Transcript
M: Eternal God, as we gather this morning, we are deeply aware of the tragedy in the Gulf Hormuz and we sent, somehow, our own engagement in that as citizens of this country. We reach out in prayer for those who suffer in sorrow in their deep loss. And we pray that somehow you may temper the belligerency of response,
that we may still preserve a peace between nations in the name of Him who is the Prince of Peace. Lead us, we pray, we in this hour. Open up to us your word and teach us how to be obedient servants. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
It's all yours, Dr. Gillespie.
GILLESPIE: Turn with me in your text this morning to the letter to the Galatians, chapter one. We'll be looking broadly at what, in the outline, is called the narration -- chapter one verse eleven through chapter two verse fourteen -- but focusing our attention, primarily, upon what is called "the denial of the charge" -- chapter one versus eleven and twelve.
Remember, now, that according to the scheme of the apologetic speech, which could be translated into a letter form, the purpose of the so-called narration was to set forth the facts of the case and to set forth the facts of the case in such a way that the telling of the fact leads
up to the issue, which is to be adjudicated by the jury, whether a real jury or a real judge or a more metaphorical jury -- such as a congregation -- that must come to a theological decision. It's interesting, isn't it, that the responsibility for theological decisions with regard to Paul is placed upon congregations and not just upon the leadership of congregations. And,
so, there's a certain sense in which all of God's people are responsible for the theological decision, which they make, and bear the consequences of those decisions. So, this -- this denial or this narration, really, is in -- first of all -- a denial of the charge, which I'll get to in a moment, and, then, four
episodes each one having to do with the nature of Paul's relationship to the Jerusalem apostles. That seems to have been a part of the issue. What is Paul's standing in relationship to those whom he called [testului?] -- the pillars. We don't know for certain, but it seems likely that the Judaizers, who had entered into his congregations, were saying something like real authority --
real apostolic authority -- resides in Jerusalem. Paul never even knew Jesus [caca sarca?] -- after the flesh. Paul, if anything, is a dependent disciple upon the apostles. And, so, what Paul has to do here is to walk a very narrow line to demonstrate, on the one hand, that he is independent of Jerusalem
and, at the same time, to demonstrate that he is recognized by Jerusalem and that his apostolic authority is as valid in Jerusalem as he claims it to be in Galatia. The first two episodes -- the first episode, of course, has to do with his conversion experience and, then, what happened to him immediately afterward, the sojourn in Arabia.
That's very interesting in a sense that it is put together, literarily, by what is called an inclusio. Paul begins by saying, in verse 13, "You have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God excessively and attempted to destroy it." Those two verbs, [daceo?], to destroy -- no --
[deoco?] to persecute and [porthano?] to destroy. And how then, in the end, he comes around in verse 23 to saying, "You have heard" -- that -- he's talked about the Jews now -- the Jews in -- or in -- I always say Palestine. That's always an anachronism. You know, never call it Palestine
in the first century. Jesus was not a Palestinian Jew. That is so anachronistic because Palestine is a modern creation you know. He was a Galilean Jew perhaps, but he was not a Palestinian Jew and it always irritated me that that got into our confession in 1967. They only heard it said that, "He who once persecuted us
now evangelized the faith, which once he sought to destroy." And those two verbs appear again at the end of this passage. John Schutz, in his book Paul and the Anatomy of Apostolic Authority calls this a biography of reversal. And it is the one biographical statement of Paul that was have from his own hand. He who began as the great persecutor of the church, dedicated to
destroying the church, ends up being, in his own time, a legend -- a man -- known in his own time as the one who once tried to persecute us and to destroy the church as now the one who evangelizes the faith. The second section, then, really is -- with chapter two versus one to ten -- and this is the -- some would say this is the Apostolic Council.
