The apostle frequently alludes to revelations made to himself; he never claims that this chief matter was _revealed_ personally to himself. It was an open secret when Saul entered the Church. "Whereof," he says, in verse 7, "I _became minister_"; again, "to me was this grace given, to _preach to the Gentiles_ Christ's unsearchable riches." The leaders of the Jewish Christian Church knew well that their message was meant for all the world. But the abstract knowledge of a truth is one thing; the practical power to realize it is another. Until the new apostle came upon the field, there was no man ready for this great task and equal to it. It was at this crisis that Paul was raised up. Then "it pleased God to reveal His Son" in him, that he might "preach Him among the Gentiles."
The effect of this summons upon Paul himself was overwhelming, and continued to be so till the end of life. The immense favour humbles him to the dust. He strains language, heaping comparative upon superlative, to describe his astonishment as the import of his mission unfolds itself: "To me, less than the least of all the saints, was this grace given." That Saul the Pharisee and the persecutor, the most unworthy and most unlikely of men, should be the chosen vessel to bear Christ's riches to the Gentile world, how shall he sufficiently give thanks for this! how express his wonder at the unfathomable wisdom and goodness that the choice displays in the mind of God! But we can see well that this choice was precisely the fittest. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, steeped in Jewish traditions and glorying in his sacred ancestry, none knew better than the apostle Paul how rich were the treasures stored in the house of Abraham that he had to make over to the Gentiles. A true son of that house, he was the fittest to lead in the aliens, to show them its precious things and make them at home within its walls.
To himself the office was an unceasing delight. The universalism of the gospel--a commonplace of our modern rhetoric--had burst upon his mind in its unspoilt freshness and undimmed splendour. He is sailing out into an undiscovered ocean, with a boundless horizon. A new heaven and earth are opened to him in the revelation that the Gentiles are partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus. He is entranced, as he writes, with the largeness of the Divine purpose, with the magnificent sweep and scope of the designs of grace. These verses give us the warm and genuine impression made upon the hearts of its first recipients by the disclosure of the universal destination of the gospel of Christ.