As we look back over the centuries, there are few cities that stand out above the rest as outstanding; worthy of being remembered throughout the generations. Some of these cities, like Athens Greece, are remembered for their greatness in influencing the world as a whole. Some, like Paris or London, are remembered because of the outstanding people who called them home. Some are remembered for their measure of goodness. Yet others, like the ancient city of Corinth, are remembered for the stench of evil that remains for ages, much like the stench of a rotting animal remains after the carcass has been removed.
In many ways, Corinth was a spectacular city. Once overshadowed by the cities of Athens, Thebes, Sparta, and Argos—Corinth became the wealthiest and most important city in Greece. When it was later destroyed in 146 B.C. some of the worlds greatest treasures of art were carried away. The city laid waste for 100 years until it was rebuilt by Julius Caesar in B.C. 46—afterward growing so rapidly that it once again became on of the most prominent cities in Greece.
Yet another century later, this city situated on a thin isthmus of land was pulsating with activity as the commercial center of the region. Walking through the streets of this place, one would take notice of the stadium of the foot race, used in the Isthmian Games that took place every two years. Pine trees, from which the victors crown was weaved and presented to the winner of the race, flourished. The smell of salty sea air would draw us to three principle ports that served this city and secured it as the commerce capitol. This would have been a spectacular scene of hundreds—maybe thousands of ships from the east and the west bringing to the people material goods, along with a wave of philosophical and religious thought from around the known world.
On our way to the coast, however, we would have passed statues, temples, and various structures built to honor and pay homage to the Greek gods and goddesses of Poseidon, Aphrodite, and Venus. As we pass the temple of Venus, with it’s 1000 female temple prostitutes, as we listen to the conversations around us, we would easily come to understand why Corinth was famous even among the pagan world for her immorality. This city, know for vile corruption that astounded even the most morally hardened person, is where we find an extraordinary man who just a few years earlier had succeeded in bringing a flood of God’s light into this incredibly dark place.
This is his second visit to a city which he had previously entered in fear and trembling following a time of extreme discouragement in her sister city of Athens a few mile away. Where no good could seemingly exist, there now flourished a community of believers, the fruit of his cooperative work with a couple named Priscilla and Aquilla a few years earlier. This would be a brief visit...three months at the most. He was on a journey to Jerusalem to deliver to the persecuted believers there a collection of money and goods generously given by churches throughout the region.
These three months were a reflective time for this man who had been named Saul by the world and renamed Paul by no other than Jesus Christ, the risen Messiah some thirty years earlier. He knew several things at this point. He somehow knew that his time on earth was drawing to a close. He knew that his life had been a dramatic illustration of God’s ability to totally transform a person. He knew that this day-by-day transformation had been kept on course through critical defining moments over the years. And he knew that before his life drew to a close, he desperately wanted to communicate God’s truth to the people of Rome...the capitol of the world.
As he spent these three months, enjoying the fellowship of the church he had planted there, and writing down his thoughts to be delivered to the Christians in Rome, his mind no doubt carried him back to those defining moments that had made him the person that he now was. I’m sure he laughed as he thought about how the path he had spent the last 30 years traveling was so different from the journey that he had begun as a child. The first defining moment would have involved a life decision in which he had very little choice. The direction of his life was chosen for him by his parents.
Born to a Jewish family living abroad in the city of Tarsus, on the southern coast of what we know as Turkey, young Saul was taught the trade of making tents out of the heavy hair of goats which were grazed by the thousands in the neighboring mountains. Being a devout Jew himself, Saul’s father had greater ambitions for his son. Though tent-making would be his trade, Saul’s father sensed a divine calling upon his son and sent him at the age of 13 to Jerusalem to enter the school of the rabbi’s under the direction of one of Israel’s greatest teachers, a man named Gamaliel. Through birth and circumstance Saul had been perfectly situated in a great commercial city to live life as a successful businessman. However, this defining moment situated him to spend his years learning everything there was to know about the God that his people had worshipped for thousands of years. Knowledge that would shape him into something he would never have imagined for himself.
He excelled as a rabbi. Saul had an incredible mind. He had the benefit of spending 13 years in Tarsus learning the culture of the Greco-Roman world now combined with years of rabbinical training. All of this gave him a breadth of understanding of the world around him that surpassed even that of his teacher, Gamaliel. Referring to himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews, he was passionate about his heritage, his people, and his God. So much so that when he felt that his religion was being threatened by a small group of people who were declaring the crucified Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah, he became enraged with a religious fury and determination to destroy anyone who would dare to utter the name of Jesus with any hint of worshipful tone.
