The Triumph of Grace
“What’s Your Story?”
May 21, 2000
This Morning’s Text – Galatians 1:11-24
“For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
“For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it; and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.
“Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. (Now in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying.) Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea which were in Christ; but only, they kept hearing, ‘He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.’ And they were glorifying God because of me.”
Review
Paul has chastised the Galatians for turning so quickly away from the one true gospel to a false gospel which cannot save and whose purveyors are to be accursed.
As we saw last week, Paul minces no words in his condemnation of those who would lead people astray—because heaven and hell are quite literally at stake! We have an awesome responsibility to take the truth of the gospel to those who are not in the faith. What are we doing with our responsibility? You see, the danger I fear this church falling into is the danger not of changing the gospel but of neglecting to share it with others who need to hear it. The practical effect is the same!
“Okay, Paul, so there is only one true gospel. Why yours?”
Three dimensions to Paul’s gospel:
“Sola fide”
“Sola Christo”
Open equally to the Gentiles as well as Jews
Interestingly, the focus of the Reformation was on the first two, but the focus for Paul in Galatians is on the third one.
The Judaizers’ “Gospel”
“Jesus + Moses = Salvation”
It was not that the Judaizers perceived themselves to be against faith in Christ, per se; they would have proclaimed the necessity of Christ. What they were doing, however, was adding to the gospel message; they were attempting to make Gentiles walk first through the doorway of Judaism, through the observance of certain rituals of the Jewish religion, prior to coming to Christ.
The Judaizers were no doubt people who feared that “this Gentile thing” was about to get out of control. It was a difficult enough pill for them to swallow that the church was such a wide-open proposition; it was a bridge too far for them to accept the idea that these Gentiles could be brought into the same body of Christ, uncircumcised and oblivious to the
rituals and customs of Jewish religion. It was a struggle as much with a proud nationalism as anything else. These Jews would be familiar with Gentile proselytes coming into the Jewish faith previously; this would not be especially bothersome. But in the case of Gentile converts to Judaism, there was effectively the “becoming Jewish”, a more-or-less wholesale adoption of Jewish rites and practices. Here, though, these Gentiles were becoming Christians…period! And Paul was the one on whom they trained their sights: it was he who, in their minds, was promoting an obligation-free gospel, lowering the bar as it were in order to win friends/converts. Ironically, it was Paul who was preaching a gospel that cut across the grain of human thinking—for man’s idea of what it takes to make things right with God almost always involves some form of self-effort. Let’s look at some popular “gospels” which we hear preached today:
A World of False “Gospels”
The “Gospel” of Self-Knowledge – “Know thyself”; “To thine own self be true”
Perhaps this is the umbrella idea under which all of these others fall; basic idea is expressed in the Humanist Manifesto, which states, “No god will save us; we must save ourselves.” This is the gospel of self-understanding; it ignores the Biblical teaching that we frankly cannot know ourselves as we truly are, for our viewpoint has been grossly warped by our sin. G.K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy, says in the first line of his argument, “Thoroughly worldly people never understand the world.”
The “Gospel” of Self-Love – “Hug Yourself and Kiss the World”
How many of us have heard nonsense similar to this: “you have to learn to love yourself before you can ever love anyone else!” That actually sounds good in our warped, Biblically-illiterate society; Whitney Houston can get up and sing such nonsense about how “learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all”, and people buy a million records. One problem, Christian: it is only the opposite of what the Word of God teaches! If we’d spend less time worrying about silly things like self-esteem and more time concerned about Christ-esteem, we’d be in much better shape!
The “Gospel” of Self-Improvement – “Be All that You can Be”
Flipped on “Christian” TV last Sunday morning and heard a popular purveyor of this “self-improvement” gospel (actually his son, who is following in his footsteps). Turns Jesus into the “guru of self-fulfillment”; human potential movement dressed in religious garb. Chesterton, in the same book, says (in typical English fashion and phraseology), “Believing in oneself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter.”
The “Gospel” of Self-Sacrifice – “Heal the world; make it a better place”
Wait a minute? Isn’t self-sacrifice a noble thing? Isn’t it part of Christian teaching? Absolutely. But what I’m talking about is a “gospel” which focuses on the doing of good things in order to earn one’s salvation before God. “If I give my body to be burned,” Paul reminds us, “and have not love, I am nothing.” A person can do incredibly self-sacrificial things which accomplish nothing if done without the right motives, for the wrong reasons.
Paul now attempts to answer the question posed above—why should his gospel be believed? Why should he be believed?