That is to say they correlate what is told here with what is told by Luke in Acts 15. I'm not so sure myself. I'm not going to the mat on that and divide the church over that. But I'm not at all convinced that what is attested here by Paul in this early part of the second chapter of Galatians is his version of the Apostolic Council -- conceivably, but not necessarily so. But the point is that he takes his gospel to Jerusalem and, as he says,
"He lays it before the pillar apostles. And that means he lays before them his law-free gospel for gentiles. And it's interesting that in the course of that debate, even though there are false brothers, he said, "Who are brought in to spy out our freedom. We defended that freedom for your sakes," he tells the Galatians. And in the end, Paul and Barnabas were given the right hand of fellowship by Peter and John and James, the Lord's brother,
which was a sign and a signal of the unity of the church in the Gospel, even though there would now be a mission to the gentiles, a gospel to the gentiles, and a gospel to the circumcision. Now, this is an early instance of the church as trying to struggle with the question of its unity vis-à-vis the purity of its gospel. If we could agree upon the purity of the Gospel, we would have only personality matters to deal with in terms
of the unity of the church. And I've been a pastor long enough to know you can divide the church over the color of the carpet in the Women's Association room. You can divide the church over the kind of music that's sung in the choir of the kind of cookies that are served at tea. We're willing to divide the church for a million different reason, but most often the church has been divided over theological issues. And, so, the issue of the purity of the Gospel is deeply related to the issue of the unity of the
church. And they obviously came to some kind of -- if not agreement, at least rapprochement, that they were willing to recognize these versions of the Gospel as directed to Jews and as directed to Gentiles. And, then, the final scene is the brief four versus in chapter two of the encounter between Paul and the others
in Antioch over the issue of table fellowship. And, apparently, what had happened was that, when Peter came down to Antioch, he joined in what was an integrated church -- that is to say integrated between Jewish Christians and gentile Christians, which meant there was a common table, which meant that it was not a kosher table. And, then, when certain ones come down from James -- from the circumcision party --
Peter withdraws from the table fellowship under pressure. And, in fact, it gets so serious that even Barnabas is carried away and withdraws from the table fellowship. And here was have an instance, then, of apostolic confrontation -- Paul confronting Peter before them all, eyeball to eyeball, cheek to jowl, saying,
"What you're doing is not in keeping with the truth of the Gospel. You are not walking in accordance with the truth of the Gospel." So much for pluralism. You see, the original agreement was to recognize their pluralism. Jewish Christians will be Jewish Christians. Gentile Christians will be gentile Christians and that's terrific so long as you
have them in two different churches. But you put them in the same congregation and you've got trouble right here in [River City?] so long as your basic operating system is pluralism. Pluralism is a pagan concept that the church is trying desperately to baptize and to incarnate and it simply will not work for long.
If we, as Christians, are going to talk about our differences, let's talk about them in terms of our diversity. And Lord knows there's enough of that to go around. But diversity always implied that there is a underlying, basic, fundamental, grounding unity. Diversity always occurs within the bounds of unity and unity has to be defined in such a way that it allows for the diversity that is
both needed and warranted. I think of that line that [Aaron Kasimon?] came up with, "If God had wanted uniformity, he would have created it." What God created was incredible diversity. So, the diversity of human life and the diversity of human opinion and the diversity of human expressions of faith are a part of the given-ness of our creation and a part of God's good creation. The
problem is to find what it is that binds us together -- what it is that binds us together. We live in a time when the church is so prone to find this unity and agreement on one-issue politics. How do you stand on abortion? That's the basis of some unity in the church. How do you stand on the ordination of homosexuals and so on and so forth -- one-issue politics.
You go to our general assembly and you go down and to the display room and you walk around just in, you know, increasing numbers of groups that are advocating one thing or another. And the impression you get as you walk through this -- the question that comes to my mind is -- whatever happened to the church. There's Presbyterians for this and Presbyterians against that, but whatever happened to the church? Whatever happened
to that body of people brought together -- brought together because they're brought to Jesus Christ and who understand profoundly that they themselves cannot have Jesus Christ without having each other? Whatever happened to the church? And I think it's time to recover our ecclesiology and our vision of the church
and its underlying unity in the Gospel. Now, I'm preaching and I apologize for that, but I'm speaking out of very deep concern from my own denomination. I think the great -- the great threat of the world is tribalism. You know, I mean, you go to Europe and here are all these people who live very close to each other and they're very different and they speak different languages and they really don't like each other because they're different.
