12 “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service, 13 even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief; 14 and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. 15 It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. 16 Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.”
“What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived.”
Capt. James T. Kirk to Capt. Jean Luc Picard, on “Star Trek – Generations”
That declaration may be true to the degree that the phrase ‘what we leave behind’ refers only to material and tangible things. But Captain Kirk’s statement is ultimately incomplete in that how we lived is what we leave behind. How we lived will make an indelible mark on the lives of those who witnessed us, more surely than any structure we built, money we donated, books we wrote, words we said, discoveries we made.
One of you recently loaned me a stack of paperback books that all tell the accounts of crimes and criminals, because I mentioned that I enjoy reading those stories. I’m not a morbid person; I just like to read about how dedicated and clever people in law enforcement went about clearing those cases.
One of those books was about the life and death of atheist, Madalyn Murray O’Hair. In case you don’t know who she was, Madalyn was the woman who sued and won the case against classroom prayer and Bible reading in our nation’s schools in the 1960s.
That is the thing she is most remembered for, although she spent many years filing various law suits in our courts in an attempt to blot the name of God out of our country entirely.
Madalyn was founder and head of the American Atheists, an organization dedicated to fighting anything and everything Godly.
She was a guest on the Phil Donahue show numerous times along with other talk programs, and was often in the news over a period of several decades for her flamboyant and obtrusive and destructive behavior.
If you read her story though, you’ll find that in the final analysis Madalyn was a sad, bitter, mentally disturbed, tortured individual who hated everyone and led a miserable existence from her childhood to the day she was murdered.
I’ve heard of Madalyn all my life, and several times I saw her on television myself. So the thing that struck me the most about the revealed details of her life was that if not for her cleverness in winning that one major court case that has adversely affected our entire nation over the past four decades, she might have lived and died in ignorance and poverty in a hovel in some small New England town and very few people ever would have known her name.
Madalyn was a sadly pathetic human being; yet she goes down in history as the one who successfully shut God out of our schools and opened the way for them to become the institutions of Godlessness and hedonism they are today.
The profusion of books and movies purporting to accurately portray the lives of famous names in history have fooled most of us into thinking that they are the significant people, the worthwhile stories, to tell about.
For the most part though, almost any famous or historical person whose name most of us know, whose stories we have access to, accomplished things that no matter how noble, no matter how progressive and philanthropic, will fade with time or pass away with this world.
The actual and eternal truth is that the most significant lives of all are the ones that reflect Christ and accomplish His will and manifest His grace and mercy in this life; for that is what will survive the passing of the galaxies and on into eternity.
CHIEF OF SINNERS
Galatians 1:13, (NASB95)
13 For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it;
The Apostle Paul might have gone down in history as one of the most ruthless persecutors of the church. Had he not responded in faith to the call of Christ, and had he continued his destructive path, he wouldn’t have stopped the growth of the church; he only would have come to a bad end himself and now we would be reading brief accounts of his life, as we do of people like Herod and Festus and Agrippa, and other than that we’d not know a great deal about him.
Paul called himself a former blasphemer, persecutor and violent aggressor. He blasphemed against Christ, denying His Messiahship, and although he arrested believers and dragged them up to be put to death we know that in God’s eyes it was Jesus he was really persecuting because on the road outside of Damascus Jesus Himself said so.
Remember that, Christian, if you ever find yourself under any form of persecution because of being a Christian, that it is your Lord they are persecuting. Therefore you can count it a blessing and a privilege to be counted worthy to bear the brunt of some of His sufferings.
Well, fortunately for Paul and for the Christian church he did not continue on his path of destruction. In Acts 26 when standing before King Agrippa Paul was able to say, “I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision”.
He rose to his feet on that road believing that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. He rose forgiven, he rose instantly changed. He went down into the dirt a blasphemer, a persecutor, an aggressor; he rose up an Apostle with a mission.
But he never forgot where he had come from and what Jesus had saved him from, and I think that is a great lesson we should learn from him.
Paul never shrank back from telling the truth about his past. In Acts 22 he defended his ministry before a large crowd of Jews and openly admitted that he had persecuted the Way, and in I Corinthians 15 he called himself the least of the Apostles and even said he didn’t deserve to be one because of his persecution of the church.
Here in our text he calls himself the ‘chief’, or ‘foremost’ of sinners for the same reason.
