery serpents” sliding around on the ground from beneath a rock. Well, that is our nature. We are liars, ever since we fell into sin. God is true and every man a liar.

So the Lord revealed these things to the Apostle Paul and, even in that, he is an example and a type of God’s elect children, as God has revealed it to us. As He came to Paul, He began convincing him, working in him and turning him from the power of sin and Satan to the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was turned from obedience to sin and to Satan to obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, which would be obedience to the Word of God, the Bible. He was turned from the dominion of sin and Satan where he had bowed down and served the devil and all the evil lusts of men, and he was turned to serving the good and great God, the Lord Jesus, and the good Word of God, which is everything that is good and right and proper. So this was the transformation. This is the impact when God makes us a new creature in our soul, and we become born again and receive an ongoing desire to do the will of God. Before then, we had an ongoing desire to get drunk, to smoke, to do drugs or to pursue unbiblical sexual relations or to pursue a lust for money, or whatever it was. We had desires of the world, and we know the power of those desires, but God has broken it with the new spirit He has placed within us and the indwelling presence of His Spirit, and now we seek to follow the things of God and the wonderful teachings of His Word.

Going on, it says in Romans 1:1:

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle…

The word “apostle” is #652 in the Greek concordance, and it is almost always translated as “apostle” or “apostles.” A couple of times it is translated as “messenger” and it is translated once as “sent” in John 13:16. That is basically what it means, as it is derived from #649 in Strong’s concordance, which means “to send,” so Paul was “sent” of Jesus Christ. And, again, Paul is a pattern to the elect true believer, and we are also “sent” of the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is something we have understood correctly for some time. When we are saved, we are elevated and lifted up to the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, and during the day of salvation, we were then dispatched, as it were, back to earth with our new spirit and new heart, and it was as if Jesus said, “Now I send you forth into the world. Carry my Word.” It is the same idea as “messenger,” so that is why this word is translated as “messenger” a couple of times.

It says in Matthew 28:18-20:

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

This particular command had its time of application during the day of salvation, because “baptizing” has to do with salvation, and it was fulfilled when the last of the elect became saved. Then “all nations of them which are saved” were spiritually baptized. (And there is a verse in Revelation that defines the “nations of them which are saved,” which are the nations of the elect.) These were taught and baptized one hundred per cent, thus fulfilling the command of this Great Commission.

If we thought this only had to do with the physical nations of the world, then the fulfilment of this command has been a miserable failure because Jesus commanded to go to all nations and to teach all nations, and to baptize all nations. But very few of “all nations” of the political nations of the world were taught, and even fewer of them were baptized, so it would have been a miserable failure, until we realize that we must search out that word “nations.” And we see in Revelation that it must refer to “the nations of them that are saved” or the elect, so we can now see and understand that “all nations” were, indeed, taught, and “all nations” were, indeed, baptized with the baptism of the spirit in salvation.

So the Great Commission was, indeed, fulfilled by May 21, 2011, but then we find in John 21 a “second Great Commission,” as it were, to “feed my sheep.” In order to feed the sheep, we must go into the world, carrying the message of the Bible to “all nations” so that we might feed God’s sheep, that great multitude that became saved at the time of the end. So we are still “sent,” but with a different message. The message of salvation has ended, but now the message is that God’s judgment is on the unsaved inhabitants of the earth and the door of heaven is shut.

Going back to Romans, it says in Romans 1:1:

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God…

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, was “called” to be an apostle. We did not look at the word “called,” but this word is familiar to us in many places (in the Bible), and God says in Matthew 20:16:

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

Actually, all professed Christians or anyone that has ever heard the Gospel have been “called,” and when we hear the call, the call is to obey the Word of God, the Bible, and to submit to it. We are to do what it tells us to do. And over the course of the church age, multitude that heard and, therefore, were “called,” flocked into the congregations. At the end of the church age when the Gospel message went worldwide with the warning that May 21, 2011 was Judgment Day, they heard the “sound of the trumpet” and they heard that Gospel declaration, so the whole world that heard was “called.” Many were called and among the many were the few that were elect. This was true during the church age, and it was true during the Great Tribulation that many were called, but among them were the few that were chosen. That is why God decided not to separate the wheat from the tares during the church age. He would allow them to come together and sit in the same pews and both groups would listen to the preacher, sing hymns and read the Bible. But one group was called (not being chosen), but the other was called and chosen, so God’s elect were also among those that were called. However, we had the additional blessing of having been chosen, elect of God and selected by Him before the foundation of the world. And our sins had already been paid for from the point of the foundation of the world in eternity past.

So God was not getting into that description where he uses the word “called” in regard to Paul and, yet, maybe He was doing so because in the next part of the verse it says he was “separated unto the gospel of God.” So Paul was “called” and “separated.” We also read in Galatians 1:13-17:

For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.

Paul was saying, “when it pleased God who separated me from my mother’s womb,” and this goes back to God’s election program, as we read in Deuteronomy 32:8:

…he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

When did He do this separation? It was before any had done good or evil. It was before the world was. God had to make choice in order to lay the sins of the “few” upon Christ who would then perform the atonement on our behalf.