PAUL, AN APOSTLE FROM GOD BY GRACE.
In the name + of Jesus.
There are two teachings that people will
often attack to discredit the Bible and the Christian faith. The first is the resurrection of Jesus. If Jesus is not risen from the dead, then, as
St. Paul says, “your faith
is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17).
But Christ has, indeed, be raised from the dead. He was seen and touched by the apostles who
willingly died for their testimony. Jesus’
resurrection is true and the testimony of the apostles is trustworthy. Jesus’ resurrection verifies that his
sacrifice has been accepted on your behalf.
Therefore, your sins are forgiven. Jesus’ triumph over death means Jesus has
authority over the grave. Therefore, your
resurrection is secure.
The other teaching that is attacked to destroy the Christian faith is the
conversion of St. Paul. Since St. Paul wrote about
half of the New Testament, the sincerity of his conversion and his authority as
an apostle are essential. Otherwise, Saul
of Tarsus hi-jacked the Christian faith and replaced the teachings of Jesus
with his own.
There has been a renewed effort to undermine
the apostleship of Paul in the past few decades. One reason is that St. Paul’s wrote much about
marriage, sex, and chastity, about the roles God has given to men and women,
and about who may serve as a pastor in the Church. That’s not to say that these teachings are
unique to Paul, but he devotes more time to these than other Bible writers do. So, there is a renewed attack on Paul as an apostle
of Jesus Christ.
Sadly, the attack is coming from within the Christian Church. Many are embracing worldly attitudes about
marriage and sex, what it means to be a man or a woman, and who may serve as a
pastor in God’s church. Since people cannot
deny what Paul wrote, they claim that Paul’s writings are obsolete. (“That was then; this is now.”) Others claim Paul had issues with women and hang-ups
about sex which we should ignore.
It is a renewed attack, not a new attack. Paul’s apostolic authority was challenged
from the moment he became an apostle.
Many Christians were skeptical that one who had attacked Christians so
violently would be preaching the Gospel so zealously, and who could blame them? But once it was recognized by the Church that
Paul’s preaching was faithful to Jesus, false teachers slandered Paul and
undermined his teachings. So, in several
of his epistles, Paul takes pains to defend his authority as an apostle of
Jesus. He states emphatically that he is
an apostle from God by grace.
The first thing Paul noted is that the
Gospel he preached “is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor
was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ”
(Galatians 1:11-12). If Paul’s Gospel had been a human invention,
he would not have bothered changing his ways.
Paul had already had a message he was defending, which he called “the
traditions of my fathers” (Galatians 1:14).
Paul was zealously devoted to what he had grown up with. No philosopher or scholar or disciple of
Jesus was going to change his mind. Jesus
had to do that, and he did. When Paul
was on his way to Damascus to persecute more Christians, Jesus confronted
him. Paul was certain that the one
appearing to him in glory from heaven was the Lord. Imagine Paul’s shock to discover that Jesus
is the Lord! Jesus revealed to Paul that
he is the focus and the fulfillment of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. Therefore, Paul no longer preached a message
that was the tradition of his fathers.
Nor did Paul promote a message of human invention or learn how to preach
from the apostles in Jerusalem. Paul is
an apostle from God by grace, and he preached nothing other than what had been
given to him by Jesus Christ.
Everything this apostle could boast about
was due to God’s grace. Paul’s
conversion was certainly not his own choice.
Paul was convinced that he was doing God’s work by trying to destroy the
Christian faith. But when Jesus appeared
to him to correct him and to convert him, Paul was stunned to discover how wrong
he was. He was fighting against the very
Lord he thought he was serving. The Lord
was pleased to change Paul’s focus and Paul’s heart despite Paul’s violence
against the Gospel. Paul acknowledged
that “he who had set me apart before I was born … called
me by his grace (and) was pleased to reveal his Son to me” (Galatians
1:15,16). The Lord not only converted Paul to the Christian
faith, he also called Paul to be an apostle.
All this was by grace. Paul deserved
neither. He had earned God’s eternal
wrath. But instead, the Lord made Paul
an apostle from God by grace.
It is no
different for us. The Lord was pleased
to bring you into his kingdom and to work in you saving faith by his
grace. Like Paul, you were set apart for
God’s kingdom, and God brought you into his kingdom. Your conversion was not as spectacular as
Paul’s with Jesus appearing to you personally in his glory. Instead, your parents brought you to the
baptismal font or friends told you what God’s promises are. They did not preach man’s gospel—as if each
of us gets to decide what is true. You heard
and learned what the Lord has revealed in his word. You have been given the very words of God so
that you can be sure you have God’s forgiveness, God’s favor, and God’s salvation. Your place in God’s kingdom is just as much
by grace as Paul’s.
