AN ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE
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What gave Paul such confidence? What motivated him to live such a life of risk, discomfort, and danger? What allowed him to speak boldly before angry mobs, skeptical rulers, and foreign scholars? What allowed him to be so certain of what he could not see? Paul believed in God’s plan, which he could see working out in the life of Jesus and His resurrection, in the testimony and growth of the church, and in the progress of the gospel across the world as he knew it. He saw lives changed by this message, not least of which was his own.
And he believed in the promises of God, “who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come” (2 Corinthians 5:5). By His presence, the Spirit infused a present reality of the coming kingdom into the lives of believers—and, Paul urged, was his foundation for being “always confident.” This is not to say that Paul never had moments of uncertainty, fear, or doubt. From his dramatic conversion to his earliest ministry, from travels across Asia Minor, and his final journey to Rome, Paul seemed perpetually at risk. “I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas” (2 Corinthians 11:26, NLT). But these were not the determining or driving experiences of his life. His life always demonstrated a larger confidence.
Such was the dominance of his confidence and the realities on which it had grown that he literally and figuratively staked his life on it. Less about Paul himself, his confidence was primarily a testimony to the reality of the God he served and the Jesus he preached.
