Saul of Tarsus
was dedicated to God, heart, soul, mind and body. As a Hebrew, he was deeply
entrenched in the teachings of the Master of Teachers, Gamaliel. Although a
Hellenist Jew, he was thoroughly educated to the fullest degree in the heritage
of his precious Hebrew faith. Pleasing God remained Saul’s primary objective in
life, the pearl of great price he vigorously sought.
Saul’s choleric
temperament, as one writer described him, prompted him to grasp his cup of life
firmly and drink deeply while others might merely sip. Saul felt driven to
empty his cup, even as others quickly fell short shy, lacking Saul’s driving
passion to be a “Pharisee of Pharisees.” It was in quenching that driving
thirst that Saul launched his crusade to defend The Almighty. This self-sufficient,
impetuous hot-tempered law student threw down the compulsive gauntlet for his
peers, driven to defend the purity of Jewish monotheism against the heretical
creed of this little-known prophet called Jesus.
One such mission
saw Saul head for Damascus, filled with divine vengeance, only to make a
life-changing discovery. It came as a revelation from heaven itself, and Saul abruptly
discovered his life did not center in his own values and beliefs; he was in a
state of dissociation from life’s center. Saul suddenly saw his life as it really was—an
engine stalled on the disconnected sideline of an abandoned railroad track.
Seemingly, this prophet-from-nowhere
called Jesus took on a new dimension of life and meaning for the fire-breathing
exponent of Jewish Legalism. For the first time, Saul was recognizing a dimension
of life with a totally new and different perspective on life and values! No longer able to look
upon his own humanity, or that of others, “according to the flesh”, Saul now
discovered new flashes of human insight and divine inspiration: “God was in
Christ, reconciling us to Himself.”
Shook to the
core, Saul caught a whole new vision of life, that brought a new and different
set of values from those that been his, and he began a several-year-transition
that saw him become a new and totally transformed man. With the demise of Saul’s
selfhood, there arose a transformed Messenger, an Apostle of God, that history
recognizes as Saint Paul. As God’s Ambassador to the Gentile nations, Paul
became the personal Emissary of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:16;
Romans 1:16-18).
In the cross
of Christ, Saul of Tarsus experienced death to himself and a resurrection in the
Lord that empowered him to live a new life: “And I, “said Jesus, “if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men to Myself” (John 12:32 NASV). Death came to Jesus, “that men …
should cease to live for themselves,” and “live for him who for their sake died
and was raised to life” (2 Corinthians 5:15 NEB). Thus; Saul of Tarsus, this
Hellenist Jew with a Pharisee’s pedigree as long as his arm, experienced a
personal metamorphosis when he personally encountered the Prophet Jesus he had
sought to exterminate.
This encounter
transfigured an arrogant Pharisee into a humble follower, a self-described
“doulos” (servant) of Jesus, the Christ. The “terrorist from Tarsus,” now
became forever remembered by posterity as the Christian Apostle to the
Gentiles, aka Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ.
This message
of the cross so transformed Saul that it enabled him to disengage himself from the
racism, culturalism, and creedalism of his time, and be metamorphosed into
Paul, the zealous
Christian Apostle, launched into the Gentile World as God’s Messenger.
Through the
Calvary Cross, God empowered Jesus to overcome sin and death and experience the
kind of resurrection that enabled Christ‘s Devoted Disciples to live like their
Master and be known throughout history as “little Christ’s. Paul conse-quently
confessed, “For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live to God.”
Through this
inspired reasoning, Paul concluded, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it
is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live
in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered
Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:19-20, NASV).
It was through
the cross that made Jesus his Lord, that Saul found the power to become Paul, a
new man with a new vision and a new hope for a potentially-new humanity. Saul
went into this spiritual cocoon a sinful worm, but he came out a full-of-grace
Butterfly, enjoying…
G od’s
R ichest
A t
C hrist‘s
E xpense.
From then on, Paul no longer regarded
any man, woman, boy, or girl from a worldly point of view. Instead; Paul saw
the cross of Christ as God’s divinely-inspired invitation personally delivered
to people of all colors, people, of all cultures, and people of all times and
all creeds, whatever their need.
For this reason,
worshippers continued to gather throughout the span of history and today we
sing with the poet,
The very dying form of One Who
suffered there for me;
And from my smitten heart with
tears, Two wonders I confess--
The wonders of His glorious love And
my unworthiness. --Elizabeth C. Clephane, 1872
The church,
concluded German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is “our hope for the present
and the future.” Bonhoeffer followed in
the wake of history’s Ancient Fathers who agreed, “God [is] our Father, the
Church our Mother, Jesus Christ our Lord, [and] that is our Faith. Amen.”1
I am
walkingwithwarner.blogspot,com,
reminding you in
this Advent Season, of EMMANUEL! (which means God with us)” (Matthew 1:23 RSV).
May God be in your heart as you celebrate the birth of Jesus.
_____
1 Mary Bosanquet, The Life And
Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (New
York: Harper & Row, Publishers,
1968), p. 65.
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