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review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks. Paul, the apostle, calls himself the chief of sinners

in the King James Version. He does not say in the past tense that I was the chief of sinners, even though he's

certainly had a wicked past. And that's precisely what Paul is calling to people's attention.

He's not speaking of present sin, although he is still a sinner. He's speaking of past sin.

He's speaking of the worst things that he's ever done over the

course of his life, the fact that he was a blaspheme or persecutor and an insolent opponent,

that he was persecuting the very church of Jesus Christ. And yet, when it comes to categorize

himself, to label himself, to give himself a name,

he uses the present tense. Not that I was the chief of senators, but I am. And Paul does not make

this statement as a new believer.

As I've already said, he makes this statement in the dating of this writing, arguably a decade or more, after faithfully serving Christ.

We can actually trace a chronological progression, and this is interesting to do, of Paul's statements

about himself throughout his epistles in the New Testament. Now there's some contention with this

in the dating of various New Testament books, but I think that this is probably accurate and generally

true. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 9, Paul says, I'm the least of the apostles.

In Ephesians, chapter 3, verse 8, written a few years later, he says, I'm the very least of all the

saints. And then here in 1st, Timothy, chapter 1, verse 15, written even still later, Paul says,

I'm the chief of all sinners and notice that

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