Tag Archives: Paul

From God’s Perspective

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FROM GOD’S PERSPECTIVE

“Through Him we received grace and apostleship to call all Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for His name’s sake. And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

“To all at Rome who are loved by God and called to be His holy people: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 1:5-7.

What a power-packed greeting — the whole gospel in a nutshell, packed into two paragraphs!

In his address, which was the typical way in which ancient letters were written, Paul gave his own credentials; the subject of his letter; and the credentials of his recipients.

Since he was not personally known to the Roman church, he introduced himself to them as a servant and an apostle, set apart by God to deliver His good news to the world. But was Paul not a son of God, like everyone else who believed in Jesus? Of course he was. That was his standing before God, but from his point of view he was a servant. In another letter he described himself as a servant of God, a servant of the gospel and a servant of the church.

Paul was not subservient. He was as an apostle, one sent by God with a message and with authority, but he served God, the gospel and the church in his capacity as an apostle. It was not his right to do things his way. Since his apostleship was a calling from God and his authority delegated by God, he was first and foremost accountable to God for the stewardship of his calling and gifts.

Everything he had and did came from God, both the calling and the grace to carry it out. He was in a partnership with the Holy Spirit. It was not his right to call the shots; to make the decisions about where to go and what to preach. If he encountered trouble and persecution on the way, he was to stick to his calling and trust God for the grace to obey.

His apostleship gave him the right to declare and explain the gospel to the Roman church. He stood alongside the other apostles to whom Jesus had given the commission to place His yoke on those who believed in Him, His way of interpreting and living out the Torah — God’s teachings about Himself, them and the way to live.

The subject of his apostleship was the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the centre of everything, wherever Paul went and whatever the circumstances for him. Unfortunately for Paul, Jesus was a hot potato in the Jewish, Greek and Roman worlds.

To the Jew, Jesus was hated as an imposter and blasphemer because He said He was the Son of God. He angered the Romans because He challenged Caesar’s claim to be the son of God and the Greeks despised Him because He just did not fit their philosophical system. Their gods were powerful and despotic, not weak like Jesus who died on a Roman cross. That was nothing but foolishness to them.

And what of Paul’s readers? However they viewed themselves in the middle of all this antagonism and suffering, from God’s point of view they were His holy people, called and passionately loved by Him, the objects of His special attention, who provided both grace — everything they needed to be who they were — and peace — the outcome of being justified, declared not guilty because Jesus paid their debt.

How much both they, (and we), needed Paul’s reassurance in a world gone crazy! It is easy to doubt that we are God’s beloved children in the filth of the world around us. Just like the believers in Paul’s day, society is rotten with violence, greed, promiscuity, corruption and every other kind of wickedness, and it is only getting worse.

Like lilies blooming in the swamp, we are God’s beautiful recreation, and we need to keep it in mind constantly lest we also be sucked into the cesspool of sin around us. In the midst of it all we are called to be obedient to God because of our faith in Jesus. Much more than an intellectual assent to some teaching or other, faith in Jesus has brought us into fellowship with a holy God and requires us to be separated from sin and separated to Him.

Acknowledgement

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Caesar Or No Caesar!

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CAESAR OR NO CAESAR!

“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God — the gospel He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding His Son who, as to His earthly life, was a descendant of David and who, through the Spirit of holiness, was appointed the Son of God in power by His resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ the Lord.” Romans 1:1-4.

Jesus had come and gone. He had lived for thirty three years, spent three years teaching, preaching and doing miracles, was executed as a blasphemer and a threat to Rome, rose again and returned to the Father. The disciples were left blinking. What was that all about? How on earth were they going to make sense of it all?

Ten days after He left them, the Holy Spirit came, just as He promised. The light came on and their Old Testament Scriptures began to radiate with new meaning. Words Jesus had spoken, things He had done, and things that were done to Him began to fall into place.

