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The structure of the section is simple, and throws into correspondence these items,
approaching the central theme by three steps, and completing the argument by another
three steps, leaving the "neither . . . but" and the geographical items to form the centre
of the argument.
"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."
The simple sentence deals with the good pleasure of the Lord to reveal his Son in
Paul, but so overwhelming was the consciousness of the Divine hand in all his affairs,
even when he knew not the Lord, that the apostle has to put in a parenthetical note. Let
us look at the parenthesis first.
"Separated." Apart from three references in the Gospels, the use of aphorizo "to
separate" is confined to the Acts or Epistles of Paul. This word is composed of apo
"away from" and horizo "to define or set bounds". The English reader will recognize the
origin of the word "horizon". We cannot here go into the many subdivisions of this
word, sufficient for the moment is it to say that another word of great moment in Paul's
ministry is closely related to aphorizo, and that is the word translated "predestinate"
proorizo "to mark off beforehand". Just as in Romans, the term "calling" follows
"predestination", so here "calling" to service, follows "separation". God may not have
been known to us during the early years of our unregenerate days. We may have done
many things the very reverse of His will and contrary to His Word, yet who among us but
cannot look back to those early days and be conscious that there was a hedging, a
guiding, a leading which we unconsciously obeyed or which we followed sometimes
against our own inclinations. In spite of prevalent evil and in full recognition of human
free choice, God has not and never will abdicate His throne.
As a "Hebrew of the Hebrews" Paul would have imbibed from infancy the doctrine of
separation as it pertained to Israel and the Priesthood, for no Israelite could forget the
peculiar calling of the nation to which he belonged. He would moreover, as a Preacher,
remember--even when overwhelmed with his own unworthiness--the language of
Jer. 1: 5-10 and its close parallel with his own calling as an apostle to the nations, and
still further, as a "Pharisee of the Pharisees", he could not miss the paronomasia* of the
words aphorizo and Pharisee, for both words have the common meaning "separated"
though derived from entirely different roots.
[* - A figure of speech where words of similar sound are brought together,
a figure found several times in Paul's epistles.]
This national separation, this separation in pride and contempt, however, was included
in those things which Paul had counted as dung, as he now rejoices in a higher and holier
separation.
(1)
He had been "separated" by the Will of God before time began "chosen in Him
before the foundation of the world . . . . . predestinated" proorizo.