41. Here's Exactly What Changed Paul’s Life

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About 2,000 years ago, a man wrote, there is now therefore no condemnation for those who

are in Christ Jesus.

What's particularly remarkable about that man, his name was Paul, was nobody was better

at condemning than Paul himself was.

And something happened to him.

That's what I want to think about today.

I want to think deeply about theology.

How do I reflect on God and understand what he is done and what does the Bible say?

Probably takes some time to walk through all this.

I hope you go through it with me.

I love the material you're going to look at.

I'll try to go into some detail on the theology of it.

So I've got notes scattered around if I'm not always looking at you.

That's why.

Start with this remarkable statement of Paul makes in Romans chapter 10 verse 2.

He says that he can bear witness about some of his fellow Israelite leaders that they

have a zeal for God, but it is not according to knowledge.

No.

We have a lot of zeal today that's not according to knowledge.

Lot of it's online.

Lot of it's in cable news shows.

Lot of it is you, Uncle Billy, that family member who just in the stuff that you post

or the way you talk with other people, we get mocking or condescending or satirical.

We condemn people so easily.

What's interesting with Paul is he says that was exactly him.

So in his letter, the church of Philippi, he writes that at one point, according to zeal,

he was a persecutor of the church.

And then in his letter, the church of Galatians says, you have heard of my formula life in

Judaism.

How thoroughly I ravaged the church of God and tried to destroy it.

And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my Kingsman being exceedingly

zealous.

There's that word again for the traditions of my father.

So we're going to walk through how Paul the great condemner became Mr. No condemnation.

And how we think about God and what God has done.

And in particular, a doctrine that is called justification by faith.

I want to walk through how that little phrase, that doctrine does not mean what many, maybe

most people in churches, especially the evangelical church, have come to think of it as meaning.

And that this is actually central to becoming people who can let go of condemnation and blame.

I will be in particular debt to this book by Tom Wright.

What Saint Paul really said, I treasure this book.

He was sent to me some time ago by a great New Testament theologian named Scott McKnight

and Scott actually wrote about how profound this book was.

And then it also ended up getting signed by Tom Wright himself.

So to like just giant heroes, this book is like a treasure to me.

And if you think that I would give this up for any money money, make it offer.

Just go ahead, you never go.

Now, here's where we go.

Tom Wright writes about how over the last 50 years or so, there has been what's sometimes

called the Pauline revolution, biggest shift in scholarship about understanding what Paul

was saying that's hit in a long, long time.

And it kind of started here.

You may know, in the first half of the 20th century, Germany produced the dominant New Testament

scholars, Karl Bart, Rudolf Bonhoffer, Dietrich Bonhoffer, Rudolf Boltmann, Bruner.

The tubing in school was like the place to go.

Germany also produced, of course, a Nazi government and the Holocaust that created a genocide

of Jewish people.

And when that was over, it very much shook up folks in the New Testament field.

And they said, maybe we need to go back and take a look at what we were doing.

Are there things that we said that contributed that allowed this unspeakable tragedy?

And so that informed New Testament scholarship for some time.

In the late 70s, early 80s, scholar named Ed Sanders wrote about this.

Tom Wright says that he had a greater impact on pulling scholarship than all the other scholars

put together.

Here's the main idea that I want to talk about for a few moments.

Sanders said, really, we have been caricaturing Old Testament faith and the Jewish religion.

The way that a lot of people began to think about it was that the Old Testament was about

works righteousness, but the New Testament is about grace.

So people in Old Testament days, Old Testament faith believed you had to earn your salvation

by obeying the law sufficiently.

And Sanders said that's actually kind of slandering Old Testament faith that Israel always

understood that life with God began through God's grace and not by our earning it.

So if you go back to the Ten Commandments Exodus chapter 20, they begin with God saying,

I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt, out of slavery.

That's before he gave them the Ten Commandments.

That's before he gave them the law.

They didn't earn that.

That was a gift from God.

And they always understood this.

We actually, Christians in the New Testament field, Sanders said, were kind of caricaturing

and really kind of slandering Old Testament faith.

And part of the way that happened, he and others right, is that in Martin Luther's day,

you might know of Luther, the great reformer, Luther had a battle with authorities in the

Catholic Church over indulgences where Luther said they're trying to convince people that

people can buy their way or earn their way into heaven.

And Luther said, no, the only way is by faith.

Luther ended up kind of reading his battle with the Catholic Church into Paul's battle with

the Pharisees in his day.

And assuming that the Pharisees were teaching, you can earn God's favor through the works

of the law.

