Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit.
Oh.. almost didn’t see you there. See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! It is good that you are here. I have a message for you. It will not be a pleasant one. But it is very, very important.
I have been hearing about you. You foolish Takomans! How can you allow yourself to be seduced by the fake religions! How is it, people of Takoma Park, that you forget so quickly, so very quickly, that the only reason you are here is that you have received grace? Grace! Not your own goodness, not your own achievement, but grace!
You foolish, blind, unthinking, unbelieving, distrusting, disloyal...
Ah, you must forgive me for that outburst. I know that it was intemperate and angry. But this matters! This matters to me, because it is not what I have been teaching you. But it matters more profoundly than that, too. It matters because everything turns on whether you think that in some way or another you can earn your way into God’s heart or whether you simply experience the sheer, unmerited, undeserved love of God. That matters, and when you let somebody sucker you into works religion, I get upset.
Maybe I’d better remind you who I am and why I claim the right to speak to you like this. I’m not just anybody, you know. I think of you as my children in the gospel, and a father cannot stand idly by when his children are about to destroy themselves. I must speak; and I have the authority to speak.
Let me remind you of our history together. Clearly there are some folks who have been distorting that history.
Yes, of course it is true that once I was known as Saul the Pharisee. I was trained under the greatest of the rabbis, Gamaliel, and was tutored by him to observe the law in its slightest detail. Yes, it is true that once I kept the law and its demands as carefully as any human being can possibly do. I observed the Sabbath, with its more than 600 regulations. I stayed far away from forbidden foods. I watched cautiously everyone with whom I associated, lest some ignorant peasant would pollute me. And yes, my enemies are right: I was a member of the most scholarly and most scrupulous of all the groups in Israel. If anyone wishes to dig up my record, well, I myself present it for you to look at: born of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eight day, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee of Pharisees, yes. I acknowledge all of that, and more.
I acknowledge that I persecuted the church. With ardent zeal I ferreted out believers and hounded them from pillar to post. I got letters of warrant from the Temple priests, and I traveled the length and breadth of the land looking for what I thought was a dangerous and obscene cult, the people of the way.
But that is not all there is to me. You have forgotten the rest of me. Saul of Tarsus has disappeared, and before you stands Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ. I taught you, I preached to you, I thought I had shown you the truth of my gospel. But now, what is this I hear? That you want to go back to the old ways? That some of you think that to be safe you had better go back and observe the Jewish law in order to assure your salvation? That some of you are wondering whether I got it right, and think I may just have been trying to make it easy on you?!
Great God, I am astonished and appalled that you would ever imagine such a thing! How can you even dream of giving up all the wonderful freedom you have experienced in Christ and turning again to the bondage of law religion?! It staggers my heart that you would do this!
But first, let me get back to this question of who I am and what has happened to me, this issue of my right to preach my gospel. My gospel, as if there were any other. My own gospel, yes; mine in the sense that I have experienced it and have not felt it necessary to have it checked out, jot and tittle, by anyone else.
Just now I am thinking back over some seventeen or more years, back when I did, in my blindness, try to root out every believer I could find ... like that fellow, Stephen. The one who prayed for me even while the stones were pummeling his head.
I had heard that up in the ancient city of Damascus there was a pocket of this superstition, and I set out, with letters of warrant in my hand and malice in my heart, to arrest everyone of the believers there. But have you not heard the story, have I not told you often enough, how on the road up to Damascus, something arrested me? Have I not told you before that in a flash I knew that the one whom I had denied had now claimed me? I did not claim Him; He claimed me.
All he said that day was, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" That caught me. Persecuting me, him. I thought I was persecuting the church. But he made it a personal matter … persecuting Him. He always makes things personal.
Well, as you surely must know, he had me. He took me by storm. I went on to Damascus, with the help of my traveling companions, because the great burst of light had blinded me. There in Damascus a kind man named Ananias took me into his home for a few days. There also I was baptized into the church and there I began sharing with others the truth about Jesus. How life-changing He is! How He does get hold of us and shake us to the very foundations, when he makes things personal!
Now, brothers and sisters of Takoma, this is what I want you to remember. This is what I have come to remind you. Christ called me. Christ called me. I was called in a special and unique way: I was called to a very important task. I was called to carry the message of Christ to those of you who are not of the people of Israel, those who never had been on the inside of God’s law.
My gospel, my call, is simply this: that no person is justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus. Very plainly, very simply, my gospel, my discovery, is that none of us can ever, on his own, satisfy the demands of righteousness. None of us, not a single one of us, can ever be complete just by trying harder to be good. Nobody. None. Nada.
But God simply gives it to us who allow ourselves to be claimed by Christ Jesus. That’s it. That’s my gospel.
