Paul certainly says things like that. And certain types of Christians take these words of Paul as being direct words from God. Others, though, note that Paul is not God, and that the way Paul is interpreted seems to rather directly contradict things that Jesus said, and Jesus is the Son of God, and the one God told those present at the time to listen to, speaking directly from the sky.
So there are a lot of things one must weigh. First, where Paul and Jesus appear to conflict, how does one resolve that? My own answer is to re-read Jesus and consider that to be the rule, and then interpret Paul so that he doesn't appear to override Jesus. Sometimes this requires dismissing Paul's apparent statement as hyperbole.
Second, one can question the reliability of the scripture itself. that it was written down long after the fact by people who themselves had a strong set of religious beliefs, so they recorded what he said from four different perspectives...and even within those accounts there is some tension between what Jesus said or did in one place, and what he said or did in another. Should one really rely on a book which is itself the interpretations of men long ago, presumably acting under the emprise of God's spirit, and not rely primarily on God's spirit in the here and now?
Different Christians (and non-Christians) come to very different answers on these questions. Where I personally come out is not really important for the purposes of this thread, which is to point out that there is a great divide - really great divides - in Christianity, and to decide whether or not they can be bridged.
Certainly the divide between me and others will not be bridged by me abandoning my reasoned and spirit-inspired beliefs to adopt some contrary belief by somebody else. Nor is he going to abandon the fruits of his spirit to adopt the fruits of mine.
For him to claim - as many do - that the fruits of HIS spirit are REAL, and that mine are false and evil - is offensive, obnoxious and proof positive (to me) that his spirit is the evil one. Concretely, that means that no, we will not bridge the divide by one person capitulating to another. Division has occurred since the beginning of the Church, and one of the worst things about our Christian history is the fact that so many frustrated and angry Christians have, historically, taken up weapons and outright murdered those who had different views and would not recant them. The murders of Christian history have more generally damaged the reputation and credibility of Christianity in general in the eyes of all. The same thing occurs very openly and obviously in Islam, with the same effect on the minds of all non-Muslims. We all look at the violence within Islam and see that as evidence that that belief system is either a method of political domination or a mental illness. Many outside of Christianity see the same thing in us because of our bad history. And within Christianity, different denominations hold the grudges of the ages and consider their opposites to be evil, deceived, even agents of the Devil.
So, those are features of the great divide. The only way across it is on the individual level. Each individual has to decide whether he can stand to hear the wild errors of the rest of Christianity and get along with those people anyway.
If he can - like I can - then he realizes that fighting about irreconcilable differences is not the way to achieve peace. To use a secular example, the French did not learn German, and the Germans did not learn French, but they learned to be good neighbors anyway, because the alternative was really, really bad for both, for a really, really long time; because nobody was ever going to win the fight but both sides could make themselves wretched and miserable prolonging it.
If the great divide in Christianity is to be bridged, it will have to be done on the model of France and England or France and Germany getting alone after a thousand years of fighting, or of North and South patching things up, or blacks and whites accepting each other. It's a hard slog.