Dedicated to God, heart, soul, mind and body; Saul was
deeply entrenched in the teachings of Master Teacher, Gamaliel. Thoroughly
educated in the Hebrew faith of his heritage, pleasing God became Saul’s pearl
of great price
His choleric temperament drove him to drink deeply, when
others merely sipped from life‘s cup. Competitors quickly fell short of Saul’s
driving passion to be a “Pharisee of Pharisees.” In quenching that thirst, he
launched his crusade in defense of the Almighty. The self-sufficient,
impetuously hot-tempered law student threw down the gauntlet defending Jewish
monotheism against the heretics of this prophet called Jesus.
En route to Damascus, Saul made a life-changing
discovery: life did not center in his values and beliefs. Suddenly, Jesus took
on a whole new dimension, as the fire-breathing exponent of Jewish Legalism
recognized a new perspective!
No longer able to look upon humanity “according to the
flesh”, Saul discovered “God was in Christ, reconciling us to Himself” and he
became a new man. , Paul now found himself an ambassador for Christ (2
Corinthians 5:16; Romans 1:16-18).
In the cross of
Christ,
Saul of Tarsus
experienced resurrection and empowerment
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).
Saul of Tarsus, a Hellenist Jew with a Pharisee’s
pedigree as long as his arm, experienced a metamorphosis in meeting Jesus. That
encounter transformed the arrogant Pharisee into a humble follower of Jesus,
the Christ, and Saul, the terrorist from Tarsus, became Paul, the Apostle of
Christ to the Gentiles.
The message of
the cross empowered the transformed Saul
to disengage
from racism, culturalism, and creedalism and
be
metamorphosed into Paul, the zealous Christian Apostle.
Through the cross, God empowered Jesus to overcome sin
and death through the resurrection and enable Christ‘s disciples to live like
Christ, or as “little Christ’s.
Paul consequently confessed, “For through the Law I died
to the Law, that I might live to God.” Thus, he reasoned, “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).
Through the
cross
Saul found
power to become Paul,
a man with a
vision of hope for human potential.
Saul went into his spiritual cocoon a sinful worm;
Paul came out a grace-full butterfly, enjoying
G od’s
R ichest
A t
C hrist‘s
E xpense.
From then on, Paul regarded no person from a worldly
point of view; rather, he saw the cross of Christ as a divine invitation given
to all:
Beneath
the cross of Jesus [I] gladly take my stand
. . .
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 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is “our hope
for the present and the future.” He followed in the wake of our Ancient Fathers
who said, “God [is] our Father, the Church our Mother, Jesus Christ our Lord,
[and] that is our Faith. Amen.”1
__________________________________________________________________
1
Mary Bosanquet, The Life And Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (New York:
Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968), p. 65.
_____
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