And, then, you go into a little, tiny, beautiful country like Switzerland where God took extra time to put that one together and they make fun of each other because they're from different cantons, you see. So, we're always trying to narrow it down that there's just us and our little group who are like us. And if we find our life in that, if we find our faith in that, if we find our identity in that, that is idolatry.
Whenever we -- whenever we find the ultimate meeting of our life in our race or in our sex or in our class or in our ethnic origins or in our language, that is a form of idolatry. All of that is real. All of that is good in God's creation, but none of that is ultimate. None of that is ultimate. And if we do believe in the God who transcends the creation
and if the reference point of our lives is not in the creation, but beyond the creation because the creation is not God, then we must realize that all created reality is of a relative character and of a relative value. So, that's really the issue. That's the issue Galatians is trying to deal with. It leads us right to the point where the issue is to be engaged. And, then, that
comes in the proposition in versus 15 to 21. Where is the unity of the church? Now, as I mentioned on the first day, the best way to attack a person's theological position is to destroy the credibility of the person. If you can demonstrate, as you can, that Paul Tillich was a philanderer, then you don't have to read Paul Tillich's three volumes of Systematic Theology. You see
because you have destroyed, in the eyes of many, the credibility of the man. Quite obviously, the same kind of attack was being leveled against Paul. And, so, he is not only seeking to defend his apostleship, which he begins in the very first verse of the letter by saying that it did not come through a human being, it is not from a human source, but it is through Jesus Christ and God the Father. So, now, the real issue is not his apostleship, but it is his gospel because, without the Gospel, there is no apostleship. It
is the Gospel that empowers and authorizes apostleship. It is the Gospel which empowers and authorizes ministry. So, in verse 11, he comes to this charge that is gospel is simply a human phenomenon. And how much of current theological discussion is at that level? We're almost back to square one,
in American theology at least, that theology is basically the -- well, that faith, religion, and thus theology is, essentially, the creation of human imagination. You see, it's Feuerbach revisited. Religion is a human projection of the divine onto the screen of life and all that wonderful influence of Barth that many of us grew up
under where it was believe, for a time at least again in the church, that faith is a response to someone coming the other way. You see, all of that has been outdated and outmoded by those who are supposed to know. I'll never forget reading Langdon Gilkey's -- one of his early books on the whirlwind -- Reaping the Whirlwind? Or whatever it was called. You know, here I was a pastor, been a pastor --
about that time -- about twenty years and Langdon Gilkey says, "You know, neo-orthodoxy failed because it never worked out in congregational ministry." And I said, "How does he know that? He's never been a pastor! And he never asked me and I am a pastor!" You know, what does he mean that it just never worked out in congregational ministry? That's nonsense. And that's the kind of nonsense that keeps the academic community alive and well.
You make prophecies that are self-fulfilling. But the whole emphasis that there's someone coming the other way to us, for us, has been lost, largely, and, again, in contemporary, American theology.
