Tag Archives: a Pharisee

PAUL’S HAPPY LETTER…NO CONFIDENCE – 13a

Bible Study, ,

“…I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more! I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.”

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭3‬:‭4‬-‭6‬ ‭NLT‬‬

What a self-righteous bigot Paul was… in his own estimation! Yes, from all his external qualifications, he has every right to be confident about his standing before God. After all, didn’t he fulfil every requirement laid down in the Old Covenant?

He was a true Hebrew. According to him, he was not aware of any intrusion into his bloodline. He was of the tribe of Benjamin…Jacob’s second favourite son. He was born right inside the Mosaic covenant, circumcised in strict obedience to the law, and, what’s more, he was a Pharisee by training and persuasion. He could not have been closer to what he considered to be “righteousness” according to his own standard…the one he used to measure himself. 

The cherry on the top, for Paul, was that he did everything “religious”, including persecuting the people who were following this new “way” because they had forsaken Moses for some Galilean peasant. They were sell-outs, traitors, as far as he was concerned…and they had to be stamped out to keep Judaism pure. 

Until that shocking moment outside Damascus, when he saw a light so bright…and heard a voice so terrifying that he fell off his horse…Paul believed that he was “in” and safe inside his religion. 

He was in favour with God, so he thought, but…there was one person he resisted…Jesus…the very Son of God…and that was his greatest downfall. What had he missed? All Paul’s efforts were focused and concentrated on his beliefs and behaviour, but…his heart was full of the one thing that disqualified him…”hot air”, pride…that which God hated and resisted…

The first requirement to enter  God’s kingdom, said Jesus, was to be empty of pride. 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭5‬:‭3‬ ‭NIV‬‬

“Poor” means “paupers”…those who have nothing inside. “Spirit” means air, breath, wind, or spirit…so, Jesus was saying, “Blessed are those people who are not windy, full of air…ie., full of nothing.”

When we truly have nothing inside, no hot air to inflate us, we have space for the Spirit of God to enter and reclaim what belongs to God. 

“As the Scriptures say, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

‭‭James‬ ‭4‬:‭6‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Paul refused to bow to the one person who said…

“Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭11‬:‭29‬ ‭NLT‬‬

…and…

“Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”

‭‭John‬ ‭14‬:‭6‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Yes, Paul had put a great deal of effort into trying to be accepted by God and trying to be vindicated by his own behaviour, his own “goodness” according to the law but…there was one thing he missed and one thing he could not do. He could not make his heart clean. 

This is what religion does. Religion cannot produce the life that comes from being reconciled to, and reunited with the only one who is the source of life. Sin, the expression of that disconnect, is an impenetrable barrier between the soul and God. There is only one who can remove that sin barrier…and He did it by sacrificing Himself as a sin offering on the cross. 

What Paul considered to be his greatest asset was actually his greatest liability…his religion! Only when we come clean with God can He make us clean by the blood of the atoning sacrifice. We must relinquish everything we consider an asset before He can do the one thing we can never do…a heart transplant that replaces our defiled heart with a new heart. 

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

‭‭Ezekiel‬ ‭36‬:‭26‬-‭27‬ ‭NIV‬‬

…and that promise was fulfilled by the cross of Jesus. 

For Paul. It would take a drastic encounter with the one who saw and knew him perfectly on the inside…to transform him from a hate to a lover of Jesus. 

To be continued

GLIMPSES OF PAUL – 1

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SAUL – THE PHARISEE…

… Such a prominent character in the New Testament, yet we know very little about him, Saul who became Paul, the man. Now and again, he reveals titbits about his early life, but only as they relate to his ministry as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Take, for example, his pre-Christian history. We know that he was a native of Tarsus, a city outside of Israel. This meant that he was raised as a Jew in a Gentile community.

What impression did this environment make on him as a young Jew? Did his Gentile associations give him a better understanding of their culture and lifestyle, or did he develop a deep prejudice towards them for their pagan and idolatrous ways?

It seems that his parents must have been devout Jews because Saul grew up strictly Jewish and even studied in Jerusalem under Gamaliel to be a Jewish rabbi.

In his defense before the Jewish leaders and people in Jerusalem, he told them…

Acts of the Apostles 22:3 NLT
[3] “Then Paul said, “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, and I was brought up and educated here in Jerusalem under Gamaliel. As his student, I was carefully trained in our Jewish laws and customs. I became very zealous to honor God in everything I did, just like all of you today.”