But now, Takomans, what are these other voices saying to you? What are you falling for? Listen to yourselves:
Some are saying that you have to follow a certain religious ritual in order to be right with God. Some are arguing that there are rituals which work like magic, and, if you don’t have them, you don’t have God’s protection. Some would insist that unless you are baptized you do not have salvation. Others would argue that if you take the Lord’s
Supper, it will protect you against hurt, harm, and danger. And still others think that if babies are christened or dead people are buried with certain words said over them or if prayers are said according to certain patterns, then that’s what you need. That will make you right with God.
I say "No". My gospel says, "No". My gospel says that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. I, Paul, have tried all the rituals; and none of them satisfied the hungers of my heart. I did everything I knew to do and still felt a distance from my God. Until faith came …
My gospel looks only to the forgiving grace of Christ Jesus; justified through faith in Him. Neither trying to be good nor not trying to be good makes any real difference; the only thing that counts is faith working through God’s love for me.
Some others of you are saying that salvation comes through correct belief. Some are very, very busy correcting other people’s theology and dabbling in debates over the meaning of words, the little minutiae of the Scriptures. Some are trying to
tell you that unless you get your head straightened out and your doctrinal ideas all fixed, you will not see God or His salvation. To that too I say "No". My gospel says, "No".
My gospel was hammered out in the solitude of the desert, where I could think it through; it was tested in preaching and teaching in the regions of Syria and Cilicia and then in my missionary journeys with Barnabas and Silas. It was beaten out on the anvil of real life experience.
My gospel, in fact, disagrees to some extent with what those who are supposed to be church leaders teach. Why, did you know that in Antioch I even stood up to old Peter, the Lord’s favorite, because I saw that he violated the openness of the gospel? Peter felt you weren’t really right unless you kept the Jewish dietary laws. I stood up to him; my gospel says that it is not correct ideas any more than it is observance of the law that gives you a right relationship with God. My gospel says that it comes from one and only one place, from God Himself, who in Christ Jesus has chosen us, simply chosen us, to be among His beloved. All we have to do is accept our chosenness .. whether we fully understand it or not, we just have to accept. That’s my gospel.
Some, I say, have tried to tell you that you get right with God through ritual acts. Some have tried to tell you that you get right with God by holding correct religious ideas. The worst part of all of this is that I see so little love, so little care, and so little compassion on the part of those who are trying to take you away from me. They are so full of venom, they are so bent on accusations and suspicions. Why would you even think of following someone who promotes enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, and envy? My gospel contains none of this. My gospel frees you from all of this. My gospel frees you for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That’s my gospel.
Brothers and sisters, let me take you to the bottom line. My gospel is mine because I have experienced it. My life has been changed, and no one can argue with that. My gospel is not some pipe dream cooked up out of reading ancient and musty religious records. It is not some elaborate theory based on human reasoning. My gospel is what has happened to me because of Jesus Christ.
Is not that your gospel too? Have you forgotten how Christ has freed you?
You were running so well until just the other day. Who are these people who have changed your minds and why have you given them such authority? How it angers me that some keep on trying to tell you that you are not good enough, not righteous enough, not clean enough! Frankly, I wish they would just destroy themselves on their own rock-ribbed piety!
Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten that, though most of you were nobodies in this world, that in the fellowship of Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free, no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus? Have you forgotten that gospel? For freedom Christ has set you free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. That’s my gospel.
Have you forgotten how degrading and impossible it feels always to be worried about whether you have done enough to please God? Have you forgotten how terrible it is never to feel secure in your relationship with Him? Have you gone back to the "what ifs"? What if I have displeased God? What if I’ve missed some step, what if I’m following the wrong teacher? What if, what if, what if?!
Oh, it’s so simple, really. Have you lost sight of the fact that because you are His children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!", so that you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir of God’s great riches? Have you forgotten such a gospel, my gospel?
Oh, my children, how can I say this so that you will never, never forget again? If you are still afraid that this talk of "my gospel" is just the raving of a conceited madman, then I must tell you that I will never again boast about anything. In fact, I will count every achievement as so much garbage! Except that I will speak of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the cross means that all old things, including old legalistic Saul, are passed away and are nothing. What you see is Paul, a new creation, a new life. Don’t miss it; it is my gospel because it is what I have experienced: it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
For me. And for you. This is my gospel. It can be your gospel too. Only trust Him, only trust Him, only trust Him now. He will save you, He will save you, He will save you now.
Trust Him. Trust Him with a receptive heart. Do not wait until you are better, for you will never be better. Trust Him now.
Do not wait until you understand everything; you will never grasp all of the wonder and mystery of God. But all you need to know is "Jesus loves me, this I know." That’s all; trust Him.
Do not wait until you feel moved. He plays no feelings games. He is available. Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ is here. He is now. He is grace. Grace greater than all our sins.