So, the idea -- to correlate the two would not be -- modern theology would not say simply that Paul's Gospel was a human creation and a human projection. It would say the whole thing was nothing but a human creation and a human projection. But the point being scored against Paul was that he did not have the authority that these people -- these Judaizers represented -- perhaps claiming
to emissaries of James or of the pillar apostles or who knows, but certainly having the authority of the mother church in Jerusalem. And, so, Paul begins in verse 11 by saying, "I want you to know, brothers" -- and incidentally -- let me just throw this in for free -- whenever Paul uses a phrase like that and uses the term [adolfoi?], brethren -- "I want you to know, brethren" or "I beseech you, therefore, brethren" or "I beg of you,
brethren" -- that's a little stylistic device that always indicates that there is a transition, a literary transition, being made in the text. There's a literary transition being made in the text and it is this little stylistic ploy that he uses here to tell us now we have entered into the body of the letter. "I want you to know, brethren, that the Gospel, which is preached by me,
that it is not [cata anthrapone?]." It is not according to man, according to human being, not according to humanity -- Cata anthrapone. Not [apo anthrapu?], not from a man as if humanity were the source. Paul is talking now about normativity. According to man -- it is not a gospel that has humanity or a human
norm as its norm of authority. "For neither did I receive it from a human being nor was I taught it" -- that is to say, it did not come to me in the form of a tradition -- "but through [apocalupsaos asucristu?] -- through a revelation of Jesus Christ." Now, a little later, he comes back to that. In verse
15 he says, "But when it pleased the one who had set me apart from my mother's womb and called me through his grace to reveal is son [en emoi?] -- in me, to me -- in order that I might preach him among the nations. Immediately, I did not confer with flesh and blood." Now, those are the two versus that reflect upon an event in Paul's life and experience, which he claims is the source and, thus, the norm
of the Gospel which he preaches. Most everyone believes that this event described here under the rubric of revelation is the same event that Paul himself refers to in 1 Corinthians chapter nine, verse one and in 1 Corinthians chapter fifteen, verse eight -- that is to say, to his vision of the of the risen Christ, which
we call the Damascus Road experience because we pick that up from Luke in Acts. What kind of an experience was that? Well, the exegetical literature goes absolutely wild on this one, of course. The truth of the matter is, no one knows. Some have said it was an objective vision, which means that he say something that was real
and was other than himself. I think that is probably, without question, the truth because in 1 Corinthians chapter fifteen, verse 8, Paul says, "Last of all, as to one untimely born, He, Jesus, appeared also to me." You see, that's the objective side or the objective way of saying it. He appeared to me. In 1 Corinthians 9,
verse one, the subjective side comes to expression where Paul says, "Am I not apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus, our Lord?" There's the subjective side. I have seen Jesus, our Lord. He appeared to me. I have seen. So, we have, obviously, a reference here to a visionary experience. But it's interesting that in the way Paul uses this
kind of language in the letters that have been preserved for us, he never identifies revelation -- [apocalupsis?] -- with [obtasi?], with visions. In fact, the one time that he talks about both of these things together in 2 Corinthians, chapter twelve, verse one following, he makes a sharp distinction between visions and revelations. He claims to have had an abundance of both. The
interesting thing was it was only the revelations that were allowed to be shared. So, what does Paul mean when he talks about this visionary experience under the rubric of revelation? Well, now we all know that revelation has to do with making something be known that would not otherwise be known. That is to say, revelation is a term that we use out of our own everyday experience to talk about things being made known to us that we,
otherwise, would not be able to know. I remember on a Sunday when our oldest daughter, who is now thirty-one, was three, being flaked out on the couch in our little [GI?] home in Garden Grove. I think we had three services on a Sunday in those days and that used to ruin the Lord's day for me, I'll tell you. There was no way I could ever convince myself that that third
service was a new experience. So, I was asleep on the couch and Robyn toddles over and, with great theological intuition, peeled back an eyelid and said, "Daddy, are you in there?" Now, she recognized, you see, that there was something more to her father than that lug lying on the couch, you see. I mean,
that was her father, but there was something more and she wanted that something more, that life, that interior life to come out. And we all know that what it interior to our hearts and to our minds only comes out if we let it out or if we let it slip. We love the phrase a Freudian slip. All we will say when we see or hear somebody
say or do something, our comment will be, "My, wasn't that a revealing statement?" or "Wasn’t that a revealing incident?" That is to say, there is something of the mystery of human life that remains a mystery until it is made known. And we are the ones, and the only ones, who can make it known. I don’t know how this squares with your pastoral experience, but I have been amazed over the years to deal with
parishioners who have invested thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in psychiatric care and have spent years playing games with the psychiatrist. And the -- finally, in the end, the psychiatrist -- they discover the psychiatrist has known that they have been playing games lo these many years, but have been waiting them out, waiting to come to the point in time when the person is willing, finally, to say
this is really what's bugging me. Now, the psychiatrist doesn't know what's really bugging that person. Only that person can tell. And lots of money gets exchanged in the waiting process for that person to tell. Only you and I can make known to one another what's in our heads or in our hearts. And we use the word, in our common parlance, revelation
in this. It is that which is not attainable by investigation. George Hendry used to say to us here, "Columbus discovered America. Anybody could have discovered America. Maybe Leif Erikson did. Anybody could have discovered America who had the courage to sail westward far enough and long enough. It was always there, waiting to be discovered. America -- the North and the South America -- did not reveal itself to Columbus.