How did Paul’s education and training influence his understanding of the gospel? We must never dismiss this part of Paul’s early life as irrelevent, even detrimental to his grasp of the message he was to take to the world. Without his thorough knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures, the Tanach, the gospel would have had no solid foundation in the history of the Jews or in the prophetic preparation in the Tanach for the coming of Messiah.

It took the divine intervention of Jesus on the Damascus outskirts and Paul’s spiritual transformation from a fanatical Pharisee to a humble servant of the Lord, to enable him to understand what he already knew. Paul had the foundation of truth firmly embedded in his mind from early days. The Holy Spirit brought this knowledge to life in him as the supreme Teacher taught him the truth of the gospel.

If Paul spent his youth in Jerusalem under Gamaliel’s tutelage, he must have either encountered or heard of Jesus and His teaching and works. His initial reaction was just like the reaction of his fellow Pharisees. They were enraged by a mere human claiming to be God. Worse than that, He did things impossible to explain, like raising a dead man after four days in the grave!

Saul may not have been present in the crowd who yelled for Jesus’ death, but he certainly approved of the unjust condemnation and execution of Stephen, the first martyr to die for Jesus.

Acts of the Apostles 8:1 NLT
[1] “Saul was one of the witnesses, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen….”

So, despite his violent opposition to Jesus, and his hatred for Christians since they represented the opposite of what he was taught and believed, God thoroughly prepared this man for His calling to take the gospel to the Gentiles.

So, we leave Saul, the Pharisee, the hater and persecutor of Jesus’ followers, to follow his chosen path with vigour and fervour, not knowing what lay just around the corner for him…

JUDGED OR JUSTIFIED?

Christian Life, ,

JUDGED OR JUSTIFIED?

Jesus did not only teach His disciples that they must pray, but He also had things to say about their attitudes to God when they prayed. Once again the Pharisees provided a poor model for right attitudes in prayer. How must we approach the Father?

Humility

Another parable did well to illustrate wrong and right attitudes.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. (Luke 18: 9-10)

Jesus could not have chosen two more opposite characters for His story – a Pharisee and a tax collector. Who were these “some”? The same ones who prayed in public to get attention – the hypocrites – the Pharisees. They were the “Noddy-badge” types who had to pat themselves on the back in case no one else did it for them. Of what was this Pharisee proud?

The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ (Luke 18: 11-12)

Wait a bit! Have you forgotten something, Mr Pharisee? Thanksgiving is about who God is, not about who you are? What about your heart? Jesus hit the nail on the head:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. (Matt. 23: 25)

What was the problem with this man? He was so full of his own “righteousness” that he had no sense of need. I wrote this in the margin of my Bible years ago – a truth which has come back to me again and again:

“Religion is the most difficult disease to cure because it infects with such self-righteousness that no sense of need remains.”

Self-righteous people are self-sufficient. They are self-made people who worship their creator. They need nothing from God and they receive nothing from Him but condemnation.

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ (Luke 18: 13)

Did you catch that? The tax collector touched the one thing that is weightiest in God – His kabot – His glory – His mercy. When he cried to God out of his deep need for mercy, he received mercy. Jesus concluded His story with the most heartening words a sinner can ever hear:

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 18: 14)

Judged or justified? The Pharisee had already judged himself and, although he found himself not guilty, unfortunately for him, he used the wrong standard. He was his own measure of righteousness, but it fell far short of God’s measure of perfection. He judged his life by the rules he followed, not by the heart of the Father, and fell far short of God’s measure. He had no idea that the mirror of the Law into which he gazed, showed up the filth in his life but had no power to make him clean. He rejected the only one who could declare him not guilty because He had paid his debt. The Pharisee thought he could go it alone.

Justified! What does that mean? Not guilty. No penalty for sin hanging over the tax collector’s head any longer. He never again had to feel terrified of the future because of what he had done. He had the priceless gift of peace reigning in his heart. Why? Because he came to God with the attitude of reality. “I am a sinner and I need mercy.”

It is humility, not self-congratulation that opens God’s heart to His mercy. Attitude number one is humility which acknowledges that I have no hope outside of God. When I come to Him, I must take my rightful place before Him, remembering who He is and who I am. Whatever I have become that is good – functional – is because of His grace. I can claim nothing for myself which He has not given to me.

But He gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you. (James 4: 6-8a)

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