Temple within its borders.  It remained loyal to David after the disruption of the

monarchy and further, Israel's first king, namely Saul, was drawn from its ranks. Saul

was the Apostle's original Hebrew name, in which he took pride.

(4) A Hebrew of the Hebrews. This either means an eminent Hebrew, one who took

special pride in belonging to Israel's race, or it could mean as Moffatt's translation, "a

Hebrew son of Hebrew parents", informing us that the language in which he was reared

was the ancestral mother tongue. Ability to speak in Hebrew and Aramaic was a mark of

faithfulness to the old culture, showing that his parents had not succumbed to their

environment by forgetting the ancient language. The three privileges that follow were

Paul's own acquirement.

(5) As touching the law, a Pharisee. This meant that he was a member of a sect which

was most strict in its adherence to the law of Moss. As Josephus expressed it "a body of

Jews who profess to be more religious than the rest, and to explain the laws more

precisely". Their one aim was to provoke the same zeal in others and bring them to a

similar conformity.

We cannot help but remember the stinging reproaches of the Lord Jesus concerning

some of the Pharisees of His day. "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites . . ."

(Matt. 23: 13, 14, 27). At the same time we must point out that not all Pharisees

merited this condemnation. Some were sincere men, even if misguided. Paul does not

use the name Pharisee as a reproach, but as a title of honour, and the Pharisees were

highly regarded by masses of the people. His one aim was to safeguard the sacred Torah

and in doing this, he conceived it to be his duty to try and stamp out any movement that

appeared to oppose it. Hence Paul's rigorous persecution of the early believers of the

Acts period.

(6) "As touching zeal, persecuting the church." Whilst it seems ironical that the one

to whom was committed the doctrine concerning the church of God should write,

"concerning zeal, persecuting the church" (3: 6), yet this was the mark of his faithful

adherence to Judaism as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, imagining he was doing God

service! He enlarges this in Gal. 1: 13, 14, "You have heard of my former life in

Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond all measure, and ravaged it--and I

was making progress in Judaism beyond many of my own age in my nation, being

exceedingly zealous for my ancestral traditions". Years later when writing to Timothy he

reflected on God's mercy to him, describing himself as a persecutor, a blasphemer and

injurious (I Tim. 1: 13). He never ceased to marvel at the grace of God that met him on

the road to Damascus and changed him from Saul the Pharisee, to Paul the Apostle to the

Gentiles with a dispensation of grace and glory beyond computation (Eph. 3:). It was

inconceivable that the Apostle, looking back on the bondage of Judaism in which he had

been so proficient, could allow this grievous yoke to be fastened upon the Gentile

converts. True, he had been zealous, but what a danger zeal can be without knowledge!

It is so easy to be zealous in the wrong thing, because of blindness or perverseness! Saul

of Tarsus, like his nation, had a "zeal without knowledge" (Rom. 10: 2), and there are

thousands today like him, even among professing Christians.