So, he discovered it because it was there. It was knowable. It was available. You just had to put yourself in the position to know it. But only -- only that which is unknowable in principle and is made known is revelation. So, Paul claims that his gospel is the product of this revelational experience.
Now, [Dieter Lorman?], in a German dissertation on Paul's understanding of revelation, emphasizes that, as Paul uses this term throughout his letters, it becomes evident that what he means is that it's not just an experience of the ineffable. It's not just an experience of the [mysterium tremendum?]. It is an experience that is intelligible. We would say a meaningful experience. What is a
meaningful experience? A meaningful experience is an experience that makes sense. It makes sense in itself and it makes sense out of something else. The emphasis upon the nuance that is important in Paul's use of this noun or this verb -- [apocaluptaen or apocalupsis?] -- is upon its intelligibility. It communicates understanding.
That is to say, when God reveals something that is not otherwise known, it is an act of [hermanaia?]. It is an act of interpretation. In the history of Protestant theology, of course, revelation was identified, initially, with scripture itself. And revelation and inspiration were considered
synonymous terms. That was challenged, of course, by the rise of the historical, critical study of scripture. And so, then, there was a retreat in Protestant theology. Well, not -- revelation does not lie in the text, but it lies behind the text. It lies behind the text, according to one school of thought, in the events, you see. Then, you get the book -- George Wright's book -- not George Wright. It's --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: (inaudible)
GILLESPIE: Hm? The God who acts --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: (inaudible) George Wright.
GILLESPIE: George Wright. Yeah. The God who acts. And so, revelation is to be found in the event of the parting of the Red Sea and in the resurrection of Jesus. It's always something that's behind the text. There are revelatory events that are attested to in a human way by scripture and so forth. Paul certainly knew that there was an event.
In chapter four of Galatians, he says, "In the fullness of time, God sent forth His son born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law." He was aware that there was a historical event that had transcendental significance, but it was a historical event. "God sent forth His son born of a woman, born under the law." That's a physical and a cultural distinction. That's where that happened, but Paul never calls that revelation.
Revelation is that which occurs, which allows us to understand that person who was born under the law and born of a woman -- to understand that as the one who was sent from God to redeem those who were under the law. That is to say, revelation has to do with God's way of creating understand of God's redemptive purpose and actions. And so, the word revelation
has to do with the creation of that kind of human understand. Let me just say quickly now something about that revelation experience. There's been all kind of attempts to explain Paul. Joachim Jeremias has a neat little model where he said, "We’ve tried to explain Paul
on the basis of cities. There's Jerusalem and there's Antioch and there's Tarsus and there's Damascus." Tarsus is the Hellenistic Paul, of course -- the Paul familiar with the mystery religions. And how much ink has gone into demonstrating that Paul was dependent upon the mystery religions for his understanding of the Christian faith. Jerusalem is the counterclaim that Paul was basically and fundamentally a Jew, a first-century Jew, and can only be understood
in Jewish terms. Davies' book, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, is a perfect example of that counterclaim. Then -- and, then, the claim that Paul is really the product -- and this is Bultmann -- Paul was really the product of the Hellenistic Jewish Christian Church as represented in Antioch, that kind of second-stage, booster-rocket of the church. And he was the product of that community. Jeremias wants to argue that, no, it's Damascus that really is the center. All the other is true.