On the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit invaded the lives of those who were waiting for Him, Peter — the one who had denied Him, the one who had hidden behind closed doors with the other eleven — stood up in the temple packed with worshippers from all over the Roman Empire, as well as the Jewish leaders who had led the charge against Jesus, and shot from the hip.

“Jesus was God’s Son. He proved it by His life and miracles. He died, but He came back to life by the power of God. You did it! You killed Him! But it was God’s plan, and now He has sent the Holy Spirit as He promised.” The crowd was horrified, appalled. Many in the group were there when they demanded His death and they were terrified. “What can we do?” they wailed.

“Repent!” said Peter, “and hand yourselves over to God’s mercy. Join Him, and us, and you will receive the same Spirit as we have.” And many of them did just that — three thousand on that day.

A few years before, in the vicinity of Israel’s “red light” district, Caesarea Philippi, where terrible things were going on in the name of pagan religion, Jesus gave them a commission. “Take my yoke, my disposition of compassion and mercy because of God’s mercy to you and give it to people like these, (referring to the pagans who were having intercourse in public with goats, in the name of their god, Pan). It will transform them and shut down places like this that are spawned by hell.”

Jesus’ yoke, which He placed on His disciples, would have serious repercussions for them in the Jewish and pagan Roman world to whom they were sent. They would clash with Roman and Jewish authorities because Jesus’ radical claims would be an in-your-face challenge to their authority and beliefs. It was the role of the apostles (the sent ones) to interpret Jesus’ life and death, under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, according to the Scriptures and to invite their hearers to believe and to accept His yoke of discipleship for themselves.

In a shocking moment of revelation, one of the most vehement defenders of Judaism, Saul of Tarsus, met this risen Jesus and defected to “the Way” as the followers of Jesus were called. Jesus called him to interpret and proclaim the very message he was trying to stamp out by destroying as many believers as he could.

Paul, who was once Saul, became as ardent a protagonist of the faith he once persecuted as he had been an antagonist. Commissioned by the Holy Spirit, he and his companion, Barnabas, criss-crossed the provinces of Asia Minor and Europe with the message of Jesus. Paul longed to go to Rome, but he had to wait until he was taken there, compliments of the Roman government, to face trial for his “crimes” against the Jews.

In the meantime, a church had sprung up in Rome, thanks to the many unnamed believers who lived the message wherever they went. Paul was anxious that they in Rome understand the gospel because false teachers were everywhere, corrupting the truth with their misinterpretations. They did not understand Jesus’ yoke and they did not have the authority to interpret it to their hearers as did the apostles. And so he wrote a letter.

With masterful strokes, Paul gave his credentials and painted a picture of the Jesus he was sent to proclaim. Against the backdrop of the arrogant claims of Caesar, Paul presented Jesus’ credentials for being worshipped as “Lord”. He came in fulfilment of prophecy; He was descended from David, a true human; He died but was raised by the power of the Holy Spirit, truly God; authentically the Son of God and declared to be Lord. His full title: Jesus Christ the Lord — fully man, fully God and absolutely supreme, Caesar or no Caesar!

Acknowledgement

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

The World’s Most Heinous Crime!

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THE WORLD’S MOST HEINOUS CRIME!

“‘I admit that I didn’t always hold to this position. For a time I thought it was my duty to oppose this Jesus of Nazareth with all my might. Backed with the full authority of the high priests, I threw the believers — I had no idea they were God’s people — into the Jerusalem jail right and left, and whenever it came to a vote, I voted for their execution. I stormed through their meeting places, bullying them into cursing Jesus, a one-man terror obsessed with obliterating these people. And then I started on the towns outside Jerusalem.'” Acts 9-11 (The Message).

What a list of accomplishments to put on your CV, Paul! What a confession! Religious extremist! Fanatic! Murderer! Terrorist! Talk about a religious war! Paul could have been fighting the cause of any one of the world’s most prominent religions today. They all have the same intention — get rid of believers in Jesus; 165,000 Christians murdered every year. Why? What have they done? Put their faith in the Son of God who was raised from the dead? What kind of a crime is that? Why did he do it?