This brought him to another defining moment. There was a commotion as a crowd of angry people were dragging a man out of the city, with stones in their hands. This man had dared to stand before the high priest and declare that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. Saul was happy to be included in this mob of people who would stone the life out of this blasphemer. Those with rocks took of their cloaks, laid them at Saul’s feet so he could watch over them as the men began hurling their stones at Stephen.
This defining moment had to stir some things within Saul. He had just heard Stephen proving with the scripture that Jesus was the Messiah. He had just witnessed, with the rest of the council, Stephen’s face emitting a supernatural glow—perhaps like the glow from Moses face as he came from a meeting with God. He had just heard Stephen with his dying breath praying tenderly for those who were stoning him. Could this man really be an enemy of God? Nevertheless, Saul chose to ignore the promptings, the goading of God’s spirit, and set off on an even more furious mission to seek out and destroy Christians wherever he could find them.
After securing the necessary paperwork from the high priest, Saul set out on a journey to Damascus that would end far different than what he had planned. Yet another defining moment awaited him, just down the road. His intent was to travel to Damascus, arrest the Christians there, and bring them back to Jerusalem to be tried, tortured, probably even killed. Suddenly at midday, as Paul and his company were riding forward beneath the blaze of the Syrian sun, an even brighter light surrounded them, a shock vibrated through the atmosphere, and in a moment they found themselves lying on the ground. The rest was for Saul alone. A voice sounded in his ears, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” As he looked up and asked, “Who are you?” The voice was that of none other than Jesus of Nazareth himself.
Jesus words to him were not harsh. Jesus did not reprimand him for his murderous actions. Jesus did not demand from Paul an eye for an eye. No...he spoke with power wrapped in tenderness. His desire was not to destroy this man who was destroying his disciples. His desire was to open his eyes to the truth. To transform him into a man who would harness his zeal and passion, infuse it with love, and bring the entire Roman Empire into an understanding of and encounter with the one true God of creation.
From this day, Saul was forever changed. Himself from the tribe of Benjamin, named after the miserable failure of a king from the same tribe, Jesus lovingly changed his name to Paul which is derived from the Latin word for “cease” or “desist.” His new name would forever testify to the day Jesus Christ pursued and arrested with love and forgiveness the one who out of hatred pursued and arrested the people for whom he had died.
There are only a few more years left in Paul’s life as he sits in Corinth, pouring his heart out on paper to his brothers and sisters in Rome. The defining moments in Paul’s life have transformed him from a tyrant dripping with the blood of the Christians he killed into a man who said things like:
“Yet if anyone ever had reason to hope that he could save himself, it would be I. If others could be saved by what they are, certainly I could! For I went through the Jewish initiation ceremony when I was eight days old, having been born into a pure-blooded Jewish home that was a branch of the old original Benjamin family. So I was a real Jew if there ever was one! What’s more, I was a member of the Pharisees who demand the strictest obedience to every Jewish law and custom. And sincere? Yes, so much so that I greatly persecuted the Church; and I tried to obey every Jewish rule and regulation right down to the very last point.
But all these things that I once thought very worthwhile-now I’ve thrown them all away so that I can put my trust and hope in Christ alone. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have put aside all else, counting it worth less than nothing, in order that I can have Christ, and become one with him, no longer counting on being saved by being good enough or by obeying God’s laws, but by trusting Christ to save me; for God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith-counting on Christ alone. Now I have given up everything else-I have found it to be the only way to really know Christ and to experience the mighty power that brought him back to life again, and to find out what it means to suffer and to die with him. So whatever it takes, I will be one who lives in the fresh newness of life of those who are alive from the dead.”
It was from the heart of THIS man that the people of Rome came to understand how mankind has rebelled against God, hopelessly distancing ourselves from Him. It was from the heart of THIS man that the people of Rome would learn of a new hope, one that rests in the mercy of God and not in our own ridiculous attempts to please him. THIS man helped the Romans to understand that this gift of salvation means not only eternal life beyond physical death, but freedom from the tyranny of sin and evil in this life. That worship is not confined to a song or a sacrifice, but an offering of our entire being to God is the highest expression of worship. THIS man helped the pantheistic Roman world to see and understand that there is only one God who is infinitely sovereign, yet in his sovereignty has asked mankind to love and serve him out of a free will, which is the purest expression of love.
As we spend the next five weeks in a journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, may we hear the voice of God. May we be sensitive to the defining moments in our lives through which God desires to set us free from our flesh, our selfishness, our deception, our confusion, and our misguided efforts and transform us into people whose philosophy of life is “...all these things that I once thought very worthwhile-now I’ve thrown them all away so that I can put my trust and hope in Christ alone. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have put aside all else, counting it worth less than nothing, in order that I can have Christ, and become one with him…”
