The apostle Paul looked to death from his situation in the world. He was in great tribulation from the moment that he was born again. He finally experienced God and learned the meaning of death, “And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest” (Acts 9:1). His purpose was to bring Christians from Damascus to Jerusalem to imprison them before terminating them in death. Paul would not be the one to destroy them, but his sin was greater, as Jesus would say.
Paul’s chosen role was not to “dress and keep” the “Garden” of Jerusalem, to literally to serve and preserve the “crop” of living souls as Adam should have — but to deliver and perish the good “seed” in Jerusalem before it took root and spread unto the world. By then, Judaism had deteriorated so much that they were little more than “tares” that Jesus would uproot.
The “function” of Saul (his Jewish name) was to perish the Garden of living souls that God had planted there. A function is the central purpose for which anything is designed, so things are somehow tools for use in the world.
Saul, meaning “Questioning,” was confused. He thought that his purpose was deliver for destruction. He chose to perish the good seed. The tool that Saul selected from the shed was death.
Saul chose the dullest tool in the shed. Jesus stopped him on the way to Damascus, and asked Saul why do you persecute me? What is your purpose? Why are you functioning the way you are?
Saul responded with a question… Who do you think you are? The answer was, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest” (Acts 95). Saul’s business was the business of Jesus. Jesus had the right to question Saul’s function in all this death.
Jesus went on to say, “It is hard for you to kick against the pricks.” You are not functioning as you should, Saul! Jesus was literally asking Saul Why are you trying to kill me by striking with your heel (Strong’s Dictionary).
Where have you heard that before? The Word had said that to Adam, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15). Saul was also fulfilling the Word just as Judas had done with Jesus. Jesus, the seed of Eve, called Jesus, would be bruised, but not broken, and Saul would bruise his heel against the Word, or Jesus.
Saul lost his function and his name. Jesus made him a new creature who surely would serve Him and seek to preserve mankind. Jesus renamed Saul (“Questioning”), Paul (“humbled”), and a new purpose was given to him. He was to spread the gospel of life rather than death.
Like Peter, the function of Paul would be to say to whosoever, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38).
Therein seems to be two baptisms. However, the former is the type of the baptism of John — a baptism of “repentance.” The latter is a baptism without water but of the Spirit. It is the baptism from the loins of Jesus wherein He gave up the Ghost. The “One Baptism” is “Christ in you” not by water but by faith. The function of Paul (as well as Peter) was to be as designed — to function according to the Design of God in the beginning. It turns out that all Christians are to function in the same manner, according to the Greatest Commandment!
When Paul wrote the key verse, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21), that was his gain of function. He was to live in Christ. His function had changed from die outside of Christ as Saul. The gain of function was no longer to live in Christ but to die with Christ in him. Saul would have died, but without Christ in his life. What changed his function? Saul did nothing but he “saw” Jesus in his blindness.
What do you suppose Saul saw that he had not seen before? Saul knew the Tree of Life. It was in the middle of the Garden, perhaps in the Garden of Gethsemane where ancient olive trees still stand, one or two as much as 4000 years old. Unbeknownst to Saul, he was delivering the Christians to the Tree of Life where in the end their gain would be with Jesus!
Because those Christians would die for the Name of the Lord God, there gain would be what? “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the Tree of Life and may enter in through the gates into the city” (Rev 22:14).
Saul was antitypical of a cherub, to wit: “So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen 3:24). “East,” in that passage is not necessarily a direction but to the front (ibid). Saul was placed before the Damascus Gate that was facing north, but he was in front of the Damascus Gate and on the Way to the Tree of Life — the Cross of Jesus.
Saul’s function, unbeknownst to him was fulfilling his purpose. He was to guard the Way to the Tree of Life! He was serving God by delivering Christians to die for burial near the Tree of Life.
People from all over the world to this day seek burial in Mount Olivet Cemetery to be closer to the Tree of Life and access to Paradise on the celestial axis of the Foundation Stone. Saul was delivering them to Paradise and was serving his purpose unintentionally! His kick against the pricks was misunderstanding his function!
For the Christians that were with Saul, he was delivering them to their gain. They were about to die, and their gain would be their reward with burial near the Cross — the Tree of Life on which Jesus hung.
Did Saul finally “see” Jesus as the Tree of Life while on the road to Damascus? He was made blind for a reason, and that was to see his function, or purpose. He was not to lead Christians to their death but to eternal life. For either life or death it was by the Damascus Road to enter the gate to Paradise along the Way from Damascus.
Saul thought that he was guarding the Way, but all the while, he was leading the Way. His function was to act the cherub as one of the cherubim guarding the gate.