And in fact, that's not actually the situation that Paul was facing.

So what is the situation that Paul was facing?

And you know, I want to do a little drawing that Tom Wright did in thinking about what

does justification or vindication consist of?

What is it that Paul was looking forward to?

Come back here.

I'll go back and forth today.

That we're justifying the New Testament often as a translation of the Hebrew word vindicate.

You might think in the Psalms, vindicate me, oh God, that's a law court expression and

this is going to be real important.

In the Hebrew law system, trials always work this way.

Tom Wright, lots of folks write, there would be a judge and there would be an accuser

and there would be the accused.

And then the judge would make it determined which of these two parties is right, which

is speaking the truth in whom will I find in favor of who's the victim and who's guilty?

Who's going to be disappointed in this verdict?

And the person that was found in favor, they were vindicated.

So it was never just a judge and one person.

So justification was not about one person facing God and say, I'm going to earn my way

up there.

Law courts didn't work that way.

It was never just one person in the judge.

It was always this kind of situation.

And to be vindicated means that I was proven right.

It was like, Nancy, I had an argument for years, we bought China when we first got married.

And her recollection was that she wanted simple, elegant, classy China and I wanted some

kind of cheesy, floral, loud China.

That's not my recollection at all.

My recollection is that I wanted simple and elegant, classy China.

And there was just no way to determine who was right until I remembered somebody who was

part of our family who knew us well back then and had no dog in his fight so that they

could actually say which account was accurate and they did it.

They remembered and one person was vindicated.

You might wonder which person was that that doesn't matter.

That's actually kind of small mind that if you want to track it down that far.

The point is to be vindicated means that in this situation, I'm the one with the judge

said, I'm going to find in favor of you.

Now in Paul's day, of course, Israel had a complaint.

It was supposed to be God's people and yet Israel was enslaved by Egypt and then they

were freed.

But then a series of oppressors, a Syria, Babylon, Persian, Rome, and so the Gentiles.

We might think about this whole category as us and them.

And for Israel, them was the Gentiles that had been oppressing them.

Now what would it look like if Israel were vindicated?

One would come sometime in the future or justification for Israel.

Paul believed would come sometime in the future.

It would come for all of Israel.

So now this is important to be vindicated or justified in Paul's mind was not something

that would happen to an individual.

To be justified did not mean now I get to go to heaven.

The whole afterlife thing was vague for any number of folks in Israel.

The Sadducees you might remember did not believe in the resurrection.

And it was not an individualistic thing.

It would come to Israel.

For Paul, vindication of Israel would come when God would appear, when God would come

down, when God would show up and he would forgive their sins.

And the temple would be restored in all of its glory.

And righteousness, obedience to Torah would rule the land and the oppressors would be defeated.

Their enemies would be destroyed and the great resurrection would occur.

So what happened in Paul's day then for Paul and other people in his category, Paul was

a Pharisee, not just Jewish, he was a Pharisee.

Not just a Pharisee, Tom writes, he was a follower of Shemaah to primary parties of Pharisees

back there.

And Shemaah's party were the more strict ones.

So they would follow the law very closely.

They also had great zeal.

So now zeal, we might think in our day zeal is something that you do on your knees as

a Christian or online if you're politically active.

For Paul zeal is something you did with the knife.

And so they believed, Paul believed that the situation in their day was now there's faithful

Israel over here.

And over on this side, there are the Gentiles plus renegade Israel.

People who are not concerned to follow Torah, people who do not have zeal, people who don't

care about circumcision.

There were folks that were in exile that were Jewish but no longer getting circumcised

then because I would hold it back in some ways or following dietary laws or Sabbath keeping

and so on.

And these were the people, folks in Paul's party said, that were preventing Israel from

being vindicated by God that were holding back the resurrection and the glory that they

were all looking for.

And so Paul engaged in zeal to force renegade Israel to follow Torah in order to hasten

their vindication.

Now, so the question around justification or vindication is, how do I know if I'm part

of faith?

Well, I know if I'm one of these people and the way that I know is I do works of the law.

I'm careful about being circumcised and about dietary laws and about Sabbath keeping

and ritual purity and so on.

In other words, the works of the law that Paul was concerned about were not attempts to

earn my salvation or to earn favor with God.

Everybody in Israel, any devout Jewish person knew that came as a gift from God.

They were membership badges.

They were ways of showing, I'm on this side and not on that side and that side is going

to be in trouble.

In Paul believe that persecuting, hounding, condemning enemies was God's will for his

life.

