Tag Archives: apostle

ROMANS…PAUL’S CREDENTIALS -1

Bible Study, ,

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭1‬:‭1‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Hardly anyone writes letters these days. It’s no wonder our postal service has collapsed. Gone are the days when a familiar figure, carrying a heavy bag, tramped the streets of our neighbourhoods, dropping letters into post boxes, with a friendly greeting, or a good-natured kick at an unfriendly dog. 

E-mails and WhatsApp have filled the gap with sterile efficiency. Gone are the paragraphs of handwritten information, family news, etc., whatever it took to make an interesting communication and to keep friends and family bonds strong. 

This letter to the Roman congregation was Paul’s way of making contact with a church he didn’t found. He began with the usual style of his time…first his name and credentials. 

Who was this Paul? He was the one whom Jesus had confronted on the road outside Damascus…the notorious hater of Christians who had tried ti exterminate them one by one.  He had become one of them through a divine encounter. His life had been turned right side up after years of believing that he was “doing God’s work!”

How did he identify himself to his readers? He had never been to Rome. His time in Rome in the future would be very different from what he anticipated. He was writing to a congregation of relative strangers and yet, somehow, he knew many of them. 

In the Roman Empire, Christians were a suspect category. The Jews were tolerated because they were no threat to the emperor. Christians were suspect because they refused to confess and bow to Caesar as Lord. They were rumoured to be cannibals because they “ate the body and drank the blood of Jesus”! They were to be exterminated like vermin.  

And so, much through Paul’s efforts, the Christians in the empire stuck together, bonded through the movement of travelling preachers and other believers. They offered accommodation and fellowship to one another, and forged connections across provinces and even countries. It was not unusual, then, for Paul to greet his readers as one who knew them although he had not yet been with them. 

In the case of the Roman church, the church had probably begun through visiting Christians who had won people in Rome to faith in Jesus through their witness. 

Paul took it upon himself to ensure that these believers who had a mostly pagan background, would be taught the great truths of the gospel. So, he wrote this letter, a thorough explanation of what God had done through His Son, Jesus Christ, to reconcile the world to Himself. 

Paul’s credentials were important. He was not just any old self-appointed apostle as some are today. He was Paul…the one who was appointed and called by God Himself to carry the message of Jesus to the world. 

“Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭1‬:‭5‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Paul’s credentials included two important facets…grace and apostleship. They were gifts from God…not anything Paul had merited or earned. It was by God’s grace that he was rescued from his life of self-righteousness, and it was by God’s choice that he was an apostle…it had nothing to do with him.  He carried the authority of Jesus from the moment he had met Him outside Damascus. He had ditched all his self-effort and clung to the righteousness Jesus had given him by grace…the same grace that had protected and provided for him over hundreds of miles, through hostile territory, and despite constant threats from his enemies. 

Since Paul had not yet been released by the Holy Spirit to go to Rome, he wrote his magnificent teaching in a letter preserved for posterity. Having established his apostleship as a calling and appointment from God, he was compelled to carry out his mandate to pass on the body of truth he had received from the Lord to every believer in Jesus across the empire. He did this in person where he could and by letter when he was unable to go in person. 

Hence, some of his letters were written from inside prison walls, dictated to faithful associates who helped him whenever they could. Prison, to Paul, was not a hindrance. In fact, his happiest letter…to the Philippian church…originated from a prison cell. He taught and wrote wherever he was. 

So begins the prince of letters, the pinnacle of theology…not the theology of a far-away God who sits up in heaven demanding allegiance but the story of a God who came here…to us on earth…to do what we could never do…to bridge the gap between a holy God and a broken world. He did it through His own Son…that one…Jesus, the Son of God. 

To be continued

ROMANS 1 – CAESAR OR NO CAESAR!

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ROMANS 1 – 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 to make sense of it all?

Ten days after He left them, the Holy Spirit came, just as Jesus had promised. The light came on and their Old Testament Scriptures began to pulsate 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. These false teachers did not understand Jesus’ yoke and they did not have the authority to interpret it to their hearers as did the apostles. And so, Paul 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”. Jesus 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.

 

PETER, AN APOSTLE

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PETER, AN APOSTLE

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with His blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance (1 Peter 1: 1-2).

Who wrote this letter, Peter or Paul? It sounds a lot like Paul, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t Paul; it was Peter, the fisherman.

When we read these letters, we read them as inspired writings rather than as letters written by human beings who must have been in contact with one another and influenced one another in many ways. These men were apostles and leaders in the early church. They had a profound influence on the believers and would have spent time together whenever they could so that they would speak with one voice.

Peter had been with Jesus for more than three years. Paul had his three years in the desert of Arabia, communing and learning the message he was to take to the world from the Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised, would lead him into all truth. They learned from the same Master and taught the same message wherever they went.

