1 PAUL: JESUS CHANGES EVERYTHING This morning s authored lived a life that overcame incredible obstacles, endured constant persecution, suffered in unimaginable ways, and all the while displayed remarkable courage and a tenacity that almost defies belief. As a result, he is regularly listed as one of the most influential persons to ever live, and other than Jesus, he is the most important figure in the spread of the Christian faith. Of course, I m talking about the Apostle Paul. We know more about him than any of the other New Testament authors. We don t know the date of his birth but he lived at the same time as Jesus. (MAP) He was born in Tarsus, a city of wealth, noted for its schools and its culture, situated on the Mediterranean Sea on the south coast of modern day Turkey. (Show Tarsus, Jerusalem, Damascus) Paul, also known as Saul, was born to Jewish parents who were committed to their faith and who refused to assimilate to the Gentile culture that surrounded them.
2 Yet, Paul was also born a Roman citizen with all the rights and privileges that citizenship provided. At an early age he moved to Jerusalem where he spent his formative years. More important to Paul than his city of origin or his Roman citizenship was his Jewish heritage. In the book of Philippians he details his pedigree. Philippian 3.5-6: (I was) circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. Not only a Jew, but also Pharisee. And even among this most committed group, Paul distinguished himself. As a young man he was what we would call an up and comer, a golden boy, being groomed for a position of authority and power. Paul studied under the most respected teacher of his day. He tells us: Acts 22.3: I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. Being accepted by Gamaliel as a disciple was like being accepted at Harvard. And even among the elite students of Gamaliel, Paul rose to the top. Galatians 1.14: I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
3 Full of potential and promise, educated, zealous and uncompromising, Paul was selected to exterminate a dangerous, blasphemous sect which proclaimed that the Messiah had come and his name was Jesus. He was chosen to be the defender of the faith and he was given the task of putting those who followed Jesus in prison or to death. And it was a task he relished. The first time we see Paul in Acts chapter 7 is when Stephen, the first Christian martyr, is being stoned to death, and we are told that those who were doing the stoning, placed their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. Rather than meaning that he had no part in the stoning, it is an indication that he was there in some official capacity. We also read Galatians 1.13: For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. Acts 9.1: Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. And yet no one in the first century did more to spread the Christian faith and no one suffered more for doing so. What happened? On his way to Damascus he had a vision. Acts 9.3-6: As he neared Damascus suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you, Lord? Saul asked. I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, he replied. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.
4 There is too much to tell in the time we have, but over the next 30-35 years, Paul dedicated his life to promoting what he once believed was blasphemy. Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, whose death on the cross, had brought salvation into the world. Yes, the Messiah had been crucified but not for his unrighteousness. He was bearing the curse of our sins and taking the punishment we deserved, that we might no longer be under the curse of the law but instead live as the blessed children of God. (MAP) Paul took this Gospel to Asia Minor, Greece, to Rome itself and most likely to modern day Spain. Wherever he went, the Roman authorities persecuted him, as did the Jews, as he once had persecuted those who followed Jesus. He describes some of his trials in 2 Corinthians 11.23-29: Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked I have been in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Ultimately, he was put to death during the time of Nero. We believe he was beheaded.
5 But before his death, he traveled thousands of miles, founded dozens of churches, and wrote countless letters to encourage those congregations and others, thirteen of which we have in the New Testament, bearing his name. And as the early church wrestled with the question: must Gentiles who put faith in Jesus also convert to Judaism and be circumcised if Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, shouldn t his followers have to be Jews it was Paul more than anyone who understood and fought for the truth that the coming of Jesus was more than the fulfillment of Judaism, it was God coming into the world, throwing his arms open to anyone who would come in faith regardless of their ethnicity, religious background or moral righteousness. Being a Jew, becoming circumcised, and following the Law were utterly inconsequential in putting faith in Christ and being saved from your sins. That may not seem like a big deal, but it liberated Christianity from being a Jewish sect and made it a faith for all the world. And who was the one who championed this radical idea? The most unlikely person on the planet. A Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, one who himself had followed the law completely, and one who had persecuted the faith he was now promoting. More so than any of the other apostles, Paul s theology has influenced the thinking of the church for the last two thousand years.
