Conversion of St. Paul
Galatians 1:11-24
01/25/04
There once was a brier growing in a ditch when a gardener came along with his spade and dug it up. He dug around it and gently lifted it out of the ground, bringing the brier to ask itself, “What is he doing? Doesn’t he know I’m a worthless brier?” But the gardener took it and placed it in his garden anyway. He planted it among his most prized and beautiful roses, prompting the brier to think once more, “What is this guy doing? What a mistake he’s made.” But then the gardener did an even more unusual thing in the brier’s mind. He came once more and made a slit in the brier with his knife. He grafted it with a rose and when the summer came to close there were lovely flowers blooming from the brier that previously had none. Then the gardener said, “Your beauty is not due to what came out of you, but to what I put in.”
“Your beauty is not due to what came out of you, but to what I put in.” Now everyone knows, of course, that plants don’t speak or have minds of their own; but this personified account of a well-known, readily accepted and often practiced procedure called grafting is quite apropos for us to reflect on today as we broach the subject of conversion, regeneration, new birth (or as some call it, being born again). It’s especially applicable when one considers how many speak of this conversion to Christ or this “being born again” as “their” coming to Christ, “their” decision to follow him. For the new birth is an inner recreation of our fallen human nature by the Holy Spirit. It changes us from lawless, godless self-seekers into those who love and trust. It moves us to repentance for past rebelliousness and unbelief. It works a loving compliance with God’s law and enlightens, liberates and energizes us to serve the Lord. The regenerate man has forever ceased to be the man he was; his old life is over and a new life has begun; he is a new creature in Christ, buried with him out of reach of condemnation and raised with him into a new life of righteousness.
But such a birth is not from us. No birth is. The one being born has nothing to do with it, as any mother in this sanctuary this morning can verify. And so it is with the conversion, regeneration or new birth of the Spirit. James Packer said it well. “Infants do not induce or cooperate in their own procreation and birth; no more can those who are dead in trespasses and sins prompt the quickening operation of God’s Spirit within them.” James Packer, Your Father Loves You, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1986. Conversion is by no man’s word. It’s by no man’s power; not his own or another’s. It’s the whole point of Paul’s case as he authenticated his Gospel and his ministry to the Gentile Christians in Galatia and elsewhere.
Here’s the background. From the very beginning the church knew Christ is Lord of all and that the Word of the Lord must be shared to the ends of the earth, not just among the Jews. The question, however, remained. “How were Gentiles to be brought into The Faith? Were all the marks and tokens of God’s covenant with Israel to be discarded? What of circumcision? What about Jewish dietary laws? Were Gentiles to be forced to become Jewish in every way or merely receive the Good News of Christ as Savior?”
The council at Jerusalem was called to deal with these questions when Paul and Barnabas’ missionary trip and teaching among the Gentiles had brought these matters to a head. They couldn’t be put off any more. A Council of the Church in Jerusalem was convened to provide some answers, and Acts 15: 28, 29 records their reply that came in the form of a request from the Jews to the Gentile converts. “Please abstain from food and practices which your pagan past makes easy for you that are abominable to your Jewish brothers and sisters in the faith.” It was not so much as a demand for salvation as it was a burden of love. And if this were a burden of love on them, the Judaic brethren were also to assume a burden of their own in not expecting and asking more. The people of God were to learn by this the as the Word of the Lord grew they were not to use their freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love to “be servants of one another.”
Thus the struggle was resolved, or at least is was in principle. There were still Judaizers, people who insisted that Gentiles had to become Jews in every way in order to be part of the people of God and join in salvation. And these were still spreading their beliefs to the churches of Galatia where Paul and Barnabas had traveled on their first missionary journey. They discredited his call as an apostle of God and they raised questions about the Gospel he preached; claiming that Paul’s gospel of salvation by mere faith in an absolutely free and forgiving grace of God omitted essential demands of God and would result in moral dangers.
In response Paul writes to his own defense that his gospel was not something that he or any other man made up; nor did he become an apostle by his own appointment. This was God’s doing. Indeed it had to be because he, Paul, was so far gone. He was such a lost cause, living a life so contrary to Christ, he couldn’t have possibly changed course without God’s personal call, without God’s personal revelation. It’s all God’s doing – His calling as an apostle, the Gospel he preached. It was God’s doing, even as His dramatic conversion to The Faith attest.
Others were involved – Ananias, the faithful in Damascus – but always at God’s direction, always by His guidance, always by His aid, always by God’s Word of grace as we see in the first lesson today. And that’s instructive for us, in that it’s the key to having an authentic and effective ministry of converting and bringing others to Christ.
