Saul of Tarsus became a Christ-follower at a time when
special-interests polluted the landscape and undermined individual and
community interests. Good without God was not good enough. Following Jesus was swimming
upstream and proved easier to proclaim than to practice. In becoming an Apostle
for Christ, Saul entered the Gentile world and encountered a demolition derby dominated
by warfare for-and-against Rome. Racial strife stirred in everywhere
imaginable. Special interests undermined individual
and community interests.
As a new Christian, Paul followed a person rather than a religious
ritual. To convert people to his new faith, he invited them to repent of their
personal sins and confess the failures of their culture or religious system and
accept the sovereignty of Jesus as God’s Messiah (Eph. 4:1, 7, 26).
Saul was a self-confessed terrorist. He admittedly terrorized
people in the name of God. After being rescued from the tyranny of his misguided
Judaic legalism, and following his dramatic encounter with Christ on the Damascus
Road, Saul began viewing life as Paul. He now viewed humanity through the eyes
of “God, who made the world and everything in it.” He abandoned his former “worldly
point of view” (Acts 17:24 NKJV; 2 Corinthians 5:16, NIV, emphasis added).
Paul’s transformation from the former Saul redefined his views of
humanity and prompted him to add new dimensions of “the divine” into his life. Saul’s
transformation brought transition from the inside out and Paul turned about
face from the inside out. This conversion from self-serving Saul, into Paul the
Apostle—the bond servant of Christ (doulos), transformed Paul into a new and
truly converted man that now served as God’s roving Ambassador for the Messiah.
Sensing his commission from God, Paul committed his life to proclaiming
God’s eternal Kingdom of peace (2 Corinthians 5:16-21). He now spent the remainder
of his mortal life taking his story where it had not been before. By the time
of Paul’s death, his epitaph readily read, “as far as it depends on you, live
at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18).
When Paul introduced his message of Jesus into the Athenian Pantheon
of gods and goddesses, he acknowledged their traditional beliefs and tailored
his message accordingly. This became typical of Paul’s gospel as he reached for
common ground with his audiences, before introducing his resurrection
perspectives and reflecting on how God lives, moves about, and resides, or has
his being, in all of humanity (Acts 17).
Of course, the sophisticated Athenians rejected Paul’s
resurrection teaching. Although they recognized the soundness of Paul’s reasoning,
their limited humanistic perspective polluted
their landscape and undermined their individual and community interests at all
levels, tossing it aside as a wild herring “—"such things just do not
happen.”.
They reacted rather than respond with reason and became defensive
with Paul. Consequently, he chose to trust God’s Living Spirit to guide them into
the truth and to sustain him as he went his way. In moving on, Paul avoided
getting mired in cultural issues and venting ill will toward those who opposed
him. Like the prophets of old, Paul left them in God’s Hands, and he leaned
hard on the mediation of God’s Spirit, thereby maintaining the good will of the
people as much as possible.
When Paul entered Ephesus, Paul found certain infantile views in
the young church that he challenged. He taught them to mature spiritually through
deeper commitment to their Sovereign Lord, Jesus Christ, He taught them how to
put on the whole armor of God; i.e., wear the garments of grace that only God
can give (Ephesians 6:10; 4:14-16; 1:6-7).
Paul understood that when we view one another through our naturally
human eyes, we sort out and divide people according to our natural human biases
and our demographics of difference. Jesus, on the other hand, commissioned his
disciples to love one another in ways that unified their differences, forgave their
wrongs done to them, and reconciled their fractured relationships (Matthew
28:19-20).
The Lord who is the Sovereign of the Kingdom of God continually calls
us to become his peacemakers; yet, we find ourselves continually confronted by wars,
rumors of war, and unreconciled relationships. Consequently when we find that we have nothing
new to offer, our Sovereign reminds us we can at least offer the stranger in
our midst a cup of cold water in ‘Jesus’ Name.’
One June evening a few years back, I found myself approaching a
black man at a church convention—Dr. James Earl Massey. Without either of us stopping,
he nodded and we locked eyes for a moment, and he greeted me with these words: “May
the peace of God be with you, my brother” That word “Shalom” from my friend and
brother, Jim Massey, later prompted me to reconsider the words Jesus spoke to
His disciples, when he said: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you”
(John 14:27, NIV).
We were two men passing each other in a sea of people. Each of us
carried our shipload of freight. Each of us reflected our differing ethnicities.
Each of us were part of a bigger world that readily assimilated us into in its variety
of turbulence, terrorism, broken lives, fragile relationships, and social
advocacy. What we shared in common, however, was that peace of which Jesus
spoke when he instructed his disciples “Do not let your hearts be troubled and
… afraid.”
Living on the outskirts of South Haven, MI as the nineteeth century rolled into view, a
young teenager wrestled with himself while listening to the frontier evangelist
and reformer, D. S. Warner. Sixteen-year-old Barney Warren accepted the
invitation and committed himself as a disciple of Jesus Christ. He soon joined
Warner’s evangelistic team and spent his life as a preacher-song writer. In
describing the peace and joy he found in the Christ-life, that he could not
otherwise express; he found that it fortified his life and remained a “sweet” memory.
Envisioning this “Kingdom of Peace” Barney Warren took his pen in
hand and wrote these words to his fellow Church of God Reformationists:
‘Tis a kingdom of
peace, it is reigning within,
It
shall ever increase in my soul;
We possess it
right here when He saves from all sin,
And
‘twill last while the ages shall roll.1
This is: walkingwithwarner.blogspot,com inviting you to join in …
“There’s a theme that is sweet to my memory,
There’s a jo that I cannot express,
There’s a treasure that gladdens my being,
‘Tis the kingdom of God’s righteousness.
…
What a pleasure in life it is bringing!
What assurance and hope ever bright!
O what rapture and bliss are awaiting,
When our faith shall be lost in the sight!
1“The Kingdom of Peace” Barney E.
Warren. Worship the Lord, Hymnal of the Church of God. Anderson, IN:
Warner Press, Inc., 1989, p. 481.
_____
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