In most of our Christian teaching it seems to me that we are encouraged, passively if not actively, to forget our past. This is the very reason I dislike the shallow definition given of the doctrine of Justification, saying it’s “Just as if I never sinned”.
Jesus said that those who are forgiven much are the ones who will love much.
We live in a day when the voice of the world is shouting all around us a message of self love and self worth. Even if forced to admit to a wrong done or a short-coming exposed the acceptable response is ‘I’m only human’, and once said we’re free to go our merry way with no introspection, soul-searching or change sought or wrought.
Like everything else worldly, this spirit has inched its way into the church also. And I think that the ineffectiveness of today’s church fundamentally is due to the tendency of Christians to take the attitude that since God has forgiven and forgotten our past sins and our life before Christ, so should we.
Now of course if we understand Christian doctrine we know that God indeed has put our sins far from us, and He declares that he remembers them no more (Jer 31, Heb 8).
One of the best definitions of Justification is found in a verse of an old song by Whitlock Gandy, which says,
“I hear the accuser roar
of ills that I have done;
I know them well, and thousands more.
Jehovah findeth none!”
And therein is the point. Jehovah finds no fault with us who are standing in Christ’s righteousness, and our sins and our lawless deeds He will indeed remember no more.
But in the line, ‘I know them well and thousands more’ we find the wisdom of the well-balanced Christian.
On the one hand we walk with head up, shoulders free of the burden of sin, knowing that Jesus paid it all and nothing can now snatch us out of our Father’s hand.
On the other, the remembrance of the condition of total depravity and lostness from which He saved us; not so that we might continue to walk in breast-beating guilt and anguish, but so we might remain acutely aware of the mercy and grace that saved us, that in our gratitude we will love Him more.
Paul called himself foremost of sinners, because he well remembered his own past sin and rebellion. But was he the foremost of sinners? Or can it be said that each one of us is the foremost of sinners?
Well, how can that be? The word ‘foremost’ itself denotes the status of chief, of top, of headmost, leading, premier; how can there be more than one ‘foremost’? Answer: In the assessment of every individual Christian, in his or her own mind and heart, the self-declaration should be ‘I am foremost’.
Some of you may remember the classic scene from the movie, “Spartacus” starring Kirk Douglas in the leading role. He and his men have been rounded up by the Romans and they’re all sitting on a hillside. The Roman commander, who doesn’t know what Spartacus looks like, announces that if they turn Spartacus over to him the rest of them can go free.
Just as Kirk Douglas begins to stand and give himself up for the sake of his men, Tony Curtis, sitting next to him, stands and yells, “I am Spartacus!”
Then another man stands and says the same, and soon men all over the hillside are declaring, “I’m Spartacus!” and a closeup shot shows a tear rolling down the cheek of their leader.
People, in defense of our beloved brother Paul, each one of us should be ready to jump up and declare, “I am foremost!”
Believers listen. If we agree that Christ died for each and every one of us as though we were the only sinner on the planet, and we should agree with that, then each one of us ought to understand and not shrink back from declaring, ‘of sinners I am chief’.
And that admission should always immediately precede the thankful declaration that we were nevertheless shown mercy and were recipients of the more than abundant grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Let’s look closer at what Paul is saying in verses 13 and 14 of our text.
MERCY AND MORE THAN ABUNDANT GRACE
Look at these two words, ‘mercy’ and ‘grace’.
Mercy, in this context, is the holding back of deserved punishment or retribution. Grace is the open-handed provision of that which is not deserved.
Paul asserts that because he acted ignorantly in his unbelief, referring to his persecution and violence against the church, he was shown mercy.
The German philosopher Nietzsche said, “If you could prove God to me, I would believe Him all the less.”
That is willful ignorance and disobedience. It is the attitude displayed by those C. S. Lewis was talking about when he said that those spending eternity in Hell will be enjoying the terrible freedom they insisted upon.
But God shows mercy to the ignorant, and we see in Paul’s response to the Damascus road confrontation that he was willing to believe the truth when he finally recognized it.
There are many who, even if knocked to the dirt and blinded, would still reject Jesus, even to His face.
Please understand that Paul was not defending himself or excusing his actions in saying that he acted ignorantly in unbelief. Ignorance is one thing, but unbelief is equated throughout the New Testament with disobedience and rebellion. Not just a lack of knowledge, but suppression of truth.
But bless God; He is willing to overlook our times of ignorance and reveal to us His righteousness through the One He has appointed, and extend His mercy to us so that we might escape His wrath and be adopted into His family and put into service in His name.