I mean, Paul was born in Tarsus. He did have a grounding in Hellenistic culture. He brought that with him to his Damascus Road experience. He was trained in Jerusalem, as far as we know, as a rabbi and he certainly brought that with him to his Damascus Road experience. And he certainly was influenced by the Antiochian Church and even received traditions from them. But the key is Paul's experience outside the Road of Damascus. Based upon what he says, "I have seen
Jesus our Lord. He appeared to me." What can we unpack from that experience. Well, first of all, you have to realize that Paul already knew a good deal about Jesus. There are two things that he already tells us about himself that he brought to that experience. It's very important. Number one, he was a persecutor of the church. And the second is that he was a zealot for the traditions
of his father, which is to say he was a Pharisee. Both of those things are important. Paul, the zealot for the traditions of the [fathers?] and, thus, Paul the great persecutor of the church. Notice how he says in that last inclusion verse, "The one who wants persecuted us and tried to destroy us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy." So, what Paul was
after was the faith of the Christians. Why? Because it believe it was blasphemous. Paul knew enough about Jesus to know that he had been crucified with the approval of the Sanhedrin and with the authority of the Romans for blasphemous claims regarding messiahship.
And he had heard the stories that Jesus had been resurrected, but he didn't believe them. And he believed, as a Pharisee that anyone who hangs on a tree has died under the curse of God. Therefore, it is a non-sequitur. It does not follow that anyone who died on a cross could possibly be the messiah of God. And this was so outrageous theologically that it had to be stamped
out. I mean, it was kind of a major version of our attitude toward the [Mooneys?], for example. It's just so absurd and obnoxious, you know. Go away. Only he was going to help it go away. Now, on the way to Damascus, he has this experience -- this objective-subjective vision. It was -- certainly, it involved him. It was objective. And it was certainly an experience of someone other than himself. Paul had an
encounter on the Damascus Road with someone other than himself. And this other, in one way or another, was identified to him as Jesus -- Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the crucified, the dead Jesus. And, now, Paul is, in one way or another, encountering one who
identifies himself in some way as Jesus, the living one. Well, talk about theological reconstruction, you see. I don't think that that experience needed to be a lot more than that, but it probably was. But let's just take it at that. And I'm not sure that all I'm now going to
unravel here came out instantaneously in the experience itself. I mean, a lot of it -- isn't that something you would be reflecting upon for a long time? I would. I'd lay awake nights thinking about that and what all that meant. But what it meant to Paul was, first of all, if the one he met was Jesus -- Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus who was dead -- it could only mean
-- and then Jesus was alive -- it could only mean he was alive because God had raised Him from the dead. And that great line in the fourth chapter of Romans where Paul described God as the one who gives life to the dead and brings into being things out of nothing. Jesus had been raised from the dead. Why raise from the dead? Well, Paul was a Pharisee
and the Pharisees, you remember, were distinguished from the Sadducees by the fact that they believe in the resurrection of the dead. Now, what we Christians tend to do with the resurrection is to see it as the Christian understand of how we deal with the issue of death. Others believe in the immortality of the soul or the never-never land or what have you, but we believe in the resurrection of the dead as if it were designed to deal with the deal question. It is not
designed to deal, primarily, with the death question. I was shocked in seminary to discover that the hope of the resurrection was a late development in Israel. Somehow, if anything is a late development, it is less true than if it was an early development, right? I mean, it's got to be right in there at the beginning if it's going to count, you know. We don't want all this Iranian stuff sneaking in, this Babylonian stuff sneaking in. And the intertestamental period is going to corrupt our pure, Jewish faith.
