An Overmastering Gratitude

Here's a quote from an old book by the Scottish preacher James S. Stewart, called A Man in Christ. Stewart is writing about Paul here, and he is making the point that Paul's letters cannot be boiled down to a doctrinal system. To attempt to do do is to sacrifice much of their essence. Stewart says that had Paul written only as a theologian (building a systematic theology), he simply would not have been God's "mighty instrument" that he proved himself to be for the converting of the world.

With utter clearness, the great day of Damascus had revealed to him Christ as the sole meaning of his own life and of all life, and the very centre of the universe of God: and all the days since then had verified and confirmed the revelation. Possessed, from that first hour of discovery, with an overmastering gratitude to the Lord to whom he owed it,with an utter conviction that what had happened to himself could happen to everyone, and with a consuming passion to see it happening all over the earth and to share his Christ with all mankind, he threw everything he had, everything he was, into his response to the gospel challenge. (pp. 30-31)