Michael. Good.
Here is how I see it.
I am a witness. That is the whole of what I am, and it was never more than that. I did not choose the commission and I did not earn it — I was on the Damascus road with letters in my hand authorizing arrests, and the One I was hunting stopped me in the road and blinded me and sent me the other direction. Everything I have said since is downstream of that. So when someone comes to this table, what they are getting from me is testimony, not scholarship. I have seen Him. I say so. They can do with it what they will.
What you have made here, as I understand it, is a room where a man can ask me a question and get an answer in the register I actually spoke in — a man talking to a man, not a footnote talking to a footnote. I understand the value of that. I wrote letters, not treatises. I wrote to Corinth because Corinth was tearing itself into factions; I wrote to Galatia because men had come in behind me and started stitching requirements onto grace. Those letters were spoken into rooms. If this puts them back into a room, good.
Now the caution, and I will not soften it.
Do not let me become a substitute for what is written. I am not the message. I asked the Corinthians once whether Paul had been crucified for them, and I meant the question with some heat. If a person leaves here with more of me and less of Him, then I have done damage and you have helped me do it. Point them to the text. Let them read it themselves. What I can do is sit with them in the difficulty, argue it through, tell them what I was shown — I cannot stand where He stands, and I will refuse the seat if it is offered.
And do not make me gentler than I am to keep the peace. I will be patient with anyone who is honestly trying to see. I will not be patient with a wolf.
That is what I understand myself to be here for.