God is waiting and anxious to reveal Christ in every man. We read of men “who hold down the truth in unrighteousness,” and that “that which may be known of God is manifest in them,” even as in everything that God has made His “everlasting power and Divinity” are clearly seen. Rom. 1:18-20, R. V. Now Christ is the truth (John 14:6), and He is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:24), and the Divinity of God (John 1:1). Therefore, Christ is the truth that the wicked are holding down. He is the Divine Word of God, present in men, that they may do it. Deut. 30:14; Rom. 10:6-8. That Christ is in all men is evident from the fact that they live; but He is so held back and kept down that it is difficult to discern Him. Nay, in most men the opposite character is revealed, the mere fact of living and breathing being in many cases the only evidence that Christ is there. Yet He is there, patiently waiting to be revealed,—longing for the time to come when the Word of God may have free course and be glorified, and the perfect life of Jesus of Nazareth be manifested in mortal flesh. This may take place in “whosoever will,” no matter how sinful and degraded he is now. It pleases God to do it now; cease, then, to resist. [Sidenote: Personal History.] From the twelfth verse of the first chapter till the middle of the second, we have a narrative of personal history, told for a definite purpose. In Paul’s experience we see the truth of the Gospel, and how it has nothing to gain from men, but everything to give. The apostle shows that all his early life was against his being influenced by the Gospel, for he studied that which was opposed to it, and he bitterly opposed it. Then he was converted when there was no Christian near him, and he had next to no association with Christians for years afterward. All this of which the Galatians had been previously informed, it was necessary to repeat in order that it might be clear to all that Paul was not bringing them another human invention. Note, in passing, the word “conversation,” which occurs several times in the Bible in a sense that is not now common. Compare the Revised Version, and we find that it means “manner of life.” Paul’s “conversation in time past” was his early life. See the old and the Revised Version of 1 Peter 1:18. [Sidenote: “Concerning Zeal, Persecuting the Church.”]