Who was Saul leading? The Christians who were walking the Way of Jesus through persecution for His Name’s sake!
Blind Bartimaeus had never seen a thing until Jesus approached him. In his mind he saw Jesus walking toward Him. He somehow sensed that the man was Jesus, or perhaps he saw what the spiritually blind could not see.
Bartimaeus in the process of receiving his sight, saw Jesus as an Image: As the blind man looked up at Jesus, he said, “I see men as trees, walking” (Mark 8:24).
Perhaps Saul also saw Jesus as the Tree of Life walking just as Bartimaeus surely had! He saw Jesus as He was in the beginning — the Tree of Life walking and speaking in the middle of the Garden. He was no longer questioning but humbled by His Presence! All those years as a Pharisee and he had failed to see Jesus as the Tree of Life.
Saul began to function as he was designed to do. Before the foundation of the world, Saul was selected to stand under the Tree of Life (Ephes1:4). Perhaps, without guile, he stood under the adjacent fig tree!
Saul, like Nathanael before, who Jesus had seen under the “fig tree,” surely Jesus as the Word had seen Saul standing under the same fig tree — the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; not the person Saul, but the guileless Paul who was surely standing humbly under the fig tree in the bodily shape of Paul.
Nathanael was seen by Jesus in the same manner, and he was worthy of apostleship (serving God) because he was without guile (John 1:47).
Lucifer had beguiled Eve. Christians think that she was fooled but it was much more than that! The “Serpent” beguiled Eve (Gen 3:13). He put guile into her. She had been perfectly righteous, and what did the “Serpent” do? Make her serpentine. He beguiled (nasa) her. Lucifer literally “seduced” her with an evil spirit of his own!
The guile that was in Nathanael is dolos in the Greek — he had no “craft” in him. Nathanael was without the cunning of the Serpent (Gen 3:1), so he was worthy of the Tree of Life. Hence Jesus chose him as an apostle. Nathanael fulfilled his function. Finally, Saul, like Nathanael, did what he was selected to do.
Christians before the foundation of the world validates that it was more than a Garden of trees but a Garden of Living Souls that God had planted around the Tree of Life to someday bear fruit. When Jesus picked Saul, he was “picking the fruit” that He had planted in the Garden four-thousand years before!
Saul’s function in the world was to serve God and preserve souls. His “gain of function” was that his soul would be saved at death. What else would be his gain? To be a person in the Bible? Noted for his logic and preaching? Making a name for himself?
No, his gain would be salvation; to finally stand before the Tree of Life, not in Jerusalem, but New Jerusalem, the real Paradise, only of a different substance than Jerusalem on the Earth.
Paul’s “gain of function” would be that he should be saved, and that he shall be saved because of his function — his service to God.
But work does not gain anything! It is not ergonomic for salvation. Paul explained that as well when he wrote, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom 12:1).
What did Paul do to be saved? Nothing at all. He was imprisoned before soldiers led him to the ax where he merely placed his head on a wooden “pillow” as if asleep, and then God used another man, only doing his job like the centurion with Jesus, to remove the head of Paul.
Paul’s gain of function was death. The moment that he died, he existed in another realm… overcoming the world by the blood of Jesus that was shed for him (not his own blood), and finally saved from the wiles of the Devil (Ephes 6:11), as is written, “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”
When Paul was born again, the Word appeared to him. What remained unsaid on the road to Damascus? Paul was then in Christ. Jesus put the coat of the Lamb of God onto him to preserve him from the wicked ones until his function was complete. The reward was not the Holy Ghost of Jesus, the Comforter, but the Person Jesus who IS “Yahweh Saves.”
Saul was born again to serve a purpose, but once his function was complete, his gain was salvation. He had been safe from the Wicked Ones as can be seen by his deliverance from them so many times in the Book of Acts, but his “gain” was at death. That too is the gain of all Christians!
The death of Christians is the gain; it is when they are saved!
Many preachers to this day view funerals as the “celebration of life.” It is more the celebration of death when their gain of function is the reward of salvation.
Inanimate Christians are not dead; they are made alive. That is the time when God takes His Breath that He breathed in, animates it, and stores it in another realm until the time for another vessel made of imperishable flesh: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor 15:52).
Gain is not the moment of death; it a process just as life in the beginning was a “process of time” (Gen 4:3). The grace continues until the person is regenerated back to the original Designers intent… to function as he or she was created — to be the very image of God!
Refer again to figure #2. Are you beginning to understand the process of time and the gain that Paul perceived?
Tomorrow, the gain of function in the chart will be explained further.
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