We’re living at a time and in an age where we have power at our fingertips to get just about anything we want. And it’s easy to develop a frame of mind that we can do anything we put our minds to doing as long as we apply the right strategy, the proper amount force, adequate power and might.
To some degree we can see this being played out in Iraq. Every day, people argue over our strategy there. Some want more force. Others think we can win the peace if we employ different methods. It’s the same, tired, worn out rhetoric every night on the news, that I feel fails to take note of the spiritual side of what is taking place there. This battle has as much to do with the hearts of the people of Iraq as it does with anything else, and these can’t be won with guns and bullets. These can’t be changed with fancy slogans and advertising campaigns.
In the 14th chapter of John, Jesus is reported to have said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives” (John 14:27). Speaking to his disciples he encourages them with a peace that passes all understanding, a peace of conscience and of mind. He reminds them that while the world my be warring about them, He’s brought them a peace that reorders their lives, that converts them from being hopelessly lost into those that are found; steadfast and true, confident to the end with the assurance of God’s love. It’s a peace, it’s a change of heart, it’s a rebirth or conversion of the spirit, which this world can’t offer.
Nor can it be given by any worldly means. We won’t bring people to Christ by wowing them, by knocking ‘em dead with entertainment, by awesome deeds, with man-made strategies. These methods might fill church pews, but not a one will change a person’s heart. Billy Sunday was right when he said that coming into a church doesn’t make anyone a Christian anymore than entering a garage will change someone into an automobile. The human nature is too badly damaged for that. As W. W. Landrum once said, a cracked bell can be fixed in a couple of way. “It can be fixed by encompassing it with hoops, surrounding it with bands. Nevertheless, you can easily discern the crack of the bell in the crack of the sound. The only effectual way that it can be repaired is by re-melting, recasting and making it new. Human nature is a bell suspended high up in the steeple of creation to ring forth the praises of the Creator. The fall in Eden cracked the bell. How again to restore it? By one of two ways: One is to surround it with outward laws and regulations as with steel hoops.” One way is to try and employ every human method possible to make up for what is broken, to overcome its effects. (But) “The best way is re-melt it, recast it, remold it. (And) this is God’s method in the Gospel.” In other words: only God can do it. He can use people like you and me as instruments in His hand, but only to bring the revelation of His great grace and forgiving love that can melt a heart of stone. It’s the revelation that he once brought personally to the apostle Paul. It’s the revelation that He has brought to us, that He has now placed in your hands and mine, that He has placed on our lips to be shared with the world. Conversion is God’s work, not our own and not by our power or skills or works of persuasion. Wonder of wonders it’s by the new life giving power and persuasion of God’s Spirit active solely and simply in this, His Word.
If you’re still wondering about the word’s power to do this converting alone, consider again Paul. Still not enough? Think of David, a prisoner serving a 365 year sentence for murder. An inmate gave him a Gideon New Testament and Psalms. One night in his cell, he picked it up after ignoring it for the longest time and began reading Psalm 34. By the time he got to v. 6 it melted his heart. There he read, “this poor man cried and the Lord heard him, and saved him from all his troubles.” David remembers that night well and later wrote, “It was at that moment, in 1987, that I began to pour out my heart to God. Everything seemed to hit me at once. The guilt from what I did... the disgust at what I had become... late that night in my cold cell, I got down on my knees and I began to cry to Jesus Christ. I told Him that I was sick and tired of doing evil. I asked Jesus to forgive me for all my sins. I spent a good while on my knees praying to Him. When I got up it felt as if a very heavy but invisible chain that had been around me for so many years was broken. A peace flooded over me. I did not understand what was happening. But in my heart I just knew that my life, somehow, was going to be different.” Sixteen years later David Berkowitz, a.k.a. The Son of Sam, leads Bible studies inside the walls of his prison, devoted to spending the rest of his life in prison where he now the Lord has placed him so he can reach still more.
The world that God created is full of wonders isn’t it? There’s wonders like salt, composed of two poisonous substances: sodium and chlorine, either of which if taken individually could kill you. Yet these two substances are combined to produce the salt that is necessary for life.
Water is another example. Its chemical formula is H2O – two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Oxygen is an oxidizer, so that it supports combustion; while hydrogen so readily burns that it can be explosive. Isn’t it amazing then that hydrogen and oxygen can be united into a substance that so easily puts out flames?
Yet the greatest wonder of all is the transformation of a poor, vile, hopeless sinner into a respectable person. And it happens every day. On skid row, in the wealthiest of homes, in jungles of South Africa and in the streets of Paris – it takes place anywhere and everywhere, so long as a lost soul meets God’s gracious intervention in the power and strength of His Word. It’s a wonder of God’s own making. And a real joy for us when by the faithful teaching and preaching of His Word, God would work such a miracle through you and me. Amen!
