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"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."
Did Paul continue in this "Jews' religion"? Was he still an exceeding zealot for the
"traditions of his fathers"? We know he was not. Phil. 3: 1-9 provides a most complete
refutation of such an idea. Before Agrippa the Apostle, in answering for himself the
charges laid against him, said:
"My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among mine own nation at
Jerusalem, know all the Jews, which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify,
that after the straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee" (Acts 26: 4, 5).
A little earlier, before Felix, he had said,
"But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I
the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the
prophets" (Acts 24: 14).
Lastly, in Acts 23: 1, Paul opened his defence with the words:
"Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day."
It is evident that Paul's point of view was not that of the Pharisee or the traditionalist
of his nation. He had most certainly left the religion of his parents, but his contention
was that he had not left the God of his fathers; that he still believed all that the law and
prophets taught, and that though it was now in a way that his contemporaries called
"heresy" it was "so" that he worshipped the God of his fathers.
We must look more closely therefore at II Tim. 1: 3, for, on the surface, this fact does
not there appear. We note that the Apostle uses the word apo, "from", when he says
"from my forefathers". This preposition, which is usually translated "from", carries with
it the idea of (a) source or (b) severance, that is, either "from" or "away from". In
II Tim. 1: 1 we have the word in composition, "apostle", meaning one sent from another
and combining the idea of "source" with "severance", the apostolic commission having
been derived entirely from the Lord, though exercised during the period of the Lord's
absence from the earth. In the second verse apo is used in the benediction "Grace, mercy
and peace from God the Father". Here "source" is most evidently the meaning of the
preposition.
We find apo in combination in II Tim. 1: 15, where severance is uppermost; "All in
Asia be turned away from me." So also in 2: 19 and 21, "depart from" and "purge
from". In 3: 15 the expression "from a child" uses the idea of "distance", as transferred
to time, as we would say "ever since you were a child". In 4: 4 and 18, we have once
more the idea of severance uppermost: "They shall turn away their ears from the truth";
"The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work."