6 Which Books Did Paul Write? The thirteen epistles in your Bible beginning with the deep and monumental book of Romans to the personal letter of Philemon where he pleads for mercy for a runaway slave. When Were Paul s Letters Written? From the late 40 s or early 50 s to the middle or late 60 s. Nine were written to churches and four to individuals. His first letter that appears in the New Testament would have been written roughly 15 years after his conversion. What occasioned Paul s Epistles? In other words, Why did Paul Write His Letters? There were many reasons. Lawsuits among believers, a misunderstanding about spiritual gifts, divisions within the church, confusion about the death and resurrection of believers, abuse of the Lord s supper, and sexual immorality within the church. And those are just the issues he addressed in his first letter to the Corinthians. Other topics in other letters included the nature of salvation by faith, the supremacy of Christ, false teaching by those claiming to be apostles, confusion about the return of Christ, thanking churches for their emotional and financial support, and encouraging those whom he has put in places of ministry and authority to do their work with diligence, compassion and the spirit of Christ. So, of all the authors we re looking at in this series, Paul is the one we will do the least justice to. But if I must, I would describe his core message as Jesus Changes Everything.
7 No one was more religious, no one was more committed, no one was more righteous before the law than Paul. But after he met Christ on the Damascus Road, everything changed. Who he was, how he approached God, what he trusted for salvation, the purpose he lived for it all changed. And Paul taught that any time anyone puts faith in Christ, everything changes. 2 Corinthians 5.17: If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. What changes when you put faith in Jesus? You do. Your identity, your status, your heart, your relationship to God, your destiny everything. You are a new creation, a new person. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul gives us a pretty good summary of his core message. 1 Corinthians 15.3: For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures Most important is that Jesus died for our sins and rose again.
8 Why? Because that changes everything who we are, how we understand God, what we live for, the motives of our hearts. Jesus changes everything. Let s see how Jesus changed everything for Paul and how he changes everything for us. 1. How We See Ourselves. Before coming to Christ how did Paul see himself? Philippians 3.6: As for righteousness based on the law, faultless. I kept the law, Paul says. I lived a moral life. Everything that was required by my faith, I did and I was. Here s Paul s description of himself again, this time in a modern translation. Philippians 3.4-6: 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 obeyed the law without fault. Whatever boxes need to be checked in order to be righteous before God, Paul says, I could check them all.
9 My pedigree was impeccable. My zeal had no equal. And my life was as righteousness as they come. I stood before God confident and assured. After he met Jesus, how did he see his life prior to trusting in Christ? 1 Timothy 1.15: This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners and I am the worst of them all. Ephesians 2.2-3: You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. And in this moving, poignant passage Paul describes his life before coming to Christ. Notice how different his assessment of himself is now that he has met Christ compared to the assurance he felt before coming to faith. Romans 7.14-15, 24: So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Before he met Jesus, he was confident in himself, in his efforts, in his righteousness. Looking at that same life after he met Christ, he sees himself very differently. Sinful and dead in his transgressions. I ve shared this quote of Mother Teresa with you before. Mother Teresa: The closer you are to the light, the bigger the shadow. If you feel like you re living a good and moral life, if you feel like you ll be ok when you stand before a holy God because of how hard you ve tried or how well you ve done if you don t feel your sin, if you don t feel a need for mercy and forgiveness and grace if you don t cry out, who will free me from a life dominated by sin and an eternity that leads to death?
10 If you don t feel your need for a Savior, it s not because you have done everything so right -- it s because you are so far from the light of Christ that you cannot see the darkness in your heart and in your deeds, and you are lost. Jesus changed how Paul saw himself. No longer proud of his righteousness, he was humbled by his sin. No longer looking to himself for salvation, he confessed his need for mercy and grace. Back to Philippians 3 where Paul talks about all the things he had trusted for righteousness before God his pedigree, his zeal, his efforts, his morality. Now what does he say about them? Philippians 3.7-8: I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ When it comes to knowing Christ and being right with God, all my efforts, all my confidence, all my righteousness, it s rubbish because I can t save myself. Only Jesus can do that. The Gospel tells us that we are much worse off than we know. We are sinners, unable to save ourselves, in danger of an eternity without God and goodness. But the Gospel also tells us that there is more hope than we can imagine. That leads to the next question.
11 How did Jesus change Paul s standing, and how does Jesus change our standing, before God? 2. Our Standing with God. Romans 3.23-25: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. Justified in Paul s writings means something different than how we normally use the word. When we attempt to justify ourselves, it means we try to prove that we are innocent or we make excuse for what we did. The way Paul uses the term, it has a very different meaning. It has to do with our status, our standing before God. And this is a huge theme for Paul. Here s a formal definition and then I ll break it down for you. Justification: God s pardon of guilty men and accounting of them as righteous based on the representative law-keeping and redemptive death of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of justification states that Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He lived a sin-free life and died a sacrificial death as our representative and God in his grace accounted the death of Christ as atonement for our sins. When we accepted Christ through faith, what he accomplished on the cross was imputed to us and now we are forgiven and deemed righteous in the sight of God.
