“Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.”
(1st Timothy 1:13)

Saul of Tarsus was a moral man, a man with an excellent public record, a Pharisee and more. He was also a religious man, highly esteemed among his peers and a religious teacher taught by the greatest teacher of his day, Gamaliel. But after God was pleased to reveal His Son in Him, he made this confession: “Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.” (1st Timothy 1:13) Think about it, the very things men and women count as modern Christianity, the very professions they cling to and the very things most dare not question, he called blasphemy and unbelief! He was at that time an unbeliever. His preaching, religious activity and the righteousness he thought he had established before God was blasphemy. When did he find out what he was before? AFTER Christ stopped him on the road to Damascus and caused him to know the truth about who He was! Only in the “after” of regeneration, faith and being brought to the knowledge of the truth. How do men find out who Christ is? By the Spirit of truth taking the things of Christ and showing them to them! When He shows us in the gospel who Christ really is by showing us there what Christ did. What did Christ do? He, by His life and death on the cross, saved His people from their sins! When the Spirit of God revealed Christ to me a lost preacher years ago, He did so by teaching me what the scriptures actually say about His glorious Person and accomplished work. I was brought from one of the ways of death to the way of life, righteousness and peace in Christ. When I looked back and weighed what I believed before that, my view of God and the work of Christ before that, I too had to confess, “I was before a blasphemer…” Like Paul and the Ephesian believers, I trusted Christ “after I heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.” (Ephesians 1:13) If there never was a before, then there’s not an after! The word of truth is not “how to be saved” but rather “the gospel of your salvation.” How that Christ saved you all by Himself through His sufferings and death, all by Himself and for His glory! His blood shed for me and His righteousness imputed to me is all my salvation. His life laid down is my hope, not my life lived for Him! We see what we were before, lost blasphemers, when God is pleased to open our eyes to the truth!