To whom did Peter write this letter? To believers scattered throughout Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. How can one write a letter to people scattered all over the place? Perhaps Peter made many copies and had one of his compatriots drop them off as they travelled from place to place. We can send e-mails anywhere simultaneously simply by adding an address to our list of addressees and pressing ‘send’. In a flash, through technology we use but do not understand, our recipients can read our letter within seconds.

Peter’s way of communicating was tedious and took many months to reach his readers but his message was permanent, preserved on material that has survived thousands of years. What happens to our messages on computer? They disappear as fast as they were sent simply by pressing ‘delete’. Unfortunately, we often dismiss God’s word from our minds as quickly as we delete our e-mails from our computers, instead of saving them on the ‘hard drive’ of our hearts.

Peter’s greeting was in itself a short but profound summary of his message to these scattered believers:

Who were they? They were God’s elect, unknown and unnamed people as far as the world was concerned but, as far as God was concerned, known and chosen to belong to Him before the world was even created. From the world’s perspective they were exiles, aliens, rejected by the world, refugees living in foreign lands, not belonging anywhere in this world but, nevertheless, citizens of the heavenly kingdom, their true homeland.

What a contrast! Rejected by the world but belonging to God. Their identity was not rooted in the world’s favour. What did it matter if the world did not want them? They were God’s chosen, chosen by Him and identified with Him. That made them secure for time and eternity. And it was a God-thing from beginning to end. Why? The triune God is involved in their election.

Firstly, God the Father was behind the choice of every individual who made up the elect. They did not happen to be in His kingdom by chance. They did not stumble into it by accident. They were there by the Father’s choice and for a purpose.

Secondly, the Holy Spirit was involved in their election. He made it all happen. He wooed and won the heart of every person who was called ‘elect’. He drew them to Jesus, opened the eyes of their understanding, brought them to faith and set them apart for God.

Thirdly, Jesus was also involved in their election. He was the object of their faith and the reason for their salvation. It was through His blood that they were forgiven, cleansed and made fit to be citizens of God’s kingdom and members of His family. It was for obedience to Him that they were chosen and called. This was ultimately the evidence and the outcome of their election.

If you are a citizen of God’s kingdom, you are also ‘elect’ of God, unknown and unwanted by the world, but belonging to God and set apart for him.

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

Hello, Ephesian Believers!

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HELLO, EPHESIAN BELIEVERS!

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 1: 1-2).

I wonder if we will even appreciate the significance of these words of greeting or even the letter Paul wrote to this church in Asia Minor.

A Roman writer once called Ephesus Lumen Asiae, The Light of Asia. Ephesus, with a population of 300,000, was the chief commercial city of the province and the centre of the mother goddess worship of western Asia. In the New Testament era, it was the fourth greatest city in the world, after Rome, Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch of Syria . . .

The apostle Paul first visited Ephesus on the return from his missionary journey where he “entered the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews” (Acts 18:19-21).

On his second journey, Paul came to Ephesus and taught the twelve disciples who knew only the baptism of John (Acts 19:1-7) and “went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God” (Acts 19:8). He later taught in the school of Tryannus for two years, and as a result, “all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks” (Acts 19:9-10).

Ephesus was full of wizards, sorcerers, witches, astrologers, diviners of the entrails of animals and people who could read one’s fortune by the palm of the hand. And yet, after the preaching of Paul, the magicians publicly burned their books, “so the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed” (Acts 19:19-20). Timothy and Erastus were with Paul, but he sent them to Macedonia, while “he himself stayed in Asia for a time” (Acts 19:22) . . .

The disturbance over Diana of the Ephesians is one of the most prominent stories in the book of Acts (Acts 19:23-41). There were 33 temples in the Greco-Roman world where Diana was worshiped. After Paul’s preaching in Ephesus had harmed the local silversmiths who made statues of Diana, Paul’s companions, Gaius and Aristarchus, were dragged into the theatre. The disciples would not allow Paul to go into the assembly . . .

“The goddess who had largely given Ephesus its wealth and importance — so that it was a kind of Lourdes of the ancient world — was at the core of so much human thinking. She derived from those early manifestations of religious belief, the mother-goddess figures to be found from Asia Minor to the Cyclades, and westward to Sicily. The embodiment of the female principle, she represented not only fertility but resurrection in the shape of the new birth, the eternal return of life to the earth and, as found in a number of early carvings, the ‘Tree of Life’. As Isis she bore the divine son, Horus; and as Artemis, she was the Mother of Wild Things, the goddess of all animals. The Isis-Artemis conception embraced everything. It could be taken at any level; from the simple peasant’s conception of the divinity who would ensure that his beasts and land were fruitful, to the intellectual idea of an all-creating mother who sustained the whole universe.” (Ernle Bradford, Paul The Traveler, pp. 194-195).

http://www.biblelandhistory.com/turkey/ephesus.html – retrieved December 2015

Paul challenged Diana worship, not by doing “spiritual warfare” or preaching against her in the city but by declaring the truth about Jesus, despite opposition and personal danger. The outcome was startling. The worship of Diana was in tatters. When the many people who were involved in witchcraft, received Jesus as Lord, they burned their occult paraphernalia. The silversmiths, let by Demetrius, rioted because they had lost their business selling Diana images.

