Now get up and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you in order to appoint you to my service as a witness to what you have seen and to the visions you shall have of me.
as a priest of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the service of God's gospel. My aim is to make the Gentiles an acceptable offering, consecrated by the holy Spirit.
that is, if you adhere to the foundations and stability of the faith, instead of moving away from the hope you have learned in the gospel, that gospel which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I Paul was made a minister.
(It was in consequence of a revelation that I went up at all.) I submitted the gospel I am in the habit of preaching to the Gentiles, submitting it privately to the authorities, to make sure that my course of action would be and had been sound.
Lay this before the brotherhood, and you will be an excellent minister of Christ Jesus, brought up on the truths of the faith and on the lessons of the good doctrine you have already followed.
I said, 'What am I to do?' And the Lord said to me, 'Get up and make your way into Damascus; there·you shall be told about all you are destined to do.'
But then, I set no value on my own life as compared with the joy of finishing my course and fulfilling the commission I received from the Lord Jesus to attest the gospel of the grace of God.