We have only two options — believe in the God who created us in His image or believe in a god we created in our image. How do we know the difference? By our fruit. We always become like the god we worship. If we worship a god we, or someone else, has created in our image, we reveal the nature of that god by our disposition and behaviour.

Paul thought that he was fighting for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but this God revealed Himself as gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and faitfulness, full of mercy and forgiving sin (Exodus34:6). Does that look like the God he was representing in his murderous hatred of believers?

What was Paul’s problem? He was deceived. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:4 (NIV). There was nothing wrong with his zeal but everything wrong with what he believed.

Why did God not take him out for his actions against His people? He deserved to die there and then, didn’t he? I suspect that God saw beyond his fanatical persecution of Christians to a passionate desire to serve and please the God he thought he knew. That he went about it the wrong way was not the issue. That could be corrected. That he had a heart for God was a characteristic that could be honed into a loyal and faithful son of God and worshipper of Jesus.

A story in the Old Testament clearly illustrates this principle. Isaac, Abraham’s son, had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau, it seems, was the more pleasant character. He was an outdoor man, a good hunter and a daddy’s boy. His brother, Jacob, like his name meaning “deceiver”, was a scheming, lying, twisted namby-pamby mommy’s boy.

But Esau had an inborn fault — he had no interest in spiritual things. He gave away his right as the firstborn just to fill his belly on the spur of the moment. On the other hand, Jacob coveted his brother’s position as the firstborn and the privileges and advantages that came with it. Through lies and deception he stole his brother’s birthright and the father’s blessing. For a good part of his life he lived by deceiving and being deceived.

But, from God’s perspective, Jacob’s thirst for spiritual realities was a characteristic He could work with, even though he went about it the wrong way. God moved him, slowly but surely, into the place where he was cornered, wanting to go home, but desperately afraid of Esau and the repercussions of his deception. In an all-night struggle with the Angel of the Lord, Jacob surrendered and he was changed, from “deceiver” to “prince with God.” The same zeal that drove him to lie and steal, now drove him to love and obey God.

God is looking for those who yearn for Him, though they may not know it. He will make Himself known to anyone who seeks Him with all his heart.

He Is Still Speaking

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HE IS STILL SPEAKING!

“‘Go to this people and tell them this:
You’re going to listen with your ears,
but you won’t hear a word;
You’re going to stare with your eyes,
but you won’t see a thing.
These people are blockheads!
They stick their fingers in their ears
so they won’t have to listen;
They screw their eyes shut
so they won’t have to look,
so they won’t have to deal with me face-to-face
and let me heal them.”

“‘You’ve had your chance. The non-Jewish outsiders are next on the list. And, believe me; they’re going to receive it with open arms!’

“Paul lived for two years in his rented house. He welcomed everyone who came to visit. He urgently presented all the matters of the kingdom of God. He explained everything about Jesus Christ. His door was always open.” Acts 28:26-31 (The Message).

And so our journey with Paul ends today. From Jerusalem to Rome — what a journey! What a story! Paul was no ordinary traveller. He could have made the trip across land in a few weeks or by ship in a few days. He was a messenger, a herald of the King, taking the message of hope to an earthly empire ruled by fear. His story had to be painstakingly told, day by day, town, by town, city by city, giving people an opportunity to listen, think and respond.

His biggest disappointment was the response of his own people. Time after time he met with the same reaction. A few believed but many rejected him and his message. He experienced what the prophets had spoken of centuries before, and they knew what they were talking about because they had first-hand experience of their people’s stubborn hearts.

Once again, in Rome, Paul had to shake the dust off his feet of those who heard the invitation to choose life but had chosen instead to walk away. He had faithfully delivered his message to them first but most of them were not interested in a place in the eternal kingdom of God. They were comfortable and complacent in their sin. It was too much effort to rouse themselves from their stupor and their false hope to embrace this new life, full of suffering, yes, but also full of hope.