But why? Why did it arise in that intertestamental period? There is a correlation, it seems to me, between the rise of the expectation and the hope of the resurrection of the dead and the political-religious experience of the Jews in that period, particularly under Antiochus Epiphanes IV who instigated a cultural revolution in Judea and in Galilea and said,
"You Jews are going to live, talk, think, dress, and behave like us Greeks." See, the Jews had the world all divided into us, Jews, and them, Gentiles. Well, the Greeks came back and said, "No, no, no. There's us, Greeks, and you, barbarians. You see, so, we're going to culturalize you folks." And we're going to do it under pain of death. Now, you are a Jews
in the second century BC. Wait, you don't even have to be a Jew in the second century BC. You're just a good, old, twentieth-century Christian because all of us are basically committed to the Deuteronomic theology. Read Deuteronomy. It's really very neat if you love God and serve God and are obedient to God, God will bless you. And if you don't love God and serve God and obey God, then God is going to curse you. So that if anything bad happens you want to know what you
did to deserve it, right? And how many times have you dealt with that in the parish, you see? Now, you've been raised in this tradition and, suddenly now, those who are faithful to God, obedient to God, honoring God, loving God, circumcising their male children on the eighth day, trying to keep the Seder, all of these things. These are the people that are being killed! So, the doctrine of the resurrection
emerged in Israel at this time as an answer not to the death question, but to the theodicy question. How can God be God and the faithful God and the God of blessing when these bad things are happening to these good people? So, resurrection was a way of saying not now, but
yet. God will vindicate this obedience, this righteousness, this human faithfulness by raising these faithful dead to life again, thereby not only vindicating their righteousness and their faithfulness, but God's righteousness and God's faithfulness. That's what the resurrection hope meant to Paul. Now, he meets
Jesus the crucified who is alive. The only way in his world of thought that that could be so was that God had raised him from the dead. Nobody saw the resurrection -- no one. It was an inference made from the appearances in the empty tomb. And Paul is drawing nothing more than the same kind of inference. Having met the risen Jesus, he knows that Jesus has been raised by God from the dead. But what does that say to Paul? That carries all kinds
of theological baggage, you see? It's not, "My God, Jesus is alive! What do you know about that? You know, one guy made it!" But it was God's way of vindicating the faithfulness, the righteousness, the obedience, and the claims of Jesus, which was a theological reversal. Interesting, though, Paul never backed
down on his preoccupation with the fact that Jesus was the crucified. Maybe you've note that in his letters. He never backs down on the cross. And he never backed down on his version of what happened. He still claims, as in the third chapter of Galatians, "Jesus died under the curse of God. Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree." But how's he going to deal with that now?
How's he going to deal with the reality of the crucifixion of Jesus theologically in the light of the fact that God has vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead. The only way Paul could deal with that was to deal with it theologically in terms of some kind of a sacrificial -- some kind of a redemptive event. And he brought to bear all of the resources of his theological background upon that event. It had to be understood, then, as a redemptive event.
Well, what else was implicit in that experience? I would say judgment. How would you liked to have been Paul the persecutor out to destroy the church because you're convinced that this faith that Jesus died and rose again -- that this faith is absolutely false. I mean, you talk about being caught with your trousers down, you talk about being caught with a zero on your
Hebrew final -- I mean, Paul in that moment realized, "I believe I've made a serious mistake." You see. Remember when you were a kid playing baseball and you were always trying to steal second and you just got a little too far-off [for it?]. There's nothing worse than being picked off first base. You know, you're a hero when you get a hit or a walk. You're on base. You're a potential run. And there you are. You're out there
dancing around, trying to fake out the pitcher and, all of a sudden, he's quicker than you are and you're out and it's a long walk back to the dugout. Well, Paul was out there. He had been caught leaning the wrong way. And God picked him off, you know? And he knew that his whole life -- I mean, his whole way of understanding life was in shambles. It was judgment. But it was also
grace. Paul never talks about his conversion, but he talks about his call a great deal and his call to proclaim the Gospel to the nations. And if anyone knew that this call was based upon a love that was unmerited, undeserved, and unearned, it was Paul.
Grace was the great experience of the Damascus Road event for Paul. And he knew the only proper response to that was obedient faith and faithful obedience. And, thus, the faith-grace dynamic was established in Paul's own experience. We could go on. I really do believe that all of Paul's theology flow, ultimately, out of that central
experience of his life that Jesus is raised, as understood in the terms of the context of his life that he brought to that experience. But Paul's Gospel, which focuses on Christ crucified and Christ risen is a gospel that is grounded not in human opinion and not in human imagination, but in the reality of the earthly
life of Jesus, which ended on the cross, and in the equal reality -- no, the greater reality -- of the resurrection of Jesus by God, which vindicated that life as a life of righteousness, a life of faithfulness, a life of obedience. And that will lead us tomorrow to talk about Jesus the faithful one.