I. The Origin of the Gospel - :11-12; 16b-22
“…I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Paul begins his defense of the gospel by talking from his own story about how his preaching of the gospel came about. “I would have you know” = “Let me make this perfectly clear”
A. Its Source
1. Not according to man
Paul here talks about his independence from man, and he says that this gospel is not merely some beautiful teaching created from human genius—indeed, as we saw above, it runs counter to the way we want to think. We want naturally to think highly of ourselves, and to think that we have the means to settle the score with God. Man’s pride is offended by the true gospel, for it does not flatter him; it does not affirm in him some supposed goodness.
2. From God
Rather, it came from God, and Jesus Christ is its object. God chose to reveal it to him on the road to Damascus through a blinding light experience – Acts 9:1-9.
B. Its Transmission
1. Not from men, nor taught
Paul had very limited contact with Christ’s apostles (:16b-21). After 3 years he finally spent a few days with Peter, in what the context suggests was primarily a “get acquainted” visit. Now, we can reasonably surmise that Peter filled in some details from his own experience regarding the life of Christ, but the clear implication here is that the basic gospel message which Paul taught was not something derived from man. “Oh, and I spent a little time with James, the Lord’s brother,” Paul adds. Besides this, he hadn’t even met the other apostles. What’s the point Paul is trying to make? Certainly not that he is some kind of renegade Lone Ranger type who didn’t need other people; I’ve been reading I Thessalonians recently, and that book is almost mushy/soupy insofar as Paul’s expressions of love and devotion to the Thessalonian believers. Paul goes to meet with Peter in part out of a desire, no doubt, for fellowship. But remember, the implication that the Judaizers were trying to get across was that Paul had been instructed by men but in a desire to make converts had changed the gospel, had taken the law out of it, had watered it down to make it more palatable and to win more converts. Thus they must have argued that his visit to Jerusalem was made for the purpose of being instructed in the rudimentary elements of the gospel. Paul counters with 3 facts:
A. 3 years elapsed after conversion before the Jerusalem visit.
B. The visit was relatively brief.
C. The visit was mostly non-apostolic; other than Peter and a very brief encounter with James, he saw none of the other apostles.
Ironically, it was the Judaizers who could very appropriately be accused of teaching a man-centered “gospel”. Their rabbinic teaching had its roots in the O.T. law, but it had diverged and mutated according to the accretions of man. In the eyes of many then—and now—the Word of God ultimately was little more than a religious relic to pay superficial reverence to but not to seriously study or obey.
2. Through a revelation of Jesus Christ
The Damascus Road experience was for Paul this revelation of Jesus Christ through which he could rightly claim apostleship—only those who had seen Christ could lay claim to being apostles (and yes, I know that there are people today who want to lay claim to that tag—sorry!). “Revelation” is something which God makes known to man which he otherwise would not know—and that is what happened to Paul! This was not merely some subjective vision that he had, but an objective revelation of Jesus Christ—and it was clear enough to radically transform Paul’s life and purpose!
II. The Messenger of the Gospel - :15-16a
“…God…had set me apart even from my mother’s womb.”
A. “Set me apart”
Paul’s Jewish readers would have understood immediately in Paul’s words reference to Old Testament prophets such as Jeremiah, who quotes the Word of the LORD saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” God, Paul says, chose him for this mission prior to his even being born! It is not as though God was in Heaven one day wringing His hands, worrying about how the Gentiles would be reached with the gospel, and finally one day in desperation he looked down on earth and saw this fellow Saul with a lot of zeal and ability and said, “Hmmm…I think I’ll choose him!” This ties in with the work being the work of God, the fact that the messenger was one of God’s very deliberate choosing. Whatever impediments Paul could throw up could not frustrate the purpose of God to choose him and use him for His purpose!
B. “Called me”
There was on the part of Paul no particular merit involved in his calling. God, with grace as both His motive and means, called Paul into His service at the time of the Damascus Road experience. It was at this moment that Paul became aware of what God was doing in his life. God’s gracious calling made Paul both willing and fit to serve Him.
C. “Pleased to reveal His Son in me”
Once again, Paul emphasizes the fact that God does as He pleases for His own pleasure. God reveals to Paul, not an abstract, not a series of propositions or a set of facts, but His only Son, Jesus—and this revelation of Jesus to Paul becomes a revelation of Jesus in Paul. It was the real truth of Christ’s person and work which Paul was able to see clearly for the first time on the Damascus Road. He had known of Jesus; he had heard much of Him from the very people he had been persecuting. Now Paul the blasphemer against Christ is brought face to face with His truth, and Paul does a 180-degree turn—with the purpose of God for his life being the work of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles—that’s you and me, by the way! Others had on occasion taken the gospel to the Gentiles—we read in Acts 10, for instance, of Peter doing so with some reluctance. Paul, however, is specifically commissioned for this groundbreaking task.