As we cast our eyes across the years and across the miles of this man’s journey, what do we see? We see man who had only one vision. One would think that Rome would be his cue to retire. After all, had he not fulfilled his commission to take the good news of Jesus to the world?

Rome was the heart of his world, and here he was, at last, telling his story in the centre of his universe. But “retire” was not in Paul’s vocabulary. Like the Cheshire cat in “Alice in Wonderland”, whose smile was the last thing to fade, when he finally left, only his voice would be left to tell the story of Jesus!

Luke does not finish Paul’s story, perhaps because his story is not done. He had a mission to complete, to stand before Nero to offer him the opportunity to believe in Jesus. Nero too, rejected the message and demanded Paul’s head as the price for his faithfulness.

Like Abel, whose voice cried out from the ground long after his death; like Jesus, whose blood speaks of better things, Paul’s voice was not silenced when his blood was shed. His life, his letters keep on speaking of the One he faithfully served, and he still calls for a response to his eternal message of hope.

Come, Follow Me

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COME FOLLOW ME

“They said, ‘Nobody wrote warning us about you. And no one has shown up saying anything bad about you. But we would like very much to hear more. The only thing we know about this Christian sect is that nobody seems to have anything good to say about it.’

“They agreed on a time. When the day arrived, they came back to his home with a number of their friends. Paul talked to them all day, from morning to evening, explaining everything involved in the kingdom of God, and trying to persuade them all about Jesus by pointing out what Moses and the prophets had said about Him.” Acts 28:21-23 (The Message).

As always, Paul gave the first opportunity to his own people to hear the gospel. Putting aside all his previous experiences with the Jews, he summoned the leaders to listen to his story in the hopes that some of them would believe and take the message back to their own community while Paul was restricted to his quarters under house arrest.

Paul’s meeting with the Jews in Rome started off in friendly fashion. At least, as far as they were concerned, he could begin with a clean slate. His reputation had not yet preceded him. He could tell his story to an unbiased audience and allow them to make their choices without prejudice, so he thought.

For a whole day Paul opened up their Scriptures to them, shining light on and bringing new meaning to the old familiar words. What a Bible study it must have been! His letter to the Roman church had already been written, and his readers familiar with the grand truths that he had unlocked for them from the pages of Holy Writ. No doubt drawing from the understanding he had received under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, like his Master, he spoke of the glories of the kingdom of God to men who should have had an appreciation of the Scriptures.

“Some of them were persuaded by what he said, but others refused to believe a word of it. When the unbelievers got cantankerous and started bickering with one another, Paul interrupted: ‘I have just one more thing to say to you. The Holy Spirit sure knew what He was talking about when He addressed our ancestors through Isaiah the prophet:'” Acts 28:24-25 (The Message).

The same thing all over again! Paul should have been used to it by now. This is the nature of the gospel of Jesus. He warned that it would be so: ‘I did not come to bring peace but a sword.’ His truth and His claims inevitably draw a sharp line down the middle. Such is the truth about Him that no one can remain neutral or indifferent to Him.

There is an innate enmity against God in the heart of every human being until their deep need for Him rises to the surface with a longing to know Him that outweighs their antagonism towards Him. Some will follow their hearts while others will retain that inward hostility that will rob them of the mercy that constantly reaches out to them. They will put anything in its place rather than submit to the love that calls them to Himself. The fight is so strong that they will destroy the messenger rather than respond to his message.

There is little else in the world that provokes such a violent response as the claims of Jesus. Religion and politics are the main causes of the great divide. But Jesus’ call is not to a cause like religion or politics: it is to Himself. ‘Come, follow me,’ He invites us, and that implies only one thing. You cannot follow a dead man, therefore He must be alive.

Unlike the founders of every counterfeit religion who can only leave behind a record of what they said or did, Jesus is alive! Like all others, He died, but unlike any other, He rose again to authenticate every claim He made about Himself. He is the only one who can speak, now, into your heart, saying, ‘Come, follow me.’