To encourage us to pick up our Bibles more
and follow up on what we have read to us on a Sunday I’m inviting you to look
with me this summer at the letters of St Paul and what he teaches there about man, God,
the Church and the future.
Last week, after some background on Paul
himself, we looked at what he has to say about human nature, the good and bad
in us and how we get our nature to be in its right mind. In Paul’s understanding we’ve got God’s
likeness so God is within us - yet so is sin and the wonder of Christianity is
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ accepting us as we are, overcoming our
deficiencies and making us more fully what we were born to be.
I said last week that Paul’s one of the most
accessible of all biblical figures since we’ve got more biography and
autobiography for him than we have even for Jesus himself. Today’s second
reading is a brilliant example.
The letter to the Galatians shows Paul’s
irritated humanity but it also evidences how God took him, with all his
imperfections, and made him his chosen instrument. I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was
proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a
human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of
Jesus Christ. You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I
was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy
it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same
age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.
But… God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his
grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim
him among the Gentiles.
That passage stands alongside two accounts in
the book of Acts of Paul’s conversion and it underlines to us the significance
of the man and his writings for our Christian faith.
When God became one of us in Jesus it took
the choice of another man to set forth the significance of that revelation.That man was Paul of Tarsus who lived from
around 10AD to 64AD when he was most likely martyred in the Rome of Emperor
Nero.
How then did Paul see God?
He saw, in Michael Ramsey’s analogy with a
phrase in the Psalms, that ‘God is Christlike and in him in no
unChristlikeness at all’. Because of the coming, death and resurrection of
Jesus God is to be seen in a new and extraordinary fashion. He saw to quote
Ephesians 2:4-6 that God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great
love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses,
made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved -and raised
us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
In witnessing to God’s love shown in Jesus’
death and poured into our hearts by his Spirit Paul announces a God whose unity
is shown in the fellowship of three persons, as in 2 Corinthians 13:13: the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love
of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
To believe this is to believe God isn’t One
but One God in three persons. Paul can write with particular authority because
as he says in today’s reading I received it through a revelation of Jesus
Christ. He received how God
had sent his Son in our likeness to be our Saviour, something no one could have
ever worked out for themselves but something God himself had demonstrated in
human history – that God is a triune God.
As we might have read from
Paul in two weeks time in Galatians Chapter 2, save the readings are changed
for dedication feast, I have been crucified with Christ; it is no
longer I who live, but it is 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. Galatians 2:19b-20
For Paul God is
Christlike and would have us be the same. As Christ was crucified the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me so Paul speaks for himself of the life I now live being life with faith in the Son of God who now lives in him. As we heard last
week human beings have sin within them that can be countered by inviting God’s
loving presence to dwell within them on account of Jesus.
Christians are ‘J
shaped’. The letter ‘J’ is like an ‘I’ pressed down that’ll spring up again.
All through his letters, like in the Ephesians passage I just quoted, believers
are said to die, get buried, rise and ascend just like Jesus. God, who is rich in mercy, out of the
great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been
saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly
places in Christ Jesus.
What is true of God who
in love came, died and rose is to be true of us Paul writes. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no
longer I who live, but it is 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.
The sacrament of
baptism contains all of this potential shaping of our lives to be like God as
Paul taught in his letter to Rome. I strongly commend reading Romans for more
meat of the kind I am sharing. It is probably the most significant Christian
writing and it’s shaped the Christian vision of God as much as words can ever
shape that vision. Do you not know Paul writes in Romans 6:3-4 that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized
into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into
death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the
Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
Paul’s view of God is
inseparable from Jesus Christ with whom he has a mystical union. He looks at
the Cross and sees our cleansing from
sin into holiness. He walks with the risen Lord Jesus who gives us newness of life. He witnesses in his
writings how the Holy Spirit pours the love of Jesus into our hearts.
If you’ve no time to read much of Paul this week, at least try reading
Romans Chapter 8. It’s one of my own purple passages that speaks of life and
love in Jesus Christ. In verse 11 it speaks of God who gives life to (our) mortal bodies…through his Spirit that dwells in
(us). It goes on in v28 of Romans 8 to say words of supreme encouragement: all things work together for good for those
who love God. The last verse of Chapter 8 in the Message translation reads:
Absolutely nothing can get between us and
God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
The letter to the Romans and Paul’s other
twelve letters are a tonic to anyone’s Christian faith. Last week I mentioned how
the four shortest letters could be remembered using the vowel alphabet – a, e,
i, o – Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians.
We’re reading Galatians on Sundays. Why not read Ephesians, full of God’s truth
and readable in 20 minutes, or Philippians, just as short and full of joy or
Colossians, again just 4 Chapters.
My
purpose this month and next is to give you a taster of Paul’s letters. You need
more than a ten minute sermon to get into Paul’s wisdom on God and once again times
up – though I’d again encourage you to put in extra time at home, pick up your
bible and let Paul speak to you himself – and God through him.
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