Perkins: Ministers must learn Christ as Paul learned him

 

In his commentary on Galatians, the Puritan William Perkins (1558-1602) offered the following application on Paul’s account of his experience of Christ in Galatians 1:

Ministers of the gospel must learn Christ as Paul learned him.  They may not content themselves with that learning which they find in schools; but they must proceed further to a real learning of Christ.  They that must convert others, it is meet that they should be effectually converted.  John must eat the book, and then prophesy; and they who would be fit ministers of the gospel, must first themselves eat the book of God.  And this book is indeed eaten, when they are not only in their minds enlightened, but in their hearts are mortified, and brought in subjection to the word of Christ, unless Christ be thus learned spiritually and really, divines shall speak of the Word of God as men speak of riddles, and as priests in former times said their matins, when they hardly knew what they said.

--As cited by Timothy George in Galatians (Broadman, 1994):  p. 120.