Paul:
Mission and Message
Stephen
Terry
Commentary
for the September 19, 2015 Sabbath School Lesson
“I
would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the
works of the law, or by believing what you heard?” Galatians 3:2, NIV
Have you ever seen someone who was going about something
the wrong way? Recognizing it will never work that way or that they might even
get hurt if they continue to do what they are doing, you try to help. But they
do not want your help. In fact, they tell you that this is the only way it has
ever been done, and they prefer to continue doing it that way, thank you very
much. Sometimes, they may be right, and we can learn something by watching
them. But sometimes they are not, and we
walk away frustrated, shaking our heads and hoping that they do not injure
themselves through their ignorance and stubbornness.
Perhaps the apostle Paul could relate to that. Both his
Jewish culture and the Gentile culture he was reaching out to with the gospel
had become enslaved to works-based righteousness. The Jews saw themselves as
separate and distinct from the heathen Gentiles. They felt their worship of the
one, true God assured them of salvation. In order to maintain that
distinctness, they observed myriad, finely-detailed laws and ordinances. The
end result was that they were indeed distinct in these observances, but they
wandered off the path that leads to salvation. How they observed the rules
became more important than why. In this, they were not so much distinct as they
were similar to the Gentiles. While the Gentiles worshipped graven idols
instead of the true God, the system of rules that evolved around such idol
worship differed little in effect from the requirements the Jews lived by.
Both Jews and Gentiles had prescribed ceremonies and holy
days. Both surrounded these days with various rituals and banned activities.
Both had rules related to food and drink. Both also expected sacrificial gifts
of animals and/or money to facilitate salvation. In both cases, all these
things came to be understood improperly as vehicles to favor with the presiding
deity. That the Jews had gotten off track in their understanding of what God
expects was made clear by the prophet Isaiah who rebuked their sacrificial fasts
that had become more important than justice and mercy.[i] Jesus also brought alive
the memory of Isaiah’s counsel through His parable regarding the sheep and the
goats.[ii] In addition, that parable
provided a new perspective on the problem when Jesus shared that how we treat
others is as though it was done to God himself. The Gentiles, though idol
worshipers, had the concept of mortals entertaining heavenly visitors unaware
of their godly status. In the many myths about such visits, they proved a boon
or a curse to the visited depending on how they were received by their unknowing
hosts. Jesus’ words therefore touch a resonating chord in the experiences of
both Jews and Gentiles.
This begs the question whether or not this concept is
somehow deeply rooted in a forgotten, common past. The early chapters of
Genesis, the Bible’s first book, touch upon the commonality of all mankind,
long before there were distinctions such as Jew and Gentile. Although
definitely seen from a Jewish perspective, the Book of Revelation, the last
book of the Bible, brings us back to that commonality with the New Heaven and
New Earth, with its holy city, New Jerusalem.[iii] An explanation for the
loss of the common human experience appears in the story of the Tower of Babel,
where a multitude of languages came about and split humanity.[iv] A counter point to this
is the Pentecostal experience where the Holy Spirit allowed the Apostles to communicate
the Gospel of grace in the various native languages of all the people attending
the feast from their many different countries. The first event marked the
shattering of mankind’s fellowship and unity. The second was earnest toward the
healing and restoration of that unity and fellowship to its former state that
will one day occur.
As a result of the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, God
used those who were open to that possibility to proclaim a unified message of
salvation through grace to all people. He attempted to do this with Peter, the
simple fisherman, through the vision of the lowered sheet and his encounter
with the Centurion Cornelius and his family.[v] But Peter had trouble
making the transition. He most likely did his best, but he was inconsistent.
Exasperated by his vacillation, Paul finally had to confront Peter about it.[vi] Perhaps it was because of
Paul’s unwavering commitment to whatever position he took that God looked his
way when he needed someone to cross the cultural divide to the non-Jewish world
and also remain fully committed to that effort. When we consider the various
torments Paul was subjected to, including being stoned, we cannot help but wonder
how Peter would have fared with similar treatment. Perhaps he would have done
like John Mark and returned to the safety of familiar environs.[vii] The Bible is silent
regarding this and the events in Peter’s life prior to his rumored crucifixion,
upside down, in Rome. However, the same document that preserves this
crucifixion tradition attempts to address the absence of information about
Peter. But the apocryphal Acts of Peter never made it into the biblical canon,
perhaps because of some of its claims, as in the story of Peter resurrecting
smoked fish. Unfortunately, such claims call into question even the accuracy of
the crucifixion story.
Philip was also led to evangelize outside of the
mainstream Jewish world with his witness to Samaritans and the Ethiopian
eunuch.[viii] But both of these already
acknowledged the one true God. It was still necessary to cross the divide into
the Greco-Roman world. Paul, who had dual citizenship as both a Jew and a Roman
by birth, was the ideal candidate to do so. A Jewish fisherman, even one who
was steadier in conviction than Peter, would lack credibility on the Greek
peninsula and in the Roman world. Paul was a human nexus astride the historical
timeline. He was a man born to change the world as no one else might. There have
been many who were born in two cultures who have never
take advantage of the opportunities that presents. Paul, with his fixed
purpose, had no failures there.
As this human conduit between cultures, Paul made some
very important decisions that possibly decided the fate of his mission. He
could have taken to the Gentiles a message about circumcision and burdensome,
legalistic practices as had so many before him. Even after coming to Christ,
some still wanted to do this. If he had, he might have achieved no better
results than the Jews had ever achieved with Gentiles. Instead, he chose to
take to them a message of faith and grace made possible by that faith. He chose
to tell people that by simply believing, their lives could be turned completely
around, and they would find salvation. This salvation comes not through
appeasing sacrifices as they had been taught all their lives. It is a free gift
of grace from a loving God.[ix] Legalistic requirements
could not save them, no matter how many rules and ordinances they drew up and
made themselves follow. Only believing in the one true God and the salvation He
offers could
do that.[x] All may be set free from
these chains of law that bind us. They bind us, not for salvation, but to be controlled
and subservient to those self-appointed gatekeepers who rule over artificial
systems of worship with their books of creeds and ecclesiastical requirements.
Laws have often been attractive to certain controlling
personalities. They allow them to exercise power over others that they might
never otherwise have. These perhaps are those servants who have found
themselves left in charge by an absentee Master, and they have abused that
power to their own advantage.[xi] They don’t understand
that the Master will return and see the results of their abuse of the other
servants. Maybe because the return has been greatly delayed, they have ceased
expecting it, allowing themselves to take liberties
with their power they might never have done otherwise.
It is the power of the message that Paul preached that
it breaks the control of these abusers. When one recognizes that grace is
dispensed directly from God as a loving response to the faith of the
supplicant, it becomes clear that such salvation needs no human repositories of
grace to dispense it. They may tend to do so only for those they favor and deny
to those they do not. This was the liberating message that Paul preached, and
it was the fire that lit the Reformation one and a half millennia later. Whenever
the world has lain in darkness, oppressed by the control of these legalistic “accusers
of our brothers and sisters,”[xii] God has chosen
remarkable individuals like Paul the Apostle and Martin Luther, to kindle the
flame of grace brighter to pierce that darkness and set his people free. No
matter how much those abusive servants attempt to perpetuate their control
through nepotism and cronyism, they cannot extinguish that light. These great
men knew that, and we may receive that liberating knowledge as well. Then we,
like Paul, can carry it to the world.
