Tuesday: The Gospel in Paul
Like many of his countrymen, Paul thought he was in good spiritual standing. But then he saw Jesus as the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me
(Gal. 2:20, NASB). Suddenly he saw himself not saved, but lost; not God’s servant, but God’s enemy; not righteous, but the chief of sinners. The scales fell from his eyes, in other words, in his reading of the Old Testament. God’s revelation, to him personally and through the Scriptures, transformed his heart and changed his life forever. We will not understand Paul’s epistles until we recognize these basic facts, which produced them.
Image © Lars Justinen from GoodSalt.com
Read 2 Corinthians 3:14-16 in this light and then verses 2-6. What does Paul identify here as the crucial step?
The meaning of the old covenant becomes clear only when one turns to the Lord
(vs. 16, ESV). Jesus is the way to salvation. It all begins and ends in Him. Israel-by trusting in their own obedience, as Paul did before his conversion-experienced the old covenant as a minister of death. Why? Because all have sinned
(Rom. 3:23), including the people of Israel, and so the commandments could only condemn them (2 Cor. 3:7). By contrast, believers in Corinth were a letter of Christ . . . written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts
(vs. 3, NASB).
Read Romans 1:16-17; Romans 3:24-26. How does Paul define the gospel? What all do we receive through Christ by faith?
The gospel is the power of God to save all who believe. Righteousness is based not on what we do but on what Christ has done for us, which we claim by faith. It is a belief that grows from faith to faith
(Rom. 1:17). What Paul means by this is unpacked in the rest of Romans, the heart of which is found at the end of chapter 3. Through Christ we have redemption (God has bought us back by paying for our sins), justification(we are cleared of guilt and cleansed by grace), and forgiveness (God accepts us back and forgets
our past sins). Amazingly, God, through the sacrifice of Christ, proves Himself to be just in justifying the ungodly who have put their faith in Jesus.
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Rom 1:16-17
V16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God to salvation to every one that believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
V17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
It is of necessity that the gospel is turned to flesh ie to live within our hearts. Wen it does, it reveals the righteousness of (righteousness which comes from) God. The gospel shows us how unworthy we are yet God treats us as if we were right - justification.
Our lives must reveal the power of the gospel, the justification in us must show thru our conduct and our treatment of others. Then we will share the gospel without much effort becos the gospel at work in us will show thru our conduct and attract others
If God calls us "a royal priesthood, a holy nation" wen in and of ourselves are not, it is a call to for us to also see others as nice pipo they are supposed to be and not as they are. Wen we do, it gives us fulfilment to carry on with joy regardless of wat treatment we receive from others.
God is calling us today to receive the power that is in the Gospel this will be manifested in our day to day life and we shall not be ashamed to lift Him up
This weeks lesson seems to do a bit of a 180 on the reality of what James taught. As I see it James message was that there is no way for love to be static. Love IS a verb - is behavior. This aligns obviously with John - in 14:21 etc. and of course the words of Jesus in Matt 5. Also, if it is grace alone and has nothing to do with what we do - do we not them ride back into John Calvin's camp where choice is gone? Love is choice too. Besides, just what is it we will be judged for? I seems that the fact that there is going to be a judgment is lost on us when we think behavior is besides the point. Seems to me that behavior IS the point.
Love is not a feeling but is what we do in spite of what we feel. Thank you James for verifying that.
Gary, James was a very practical person who saw a creeping disregard for doing what is right. I think a lot of that was because people were misinterpreting what Paul was saying as Peter said, "as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures" (2 Pet. 3:15-16 NKJV).
Paul never undercut the necessity of good works. His message was that we are not saved by them but rather by the grace of God in the form of a free gift. In the second half of all his doctrinal epistles Paul went into the things we are to do. To him it was part of being a Christian that we did because we are saved and have become the children of God (1 Jn 3:1).
Tuesday December 23
''The Gospel in Paul...''
...Wrong conclusions. We are not justified in our sins. We are transformed into new creatures who no longer sin.