III. The Power of the Gospel - :13-14; 23-24
“He who once persecuted us is now preaching…”
Here’s where I want to spend a few moments today—the truth that the power of the gospel can change lives! Here’s the thing: there are a lot of folks who get caught up in the “experience” of Christianity. Come to a church like this one on Sunday morning where the music is good and the people smile and the preacher delivers a message that is challenging enough to make them feel convicted but which they will leave without any determination to really allow God to break through to them. Oh, they may have some sort of fire insurance salvation—but what they really get excited about is the “experience”.
Talk about an experience! Paul is struck blind by a bright light and hears a voice from Heaven calling his name. I doubt many of us can measure up in the sense of being able to say we have had an experience quite as dramatic as that! But you know what I find interesting? Paul’s emphasis here is not on the experience but on the change! You see, here’s what I want you to hear this morning: the reality of our Christian experience is to be seen far more in the change than in the experience! And to take it a step further: if there is no change, then there is real reason to doubt the validity of the experiences!
Paul was by his own admission one who was leading the charge for Judaism and against this new sect led by Jesus, Whom he considered an impostor. He was attentive to all of the Jewish regulations that he could be; the word “devout” didn’t begin to describe this man. He was at the head of his class, outdistancing his contemporaries in the arena of works-righteousness. His religion was not a hobby or a secondary thing to him; it was his raison d’etre, his purpose. He was so thoroughly devoted to the cause that he went around trying to stamp out Christianity as one might try to stamp out a fire. Paul says that he persecuted the church of God—with the emphasis signifying his belief that to persecute the church was to oppose God!
Parenthetically, it bears pointing out that Paul would dispute the current notion that sincerity is all that counts. Sincerity, I believe Paul would say, is only as good as its subject; to merely be sincere counts for little. Paul was sincere—but he was sincerely wrong! In another place, Philippians 3, Paul says that all of his previous religious experience put together counted for nothing more than rubbish in comparison with the goal of knowing Christ! Is it not fair to say that, had God not radically intervened, there was no way this man would come to Christ? Truthfully, that is true of each of us as well; there is none who does good, Romans tells us; there is none who seeks after God. God radically intervened in our lives to draw us to Himself as well.
But the change is radical: he goes from persecutor to preacher! Can I suggest that the change in his life not only gave credibility to his sermons, but was more powerful than all of them put together. Paul uses this to argue further for the credibility of his message—this didn’t “just happen!” And according to verse 24, it was the change that caused these Christians in Judea—who had not seen Paul but only heard of it—to glorify God!
Paul uses his story to demonstrate that the message he preaches, a message of salvation by the grace of God alone through simple faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, is independent from others and direct from God Himself.
The question I want to ask this morning is this: what’s your story? Is it a story of a mere experience of some kind—or is it a story of a changed life? This community is populated by a lot of people who haven’t darkened the door of a church in years, whose lives look like anything but the life of a Christian—but who, if you ask them, will say, “oh, yeah, I’m a Christian!” And when you ask them how they know that, they will point to some “experience” they had at some point in the past. They said a prayer, or walked an aisle, or felt some emotional release during an evangelistic crusade, or underwent some method of baptism or confirmation or whatever. They will point to experiences, but there is no change that can be seen.
Now wake all the way up or go all the way to sleep; don’t misconstrue what I am saying at all here: it is faith that saves us by God’s grace. But faith demonstrates itself in changed living—and if there isn’t a story of change to tell; if Jesus makes little or no difference in your daily living, then I think you have every reason to doubt the validity of that experience! Jesus doesn’t say, “It is by their experiences that you’ll know who the true believers are…it is because you can point to a day or time when she had an experience that you’ll know that she’s a Christian.” No, He says, “by their fruit you will know them.” That’s the test—because true faith manifests itself in changed living—period. Once again, I believe that the Bible teaches that once a person has truly turned to Christ in faith, he is saved and kept by the grace of God and cannot lose his salvation. But if there is no fruit in my life—by what right should I look back to an experience and assume that it is genuine? By what measure ought I to have assurance of salvation? By no measure, I believe! “Show me your faith without your works,” James challenges us, “and I’ll show you my faith by my works!”
So what’s your story?
Can you tell your story? On your note sheet is a brief outline of how you ought to be able to put your story in words.
Change was evident in Paul’s life—change so evident and radical that it pointed others to Jesus. Is there change in your life?
Paul knew and acted upon God’s purpose for his life—do you and are you?
