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You seem to be saying, God made a mistake, in not calling him his apostle to the gentiles....God could have said so on the road where He and Saul met. He did not do so...Paul not being an apostle would not take away from his teachings, since Jesus told all his followers to spread the Good Word....To say Peter was hasty (which I am sure Jesus knew) it would have been easy in the wording of Sauls conversion to Paul for Jesus to have called him HIs apostle, but he choose not to. In the Acts and following teachings, it is most Paul that calls himself an apostle. So one cannot use Paul's word to defend him.

And as I say, it does not take away from his teaching to not be called an apostle..

If we are going to imagine the Peter was just too quick and didn't wait for God is not what the scripture states. If we are going to imagine a little (not meant as an insult) I could see Paul calling himself an apostle and Peter getting tired of correcting him just let it ride and left it up to God.

It is written Paul had a thorn of the flesh that he asked God to remove and it was denied. Perhaps this thorn was a little too much pride (he put himself on the same level as the original 12) For he certainly didn't fulfill the necessary terms for being called an apostle, but had to live with the fact that his pride was not taken away as a reminder to be humble before the Lord.

Pride had to be one of his major problems as he was well versed in scripture to the point of feeling he had a right to kill the followers of Jesus teachings.

Those past acts could have been the reason that in scripture, Jesus called him his *instrument* to the gentiles as that would make him not on the same level as the apostles that had followed him since the beginning of his ministry...

I have seen others make the same argument that it was Peter's fault that he was too hasty. That, to me says Gee Whiz God didn't know that, and God should have called him an apostle and he didn't...

Peter was quite clear in what it took to be an apostle (one who was sent) but I am sure, being human, that gave them amongst the followers a little more authority. Remembering all the time that they didn't seek this, but by the nature of their being with the Lord from the beginning this gave them authority..

Perhaps in the beginning, Paul did not like being merely an instrument and in human terms wanted the same authority as the original 12 + and minus one Judas. Add one Matthias...Don't we all to this day think Paul more authoritative than Matthias, yet the lot to be called apostle fell to Matthias for he and the others being considered had all the prerequisites Peter laid out... put side by side, Paul doesn't fall into that category...

But the original 12 with Matthias added was to preach only to the house of Israel and much of what many of them said or taught is not writted down..As all of them were Jews...and well versed in Holy Scripture of the OT.

Paul’s thorn in the flesh was a messenger of Satan (see 2 Cor. 12:7-10) sent to attack Paul’s ministry because of the revelation of the New Birth. God had nothing to do with sending a messenger of Satan to attack one of His children. Satan was constantly attacking and persecuting Paul’s ministry because he was very effective at getting people out of Satan’s dominion and into the Kingdom of God.

All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. (2 Timothy 3:12) Jesus says: I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. (Luke 10:19) And God’s grace will see to it that we will be victorious over the enemy as Paul later confirmed in Romans 8:37 - No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. And in 2 Timothy 3 - You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.

There is nothing wrong with being exalted as long as God is doing it (which would be the case with Paul who was receiving Wisdom and revelations and was teaching them all over the ancient world). — Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. 2 Peter 5:6

Even Peter admitted that what Paul taught was sometimes hard to understand. He knew Jesus first through His senses and later spiritually after Pentecost. No doubt he had to renew his mind as the Holy Spirit taught him - see the vision on the rooftop concerning the trip to Cornelius’ house.

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. 2 Peter 3:15-16

I really don’t see any competition between Peter, John and Paul etc for who was first or most important. They had a love and respect for each other that is seen in most of their writing. Only when Peter’s hypocrisy was rebuked by Paul when it came to the Jew/Gentile issues of the early Church was there any contention and it was done in a very respectful way as acknowledged by Peter.

BTW - the man that persecuted the Church, Saul, died on the Damascus road. He was spiritually reborn as a child of God and filled with the Holy Spirit shortly after that experience. He knew Jesus quite well. Even when it sounds like boasting, Paul gives credit to God’s grace for his work.

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 1 Corinthians 15:9-10

The “yet not I” tells you pride was not a problem Paul suffered.

The Word of God called Paul an apostle.

Which when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of, they rent their clothes, and ran in among the people Acts 14:14

I think the point of a discussion like this is the authority of God's Word. Paul wrote most of the books in the New Testament. The Holy Spirit witnesses that these words and revelations were given by God. God's Word doesn't lie no matter who the author is. Jesus said, I'm the Way the Truth and the Life. You don't discount Jesus' words because He testified about himself do you, the way the Pharisees did? Jesus said two witnesses were needed to verify the truth and said His Father and He were the two who witnesses who testified to the truth of what He was saying. So when Paul says in scripture which cannot lie, in Galatians 1:1, Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;) , the Holy Spirit, the author of scripture, is the second witness (also the Father and the Body of Christ).