<p>15:9 <i>For I am the least of the apostles- </i>&quot;Least&quot; could as well be translated &quot;smallest&quot; or &quot;shortest&quot;. Hence when Paul embarked on his missionary work, he changed his name from Saul (the tall king of Israel who persecuted David-Jesus) to Paul, 'the little one'. Despite having withstood Peter to his face, according to Galatians, Paul still considered that he was less than them all.</p><p>Clearly perception of sinfulness grew in Paul after his conversion. He considered himself blameless in keeping the law (Phil. 3:6); and yet chief of sinners. He realized that sin is to do with attitudes rather than committed or omitted actions. I'd paraphrase Paul's personal reminiscence in Rom. 7:7-10 like this: &quot;As a youngster, I had no real idea of sin. I did what I wanted, thought whatever I liked. But then in my early teens, the concept of God's commandments hit me. The command not to covet really came home to me. I struggled through my teens and twenties with a mad desire for women forbidden to me (AV, conveniently archaic, has &quot;all manner of concupiscence&quot;). And slowly I found in an ongoing sense (Gk.), I grew to see, that the laws I had to keep were killing me, they would be my death in the end&quot;. Paul&rsquo;s progressive realization of the nature of sin is reflected in Romans 7:18,21,23. He speaks there of how he came to <i>know</i> that nothing good was in him; he <i>found</i> a law of sinful tendency at work in him; he came to <i>see</i> another law apart from God&rsquo;s law at work in his life. This process of knowing, finding and seeing his own sinfulness continued throughout his life. His way of escape from this moral and intellectual dilemma was through accepting the grace of the Lord Jesus at his conversion. Here in one of his earliest letters, Paul stresses that he felt like the least of the apostles, he honestly felt they were all better than he was (1 Cor. 15:9). However, he reminisces that in his earlier self-assurance, he had once considered himself as not inferior to &quot;the very chiefest apostles&quot; (2 Cor. 11:5). Some years later, he wrote to the Ephesians that he felt &quot;less than the least of all saints&quot; (Eph. 3:8). This was no Uriah Heep, fawning humility. He really felt that he was the worst, the weakest, of all the thousands of believers scattered around the shores of the Mediterranean at that time. As he now faced his death, he wrote to Timothy in 1 Tim. 1:15 that he was &quot;chief of sinners&quot;, the worst sinner in the world, and that Christ's grace to him should therefore serve as an inspiration to every other believer, <i>in that</i> none had sinned as grievously as he had done. It could well be that this is one of Paul&rsquo;s many allusions back to the Gospels- for surely he had in mid the way the publican smote upon his breast, asking God to be merciful &ldquo;to me <i>the</i> sinner&rdquo; (Lk. 18:13 RVmg.). Note that &quot;Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners&quot; is rooted in the Lord's words that He came to call sinners and to seek and save the lost (Mt. 9:13; 18:11).</p><p><i>Who is unworthy to be called an apostle</i>- Inadequacy is the characteristic required for being used in the Lord's public service, and the Corinthians needed to learn from Paul's example. </p><p><i>Because I persecuted the church of God</i>- The Lord had accused Paul of persecuting <i>Him</i>, and Paul would have perceived that all those in Christ were Him, and Paul's behaviour to them was his actions to the Lord Jesus personally. With his knowledge of the Gospels he would have reflected upon the Lord's teaching that whatever was done to &quot;the least of these my brothers, you did it to Me&quot; (Mt. 25:41,45). And it is therefore no accident that he uses this very word to describe himself now as &quot;the least&quot;.</p>