So in Acts chapter 9, for example, it talks about how Paul was breathing out murderous

threats against members of the way, followers of the way of Jesus and looking for letters

from other religious leaders so he could have them thrown into prison.

What happened?

What changed him?

Well, as you may know, all the road to Damascus, he was met by the resurrected Jesus.

And the question that Jesus asked him was, Saul, Saul, that was his Jewish name.

Why are you persecuting me?

Now of course, he didn't think he was persecuting Jesus.

He was persecuting the church, followers of Jesus, but somehow Jesus says, when you see

them, you see me.

When you hurt them, you hurt me.

We'll come back to that idea.

When Paul met the resurrected Jesus that disciples did, several people had experiences

and counters with Jesus.

It was not a vision.

It was not a ghost.

It was not a hallucination.

It was the resurrected Jesus.

Paul had no category for that.

That blew his mind as it will blow yours in mind when we think about it.

When Tom Wright puts it this way, Paul realized that God had now done for Jesus in the middle

of time what Paul thought he would do for Israel at the end of time.

And so this changed everything.

And the way that Paul began to view what God was doing, the way that his theology changed

was that now all that came down to this, that here is Jesus over here.

And here is all of us for all who have sinned, Jew and Gentile, male, female, slave and

free, fallen short of the glory of God.

And so the question now is now who is the faithful servant of Jesus who will be vindicated?

And of course, that was Jesus.

Jesus provided the kind of faithful servanthood that no human being, Israel or anybody else,

would be able to do.

And he died on the cross.

That was the ultimate expression of forgiveness for us.

And then when was Jesus vindicated?

When was it that God said then a public way for the world to know?

Here's my boy.

He's the one who listened to him.

He is your hope.

Well, of course, that was the resurrection.

The resurrection is when death was defeated, when the enemies, the ultimate enemies are

not people.

It turns out it's not really the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Romans, it's hatred,

it's sin, it's guilt, it's hell, it's death itself.

The enemies were defeated in the crucifixion and the resurrection.

And the temple that is God's presence on earth was made available to everybody now

through the risen Jesus and the spirit that he would send at the resurrection.

The resurrection is the great vindication, the great expression of God, here it is.

Now the new age has begun.

Nobody was expecting this, Paul, least of all.

And so then he has to think about everything.

So then, now, where does that leave all of us?

Well it turns out now, if any of us want to stand with Jesus, then we simply do that

by trusting him, by following him, by becoming a part of his community, by becoming one of

his people, by becoming one of his apprentices, by being with him and learning from him how

to live like him, by receiving his forgiveness and his presence with us and his love for us

as a free gift of grace.

And we do all that without earning anything simply by placing our trust in him, by giving

our hearts.

Now part of what Paul realized was before my other ways of looking at who's part of the

faithful group, you know, who's going to be vindicated, who's going to be justified,

it was kind of superficial.

It was like these laws.

It was stuff that you could see, but actually God judges by the heart if there is an open

and contrite heart, a willing and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise.

You are being judged by the appearance, but God judges by the heart.

Now if we get this understanding of faith wrong, then there's a problem.

Sometimes people who hear about justification by faith think what that means is I'm supposed

to trust that Jesus made an arrangement for me to get into heaven when I die.

And the problem there is that I'll think that really I'm just, if I believe that what

that means is if I believe the right doctrine, God has no excuse to keep me out of heaven.

He has to let me in.

There's an Anglican divine, Tom Wright quotes, Richard Hooker, who wrote, one is justified

by faith, one is not just, try again, one is not justified by faith, by believing in

justification by faith, say that once more, one is not justified by faith, by believing

in justification by faith, by believing in a particular doctrine.

The mark of people who are now standing with Jesus is that we simply trust Him.

Well, how do I know I'm going to get into heaven?

Here's an idea, trust God.

Trust God that He will do the right thing with you.

See we only demand to know what's the deal, what's the contract, what's the guarantee

when we don't trust the person.

If W.J were to say to me, I'm going to buy your car, just trust me to pay you the right

amount.

I would not do that.

I would say, I want to see the deal.

I want to spell that in black and white, you tell me, what's the formula?

If Sam were to say to me, I'm going to buy your car, trust me.

I will do right by it in a heartbeat, because I know his heart and his goodness that it

would be way better than anything I can imagine.

We trust Jesus, so ideas, I trust Jesus for everything.

The problem with trusting and arrangement, if I believe a certain thing that I go to

heaven when I die is, I can think I'm trusting Jesus with my eternal destiny when I'm

not actually trusting Him about anything.