The power of the gospel had broken the evil deception of Diana, just as Jesus had told His disciples it would during their visit to Caesarea Philippi (Matt. 16: 13-19).

How marvellous that Paul could write words like “to God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus,” to a group of people who were once pagan idolaters! They had worshipped the image of a goddess whose history goes back to the time of Nimrod, the rebel king who, together with his wicked wife, Semiramis, led a revolt against Yahweh and set up the first organised false religious system of sun-worship, symbolised by the tower of Babel.

How tragic that the church today, in the name of Jesus, has unwittingly reincorporated so much of the pagan mythology of Diana-worship into the worship of Jesus, especially in the so-called “Christian” festivals of Christmas and Easter. We have swallowed the lies of the Roman Catholic Church by following their deceptive “Christianising” of the worship of the sun-god, Baal, through the incorporation of the many symbols of Baal-worship into our celebrations in the name of the one who expressly forbade the practice.

God has entrusted to His people the rich treasure of His Word. He asked us to preserve it intact and teach it as the truth, not to add or subtract anything. He will hold us accountable for what we do with it because His Word is the embodiment of Himself.

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once of all entrusted to the saints (Jude 1: 3).

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.

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ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

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For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?

 

 

Peter, An Apostle

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PETER, AN APOSTLE

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with His blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance (1 Peter 1: 1-2).

Who wrote this letter, Peter or Paul? It sounds a lot like Paul, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t Paul; it was Peter, the fisherman.

When we read these letters, we read them as inspired writings rather than as letters written by human beings who must have been in contact with one another and influenced one another in many ways. These men were apostles and leaders in the early church. They had a profound influence on the believers and would have spent time together whenever they could so that they would speak with one voice.

Peter had been with Jesus for more than three years. Paul had his three years in the desert of Arabia, communing and learning the message he was to take to the world from the Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised, would lead him into all truth. They learned from the same Master and taught the same message wherever they went.

To whom did Peter write this letter? To believers scattered throughout Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. How can one write a letter to people scattered all over the place? Perhaps Peter made many copies and had one of his compatriots drop them off as they travelled from place to place. We can send e-mails anywhere simultaneously simply by adding an address to our list of addressees and pressing ‘send’. In a flash through technology we use but do not understand, our recipients can read our letter within seconds.

Peter’s way of communicating was tedious and took many months to reach his readers but his message was permanent, preserved on material that has survived thousands of years. What happens to our messages on computer? They disappear as fast as they were sent simply by pressing ‘delete’. Unfortunately, we often dismiss God’s word from our minds as quickly as we delete our e-mails from our computers, instead of saving them on the ‘hard drive’ of our hearts.

Peter’s greeting was in itself a short but profound summary of his message to these scattered believers:

Who were they? They were God’s elect, unknown and unnamed people as far as the world was concerned but, as far as God was concerned, known and chosen to belong to Him before the world was even created. From the world’s perspective they were exiles, aliens, rejected by the world, refugees living in foreign lands, not belonging anywhere in this world but, nevertheless, citizens of the heavenly kingdom, their true homeland.

What a contrast! Rejected by the world but belonging to God. Their identity was not rooted in the world’s favour. What did it matter if the world did not want them? They were God’s chosen, chosen by Him and identified with Him. That made them secure for time and eternity. And it was a God-thing from beginning to end. Why? The triune God is involved in their election.

Firstly, God the Father was behind the choice of every individual who made up the elect. They did not happen to be in His kingdom by chance. They did not stumble into it by accident. They were there by the Father’s choice and for a purpose.

Secondly, the Holy Spirit was involved in their election. He made it all happen. He wooed and won the heart of every person who was called ‘elect’. He drew them to Jesus, opened the eyes of their understanding, brought them to faith and set them apart for God.

Thirdly, Jesus was also involved in their election. He was the object of their faith and the reason for their salvation. It was through His blood that they were forgiven, cleansed and made fit to be citizens of God’s kingdom and members of His family. It was for obedience to Him that they were chosen and called. This was ultimately the evidence and the outcome of their election.

If you are a citizen of God’s kingdom, you are also ‘elect’ of God, unknown and unwanted by the world, but belonging to God and set apart for him.

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