Galatians 1:15-16

Galatians 1:15-16. But when it pleased God who set me apart from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son within me, etc. Now he comes to his conversion and accumulates words to show the sole agency of God and the entire absence of all effort and merit of his own in this radical change from fanatical and persecuting Judaism to the apostleship of Christ. Lightfoot well explains the drift of Galatians 1:15-17: ‘Then came my conversion. It was foreordained before I had any separate existence. It was not, therefore, due to any merits of my own. The revelation of His Son in me, the call to preach to the Gentiles, were acts of His pleasure. Thus converted, I took no counsel of human advisers. I did not betake myself to the elder Apostles as I might naturally have done. I secluded myself in Arabia, and, when I emerged from my retirement, instead of going to Jerusalem, I returned to Damascus.' ‘Pleased,' according to His free, sovereign will, uninfluenced by any cause from without. ‘Set me apart,' elected and devoted me to the gospel service; comp. the same word in Romans 1:1; Acts 13:2, and the corresponding Hebrew verb hiphdil, which is used of the separation and dedication of the priests and Levites to the service of God (Numbers 8:14; Numbers 16:9; 1 Chronicles 23:13). The English version ‘separated' is misleading. ‘From my mother's womb,' before I was born, or from the moment of my birth and personal existence. The same is said of Isaiah (Isaiah 49:1, ‘the Lord hath called me from the womb, from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name'), of Jeremiah (Galatians 1:5), and of John the Baptist (Luke 1:15). The decree of election is as eternal as God's omniscience and love (comp. Ephesians 1:4), but its actualization in time begins with the natural birth, and is completed with the spiritual birth or the effectual call.