12 The word for justified in Greek is a legal term. It means declared not guilty. It is the verdict that a judge would pronounce that would set a man free and pronounce him righteous before the law. In terms of our relationship with God, being justified does not indicate that we were not guilty in the sense that we had never sinned. It does mean that, though guilty and unrighteous in God s sight because of our wrong deeds, we are forgiven, our wrongs are no longer held against us and we are considered righteous in the sight of God because of what Christ has done for us. Our penalty has been paid. Our debt has been forgiven and we are now treated by God as if we had never sinned. Paul says we are all justified freely by his grace. Present tense. That s our new status before God. It began the moment you put faith in Christ. You went from guilty to forgiven. From enmity with God to reconciled to God. From condemned in your sins to righteous in Christ. All your sins are forgiven and gone. The slate has been wiped clean and you have become a new creation in Christ. And this happened what does Paul say? Freely, by his grace, through the redemption that came by Jesus shedding his blood as the atonement for your sins.
13 There are two understandings of how persons become right with God. One is the Gospel. The other is our natural human tendency that makes sense to our intellect and pleases our pride. HOW WE BECOME RIGHT WITH GOD Human Nature The Gospel 1. Our merit 1. God s mercy 2. Our goodness 2. God s grace 3. Our virtuous works for God 3. The work of Christ on the cross for us 4. Something we earn 4. Something we re given 5. Religion 5. Relationship 6. Do 6. Done Christ changes everything. Our status is no longer sinner trying to do enough to earn God s favor. Our status is forgiven, accepted and righteous because of what God has done for us. Christ also changed how Paul saw and how we should see our relationship with God. 3. Our Relationship with God. Just because a judge declares us as righteous, that doesn t necessarily change our relationship with him. He may not care to have us in his life. Or if he does, it may be nothing more than a professional or a business relationship that he is prepared to have with us. But Jesus changes that. Romans 8.15-16: The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God s children.
14 You are a son of God. He could have made you a servant. He could have made you an employee. He could have even made you a friend. But he made you more. In fact, the Spirit that he placed within you when you accepted Christ, makes you call out, Abba, which was a Jewish child s name for father. It s best translated as Daddy or Papa. What does it mean that you are God s son? It means you bear his name. It means he is committed to you. It means he will provide for your needs. But more than anything else, it means that he loves you. Story: Me with my boys, my dad, and God. God loves you. More than you know. He wants you to be sure of that love, sure that nothing you do can make him love you more than he does right now, and certain that nothing you do will ever make him love you less. You are his son. You are loved by the Father, and his heart is open to you, tender for you, committed to you. Last one. Jesus changed Paul s motive for serving God. And he changes ours as well.
15 4. Our Motive for Serving God. 1 Timothy 1.12-14: I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength to do his work. He considered me trustworthy and appointed me to serve him, even though I used to blaspheme the name of Christ. In my insolence, I persecuted his people. But God had mercy on me because I did it in ignorance and unbelief. Oh, how generous and gracious our Lord was! He filled me with the faith and love that come from Christ Jesus. Before meeting Jesus, Paul labored to earn God s approval. After meeting Jesus, his motive for serving God and doing his work was gratitude. He could not forget how merciful, how generous, how gracious God had been to him. Christ Jesus our Lord had saved him from his sins, given him a new life in Christ, and appointed him to his service. And the motive of all that Paul did in response was gratitude. Garrison Keillor tells the story of his uncle Fred who would always say the prayer at family gatherings, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. He would say the blessing because nobody else wanted to and they all knew Fred would be happy to. But there was a problem. He would get too emotional and go on too long. He would take the hands of the people next to him, and begin to pray. His eyes would moisten and his voice would crack. And he would go on and on about how good God had been
16 and how blessed he felt. And only then would he thank God for the food and say amen. Keillor ends that story by saying, The rest of us knew that God was good, and that we were blessed, and that Jesus had died for us. It s just that Uncle Fred never got over it. Neither did Paul. And that was his motive for serving God. What Christ had done for him and the gratitude that lived in his heart. Addison Leech? Close with this quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian, about how reading Paul s letter to the Ephesians changed everything for him. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: I can never forget that the reading of this Pauline letter, when I was a boy in my teens, exercised a more decisive influence upon my thought and imagination than was ever wrought upon me before or since by the perusal of any piece of literature. The romance of the part played by Jesus Christ in making my personal salvation possible and in mediating God s cosmic plan set my spirit aflame That was my encounter with the Cosmic Christ. The Christ who was and is became the passion of my life. I have to admit, without shame or reserve, that as a result of that encounter, I have been unable to think of my own life or the life of mankind or the life of the cosmos apart from Jesus Christ. He came to me and challenged me in the writings of St. Paul. I responded. The years that have followed have been but a footnote to that encounter.