Paul began this portion of his letter in verse 12, saying “I thank Christ”. More than one commentator I researched pointed out that the Greek rendering would be “Thankful I am…”, and they teach that in the Greek language the placement of the word at the beginning of a sentence establishes its emphasis. Paul wanted his readers to know that above all he was thankful to Christ Jesus for demonstrating patience and mercy and counting him faithful for service.
This emphasis continues in the way he describes the grace he received, here in verse 14. The NASB translates it, “more than abundant”.
The King James says “exceeding abundant” and the NIV renders it “poured out on me abundantly”.
Each translation is trying to capture the grandness of Paul’s expression.
He wanted his readers to know it wasn’t just grace, it was ‘supergrace’. In fact, the Greek word, according to the experts, is best rendered, ‘superabundant’.
In Ephesians 1 he said that God ‘lavished’ His grace on us. Paul was intent on making us understand the amazing contrast between us and God. While we fought Him tooth and nail, while we rebelled and fought against Him as His sworn enemies, while we poured out our hatred and loathing of Him and His Christ, He ‘lavished’ His grace upon us. His grace toward us was superabundant. Exceeding anything we could ever hope of deserving or getting from Him, because it came through the faith and love that are found in Christ Jesus.
A TRUSTWORTHY STATEMENT
Wiersbe points to several places in the epistles of Paul where he uses this term, ‘a trustworthy statement’, and says that since first century believers had no Bibles, they had these various statements that put forth fundamental teachings about the faith which could be quoted with authority to establish and hold forth basic truths.
One more example of Paul’s strength of emphasis is that he prefaces his words here with ‘it is a trustworthy statement’, then as if that isn’t strong enough he adds, ‘deserving of full acceptance’.
Listen up! Whatever your thoughts concerning anything I’ve said to you up to this point, this is what you need to take deep into your mind and heart and hold on to it and teach it in turn.
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”
Christians, pay attention to what is being said here.
This wasn’t just a man. Every one of us came into the world without our knowledge or our expressed permission. We were born as a result of either the whim or the inattention of our parents. Not so with this God/Man.
He came into the world on purpose. He came with a purpose. He was in the beginning with God and was Himself God, and He predetermined to enter into this world in the same way the rest of us do, only He did it with full knowledge having volunteered to do so.
His mission: To seek and to save that which was lost (Lk 19:10).
You get into discussions with people and you begin to tell them about Jesus, and they respond with this unthinking, dribbling-down-the-chin nonsense about Him being a good teacher. A philosopher. A prophet like Mohammed or Joseph Smith. A good man who lived a good life and taught us to love one another and then died.
And when you hear this drivel, you stop them, and you look them in the eye, and you tell them that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
That means He came on purpose, meaning He existed beforehand and determined beforehand to come, and He came, not to spread good cheer, not to advocate some sticky sweet lovey-doveyness among us, not to teach us how to avoid war or how to learn to tolerate one another’s differing views so we could all just get along.
He came to save sinners by the shedding of His own innocent blood and paying their penalty for them. You tell them He came to seek and to save that which was lost, and that they are included in that category.
You say to them, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all” Not Paul, not Madalyn Murray O’Hair, not all the tyrants and blasphemers and murderers through history, but me. I’m chief. He came to save me, and He came to save you.
Then you make sure they understand this contrast.
Since I was the worst sinner of all, He extended his mercy to me in order to demonstrate His perfect patience, as an example to you and all who will respond to His call in faith and believe on Him for eternal life.
Because friend, if he was willing and able to save me, the foremost of sinners, then surely, He can save you too.
He didn’t come and say, ‘ok, let’s find the nicest person, the one with the least sins, and save him, and work up from there and see how far we can go before we find someone who just isn’t worth it’
He came into the world to save sinners, and He went straight to the chief (here’s where you insert your name) and saved him/her. And the unspoken declaration is, ‘There, I saved the worst, the rest is easy. Come and have life’.
I quoted Galatians 1:13 earlier. Ten verses later he wrote:
Galatians 1:23, (NASB95)
23 but only, they kept hearing, “He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.”
How could he do that? Because according to Christ’s mercy and superabundant grace, he gave Paul life, called him to service, and told him to go preach the good news.
So he did. And if He could do that for the foremost of sinners, He can do that for all those who will believe in Him for eternal life.
“Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” I Tim 1:17