I don't trust what He said about money, I don't trust what He said about servanthood,

I don't trust what He said about anger, I don't trust what He said about humility.

Well, if I don't actually want Jesus to be, Lord, heaven would be a pretty miserable place

to be, because most of what we know about it, we're kind of guessing at the imagery,

but for sure, it'll be really hard to avoid Jesus there, and He's going to be around

the show.

The mark of anybody who wants any open heart is trusting in Jesus, and of course, we're

not able to tell for sure about anybody where their heart is.

That's where Jesus would look at so many people, and their heart was just right there,

the heart was just right there, their heart was just right there, and that's what happens

to Paul.

Now, that's where no condemnation, no condemnation, when I look at people, who am I allowed to

associate with?

Who can I sit down on a table and have fellowship with?

Do you understand?

It is an incredible gift to you and me that Jesus did what He did, and then that Paul did

what He did to throw those gates wide open, and people that previously were thought to

be outsiders like, nope, they're trusting Jesus now there, and even people that aren't

trusting Him yet, man, they might just be that close.

I don't know, so to be able to be with, to love people, to enjoy people, to learn from

people, to serve people, to care for people, that's the way of Jesus that Paul began, and

Mr. Condemn and Persecutan throw in jail and thinking, my anger and, you know, my letting

other people know how wrong they are as God's will for my life just got completely transformed.

I'm mentioning before, when the resurrected Jesus came to Paul, what He said was, why

you persecuting me?

In other words, you think that those are people that I don't like, that I don't care for,

that I want to have damage.

No, no, no, not only do I love them, but what you, you'll find me in them.

It's a very strange thing with Jesus and the kingdom, Matthew 25, he's talking about

people that everybody pretty much rejects and gives up on, people on the margins, people

that are in prison, people that don't even have any money, any food or any clothes, they're

desperate.

Whatever you do for them, you do for me, somehow I'm in them.

In Luke 9, the disciples are arguing about who's the greatest and he takes a little child

and he says, this is the least important, least important being, whoever welcomes this

little child, whoever welcomes the least important, the least significant, the least powerful,

the least educated, the least attractive, the least whatever, whoever welcomes them,

welcomes me.

He says in Matthew 18, wherever there's a gathering of folks in my name, even if it looks

real unimpressive, how small can you get and still be a gathering two or three, I'm there.

Somehow when you look at a person, I want you to see me.

You're going to see that at the deepest level of archaeology, our understanding of God

and his heart for and making of people.

That's the land of no condemnation.

I love Richard Dirks in his book, talks about just to help him practice this in a tangible

way when his phone rings or his phone goes off.

If you ever find yourself kind of irritated by that, could be a text to, could be an email,

his comment when he, when that happens, he says out loud, bend into Kamu's domino,

and that doesn't mean bless the dominoes or bless the pizza.

It means it could be the Lord.

So today, when you're phone buzzes, when you get a call or a text or you read an email,

or you see another person wherever you see them, where you work or in your home or on

the street, when you're out driving around, maybe somebody different than you, maybe

somebody that looks real different or weird and you're tempted to just bend into Kamu's

domino.

It could be the Lord.

That could be the Lord.

That could be the Lord.

Today be an included today.

Years ago, I was at a gathering and there was somebody there who I thought was quite important

and we had meetings and then free time and during a free time, I was talking to Mr.

Big, Dr. Big, and another guy we'll call him Bob came up and he was kind of just standing

in there and I was kind of irritated because it's like, no, no, no, this is my time with

Mr. Big, not your time, but Dr. Big actually turned to him and invited him into that little

circle.

So instead of it being two of us, it was now three of us.

And then when the larger group gathered together, the doctor who was teaching us, talked

about that moment and said, and thinking about God and community and I would just God

wants everybody in.

There's room at the cross for you.

There's room at the cross for you.

Millions of come still room for one and say, that's that's Jesus.

There's come a trust, anybody, whatever you've done.

And this doctor said, you know, there was two of us here and then one guy standing on

the outside and then we opened up and welcomed him in and that's what Jesus does.

The doctor said, if he didn't, we'd do that John.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So today be an included here, a welcomeer.

There's Jesus.

There's Jesus.

There's Jesus.

We're on the road of Paul.

We're on the old Damascus road.

That's where we're headed.

There is now.

Therefore, no condemnation.

Thanks for hanging all the way to the end if you did.

Hey, did you have a takeaway from that teaching?

Don't keep it to yourself, share it in the comments or text it to us or email it to us.

We would love to hear from you.

My name is Tim.

I'm a part of the team here at Become New and I'm a pastor.

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