You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism.

Trust me on this one, everybody had heard about Paul's earlier life in Judaism. It was one of the most common topics of conversation whenever members of the new church got together. And the opinions about that earlier life were mixed, especially when it came to how it compared with the Paul that was converted. Those opinions were so mixed that it threatened to split apart and destroy the church itself. So when people read Paul's opening line — You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism — he had their attention.

We can make sense of all this; let's remember together just what all the fuss was about. Let's go back a couple of thousand years, to just a few years after Jesus had preached and been crucified. The disciples h…