One of my Bible’s is a red-letter edition. A red-letter edition of the Bible is one that
puts the spoken words of Jesus in red-letters.
Not only are there red letter editions of the Bible, there is now a
movement called the ‘Red Letter Christians.’
Red Letter Christians want us to put more emphasis
on the spoken teaching of Jesus. They
suggest that Jesus majored on compassion and caring for the poor, and so should
we. That’s good, but incomplete. They tend to ignore the fact that Jesus
warned about hell and taught salvation through grace. They also ignore the fact that Jesus endorsed
the Old Testament as the word of God and entrusted his teaching to the
apostles.
Red Letter Christians seem to have a particular
problem with the teaching of Paul. This
is nothing new. It was a problem in the
early church, and it is a problem today.
I remember listening to a Bible teacher saying that he had grown up
hearing about Paul, but he was now more interested in the teachings of
Jesus. He believed Jesus and Paul taught
things that were incompatible with each other.
But to set up a disagreement between Jesus and Paul is to start a fight
that neither would consent to.
In this morning’s passage Paul claims that his
gospel is Jesus’ gospel.
Paul
received his gospel by revelation
Tolerance is believed to be one of the great virtues
our society. Yet the Apostle Paul comes
across as being less than fully tolerant. He is writing to the church in Galatia (an
area that is now in southern Turkey)—to churches that he had planted. He is furious because they are being confused
by people who are preaching a gospel that is different to his. This does not bother Paul because his pride is
being hurt but because the message matters. He doesn’t say ‘I respect your opinion—that is
an interesting take on the message of Jesus’, but rather ‘If anybody is
preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally
condemned.’
For Paul there is only one true version of the
Gospel. Those who distort his message
are not preaching the gospel. His gospel
centres on the cross of Christ (1 Cor. 1:23), it concerns the good news that
Jesus has done all that is needed to save a guilty world (Rom. 3:26), and
teaches that it is by grace that we are saved (Eph. 2:8). This gospel is not to be tampered with, for God’s
glory and people’s eternal destiny are at stake.
But why should we believe that Paul’s gospel is the
right message? How can we be sure that
the teachers who opposed Paul were not right? Paul declares, ‘the gospel I preached to you
is not something that man made up. I did
not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by
revelation from Jesus Christ. By grace
Paul was called and commissioned (verses 13-16a).
Paul
is a wonderful example of the gospel he preaches
Paul’s conversion and commission provide a wonderful
illustration of the gospel he preaches. He
was one of the least likely people you could imagine coming to faith. He was a religious zealot who hated this new
sect that centred on Jesus. He intensely
persecuted Christians and tried to destroy the church. ‘Yet God was pleased to reveal his Son in me.’ God had set him apart from birth, called him
by his grace and revealed Jesus to him that he might preach Christ to those who
weren’t Jews.
What had Paul done to deserve God’s favour? Nothing! Did he earn God’s mercy? No—after all he demonstrated the reality of
his rebellious heart by trying to smother God’s truth and defeat God’s people. He didn’t even initiate his encounter with
God. Yet Paul was saved by the free,
undeserved and unearned favour of God.
As an apostle, Paul may have unique authority. However, as a Christian his conversion is
much the same as ours. If you are born
again it has been God’s pleasure to save you.
Your heart was at enmity against God (Romans 8:7). You did not start to seek him before he
caused you to realise your emptiness.
His Holy Spirit convicted you of sin.
He drew you to himself and adopted you as a beloved child. He has privileged you with works that he has
prepared in advance for you to do.
Is this the gospel we teach our children and friends? Please don’t teach your children to be good
and proper; show them how to be forgiven and grateful. I would hate for them to have a clean record
and a cold heart. The worst sinners in
the New Testament were amongst the most respectable in their society. Those who have been forgiven little love
little. Those who know they have been
forgiven much overflow with love.
An eight year old was been baptised in a church up
north and declared before the congregation, ‘I have been saved from a life a
debauchery and sin.’ I doubt that he had
been all that wild. He reveals a slight
misunderstanding the gospel. You see the
sin that we are saved from does not simply consist in the actions we
commit. You don’t have to have been
guilty of debauchery to be a terrible sinner saved by amazing grace. We are saved from the fact that we have been
born with a rebellious heart that is bent towards self, and often this displays
its wickedness in self-righteousness.
But while that young fellow may have not fully understood the gospel, he
grasped it a whole lot more than the people who had a young boy sing, ‘Amazing
Grace how sweat the sound that saved a “boy” like me’ (it seemed wrong to them
to have a young lad declare himself to be a “wretch”).
Paul’s
gospel was received directly from Jesus
From verse 16 to the end of the chapter Paul clearly
wants to show that he did not receive the gospel from the apostles in
Jerusalem. Perhaps the distorting
teachers were saying that Paul was only a delegate of the other apostles and
that he had even distorted the message they had given him. Paul makes clear that this could not have been
the case.
After his conversion on the Damascus road he went to
Arabia—in the opposite direction to Jerusalem. There he would have studied the Old Testament
Scriptures, and through the Holy Spirit God revealed to him the fullness of the
Gospel of Christ.
It was three years before went to meet the apostles
in Jerusalem. By this time he was
established in the truth. In Jerusalem
he met only two of the apostles. The
purpose of his journey was merely to get acquainted with Peter, not to get a
seal of approval. He only stayed fifteen
days—not long enough to be taught all the details of the faith. He had received the gospel independently of
them. ‘I assure you before God that what
I am writing to you is no lie. Later I
went to Syria and Cilicia. I was
personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only heard the report: “The man who
formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.”
And they praised God because of me.’
They praised God because of what he had done in
Paul’s life. They didn’t praise Paul for
his conversion saying ‘well done for realising the truth and coming to
faith’—they praised God! When we realise what God has done for us, when we see
him adding people to his kingdom, when we watch him turn people to him and save
them we should praise God! Indeed, when
we see how he turned us around; how he sought us before we sought him; how he
made us anxious for him; how he showed us the sense of the cross; how he drew
us to himself; and how is now doing a work in our lives, then we should praise
God for his grace in our own lives.
Conclusion
I think that one of the biggest barriers to people
accepting the gospel today is its demand that we submit our opinions to the
teaching of Scripture. The reformer
Martin Luther wrote to his opponent Erasmus declaring that’ the difference
between you and me is that you stand above the Word and judge it, but I stand
beneath the Word and let it judge me.’
We live in a country where rebellion is a part of
our cultural narrative. We live in a
constitutional democracy where are asked to decide issues like what constitutes
marriage and if it is ever acceptable to terminate life. We live amongst people who believe their
church was a malignant authority. We
live in a post-modern world that tolerates anything but absolutes, and doesn’t
mind what you believe so long as you are sincere. Paul’s claim of absolute authority and
divinely revealed truth don’t come easily to us.
Why should I think that I must find it easy to agree
with everything taught in this book? I
might have written it differently! But I
am a man tainted by sin and limited in understanding. God’s ways are not always my ways, but they
must become my truth and guide. Loving
God with my entire mind involves letting him reshape my thinking. One day we will see all things as He sees
them and know that He knew better than us.
Some of my opinions may be idols that need to be demolished. May God enable us to submit to a truth that
does not originate in the mind of any mere man, but comes from the mind of God!
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