God chose to
save you, and he set you apart for his salvation. You have been set apart from sin, death, and
everything that will be condemned. You
have been set apart for good works, for glorifying God in your words and actions,
and for serving your neighbor. This
means that, not only do you rejoice in God’s gracious forgiveness, you also
order your life according to his word.
We do not let the opinions of man or the attitudes of our society determine
what is good and right. We adhere to the
very words of God.
You will notice
that it is getting harder and harder to do that. Our society has cast off God’s word. What’s worse is that even Christian churches
are doing that, and in particular in regard to what St. Paul wrote in his epistles
about godly lives for God’s people. So,
for example, St. Paul wrote, “Sexual
immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among
you, as is proper among saints. Let
there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are
out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this,
that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that
is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words,
for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of
disobedience. Therefore do not
become partners with them” (Ephesians 5:3-7).
This is the kind of teaching from St. Paul that some Christians are
saying is obsolete. They abandon these
words as if they are merely human opinion.
Beware so that you do not get deceived by that. After all, we have been influenced by a world
that mocks chaste and moral living. It
is tempting to dismiss Paul’s epistles so that we can enjoy sensuality. We see everyone else embracing it, and we have
come to accept that this is normal. TV, movies,
and music feature blatant promiscuity. Our
nation dedicates the entire month of June to celebrating the perversion and
abuse of God’s gifts of marriage and sex.
You may even be cancelled if you do not follow along. But you have been set apart from this. God has revealed in his word that marriage is
a union of one man and one woman, that sex is reserved for the marriage bed, that
these are good gifts to be protected and preserved, and that we are not to cheapen
these things even by joking about them.
Do you think people will take notice of you if you hold to God’s word
and live according to it in these matters?
They absolutely will, and they make dump insults on you just as St. Paul
got for preaching these things. But what
the world does not understand—and what you know—is what St. Paul acknowledged: “I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but
I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12). We do not dismiss the
epistles of St. Paul just because they are unpopular or because they are hard. We recognize that St. Paul is an apostle from
God by grace. St. Paul delivers to us
the very words of God who has set us apart for his gifts and for his
glory. If his word corrects us and calls
us to repent, we must. If we should
discover that we are as wrong about our beliefs and behavior as St. Paul discovered
he was, then we are right to repent and turn away from our sins as Paul did. We
will also discover that God is gracious to sinners and is eager to forgive us
as he did for St. Paul. The blood of
Jesus purifies us from all sin, but it does not encourage us to return to
it. The Lord is eager to transform our hearts
and minds so that, by his gracious work, we remain devoted to him because his
word is good and right and true.
The renewed
attack on St. Paul as an apostle of God need not surprise us. Sinners have always wanted to stand in
judgment over God. Sinners want to
decide for themselves what is good and right and true. Sinners are willing to acknowledge the word
of God as long as it already agrees with their opinions. But if we make ourselves the judges over God’s
word, then we have made ourselves into our own gods. Our truth ends up being as changeable as the
calendar. This provides no confidence,
no comfort, and no certainty about anything—except God’s judgment for defying what
he has graciously revealed.
This approach to
Scripture goes beyond St. Paul. Many today
focus only on the Gospel—that God loves you no matter what. That is the only message proclaimed: God
accepts all. But then no one is called
to repent. All live as their sinful
flesh desires. It is as if people are saying,
“I am the kind of Christian who lives in a way that St. Paul says I am not a
Christian.” It is as if the Gospel grants
the freedom to be wicked and that God has nothing to say about morality, chastity,
honesty, or godliness. St. Paul always
preached both, and that is why he is still under attack to this day.
But you, dear Christians,
have been set apart. You live under God’s
grace because you have been washed and sanctified in the blood of Christ. You know that God’s word is good and right
and true, and that ordering your life according to it is good and right and
true. You know that all of the Bible is
God’s word, and that all of it matters, even if it is unpopular.
Paul is an
apostle from God by grace. By grace,
Paul received the word from Jesus and preached it. By grace, you have heard it and believe it. By grace, we are saved through it. And God is glorified in all of it.
In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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