Saul, Paul and the advent of grace

Text: Galatians 2:11-21

I’m going to start today by acknowledging something that we pastor-folk don’t acknowledge enough: Paul’s writings are really hard to digest. Partly, this is because they are difficult to put into a context. Just like Easter is hard to put into context. I’m not talking about Easter Sunday; we all know about Easter Sunday—open tomb, resurrection, something about bunnies and eggs; not a problem. I’m talking about the season of Easter—all that stuff that happens between Easter Sunday and the Ascension. That’s when we get stuff like this from Paul’s letter to the Galatians; stuff that sounds right—talking about justification and faith and grace—but most of the time it goes in one ear and out the other. Mostly, we think the story is over after Easter Sunday.

And, in a way, we’re right: the most important part is over. But the trouble is that there are twenty-three books in the Bible after the Gospels—twenty-three books that contain a good chunk of what we believe about Jesus. The fact that it’s hard for us to figure how Galatians fits into the wider story does not mean it is unimportant. So, here’s the cold, hard truth: we’re going to be in Galatians for the next three weeks, so what I’m going to do today is set the stage for the next two weeks. So, your job, next week and two weeks from now, when the person sitting next to you is looking confused, is to tell them, “Oh, you weren’t here last Sunday—here’s what Galatians is about."

            Alright. Let's go.

            Three weeks ago we read about Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian church who died for publicly professing his faith in Jesus. His story might not seem like it connects much to Galatians, except there is this character, Saul, who shows up briefly in the Stephen martyring. Saul is under the authority of the Romans and he is charged with persecuting Christians. Stephen would not be the last Christian put to death under Saul’s watch. As many of you know, Saul would go on to have a dramatic conversion experience and take on the name Paul; the same guy who wrote a good chunk of what we consider today the New Testament, including this book of Galatians. What we call “Galatians” today was a letter from Paul to the church in Galatia, just like the book of Romans was a letter from Paul to the church in Rome, Corinthians a letter from Paul to the church in Corinth and so on and so forth. So, Galatians is a first-person account from Paul, former persecutor of Christians turned into a champion of the faith.

So, if it seems sometimes like Galatians is difficult to understand, try to put yourself in the place of a man who grew up hating Christians, persecuting them and killing them, who was converted dramatically on the road to Damascus, and who then found himself discovering what it meant to be a Christian with a terrible past.

            That’s the context you need to know to read Galatians.

            I realize that’s a lot, but we throw around a lot of terms in the church—and many of them have their origins in Paul’s writing—so if we’re hoping to understand exactly what these mean we have to get back behind the story. On their own these terms are very difficult to understand: Justification, grace, law, gospel, works, sin. You’ve heard them a thousand times—and they sound like really important words—but understanding why they are important not just for the church, but in your daily life, is tough. We have to start by understanding Paul.

            Paul’s story was a tale of a man who started out trying to make a name for himself through political means. Now, political power in itself is not a bad thing—political power can be used to help out people who are in need and right the world’s wrongs—but Paul (who was then Saul) set out for the kind of power that holds dominion over others; his politics were designed to benefit only him. He destroyed those who were not worthy according to his beliefs; his success was defined by his cruelty and, by that measure, he was very successful. He was a champion of ridding the world of blasphemers and hypocrites. Saul’s story is the story of many rulers of this world who use their power to subdue. In his eyes he was making the world a better place.

            But when faced with blindness on the road to Damascus, Saul was confronted with a terror he had never before fathomed. If Jesus were truly God and the Christians were right then Saul was under a condemnation far greater than anything he could muster, a condemnation from which he could not be freed even if he fled to the ends of the earth. The blinding on the road changed Saul’s life in a way nobody could have foreseen.

            I suppose that if most of us were God, Saul would have gotten what he deserved right then and there. Stricken blind, I would have sentenced him to live out his life in darkness until death took him away to the punishment he rightly deserved. That seems just for a life filled with cruelty. But what happens instead is remarkable and influences everything we know about the Christian faith today. Paul becomes the great Christian writer of his age, persecuted eventually to the point of his own death for the faith he had once persecuted in others. You can imagine the inner turmoil coursing through Paul’s veins. If he has become a Christian even after the terrible things he has done then surely there is much demanded of him. Something is always gnawing at Paul in his writings—something that cannot so easily be explained away.

            Paul realizes that if he is judged according to his actions no amount of good could make up for the bad. Paul was a sinner to rival any other. He had been terrible, reprehensible and vicious. He had blood on his hands. And so, in spite of his conversion, it was difficult to see how God could demand any fate for Paul but death and hell. But Paul also felt that God redeemed him for something more than that. Paul realized that God had to be doing something completely new in him. This is what grace is all about. If you want to understand what grace means you have to understand Paul’s life. Grace does not sound like good news initially, because it means that we cannot achieve salvation of our own merit; it shows our sense of self-sufficiency to be a lie. You can’t do enough. That’s what grace tells you. You can never do enough.

            But for Paul this realization was freeing; it was good news beyond reckoning. It meant that no matter how rotten he had become there was still hope for him; not because of his own ability to change but because of God’s ability to take even that rotten shell and make something beautiful from it.

            Nobody is beyond redemption.

            That is Paul’s final realization and it changed the Christian faith forever. Paul talks a lot about the law, because according to the law he deserved nothing but death. No change in Paul was good enough to set right the wrongs he committed. No good deed could make up for the bad. According to the law, Paul was condemned. And yet, God was somehow above the law. Paul still felt the judgment of God for what he had done, and yet, his life was spared. Amazingly, in spite of the terrible person he had been he was still right with God--he was justified. The final chapter in Paul’s story is a man who realized finally that he cannot do it on his own. He needs grace. He needs a God who did it for him. That’s why he says, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”

            If God can do it for Paul, he can do it for you. There is no one so broken that they are hidden from the grace of God. No one. Our Christian church two thousand years later has a tough but simple task: remember that. Nobody is unwelcome, because nobody is beyond reach.

            Thanks be to God.