“A place to Stand, a Place to Run To: in search of Paul’s Gospel” (Grace Montreal Church: Sunday, July 22nd, 2018: Romans 1.1-17; Philippians 3.4-14)



AUDIO

SEEKING THE MEANING OF THE CROSS OF JESUS

Is there a meaning on this hill?  Almost 2,000 years ago, on a hill outside of the capital city of the Roman province of Judaea, a blue-collar worker from the tetrarchy of Galilee (i.e. a nobody) was crucified – along with two other brigands – on a charge of political sedition (i.e. defying the empire).  In the eyes of the world at that moment, what happened that day was a non-event – it definitely wasn’t “gospel”.  The word “gospel” was actually a common word in the world of the New Testament; it was not invented by Christians (from a pagan background; Jews had a biblical concept of “gospel”: Is. 52.7).  “Gospel” meant “good news”, “worthy of the front page”.  Even the close friends of the executed man were so scared of sharing his fate that they were holed up in a locked apartment.  Fortunately, a sympathetic member of the Jewish Supreme Court took it upon himself to give the condemned man a decent burial, and in this way averted the further degradations that usually awaited crucifixion victims – that is to say, their corpses were often left hanging on their crosses to serve as carrion for the vultures and wild dogs.  Indeed, there was absolutely no reason for anyone outside the circle of this man’s friends to take notice of this tragic but all-too-common happening.  Not only was Yeshua/Joshua the equivalent – at the time – of “John” among men’s names in today’s western world, but the fact that the Romans crucified thousands of young Jewish men between the 1st century B.C. (when they first annexed Palestine) and the 2nd century AD (when they crushed the 2nd Jewish revolt and exiled almost the entire population) added to the “anonymous” nature of this event.  Some guy named Joshua got crucified?  Well, the sun rose this morning, didn’t it?  What’s the big deal?
The turning point of world history.  The fact that we – along with over 2 billion other inhabitants of this planet – know who this man was is evidence that his death did mean something after all.  This morning, we’re going to discuss the meaning that one first-century Jewish man gave to the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth – you guessed it, it’s Paul.  But before we talk about Paul, let’s back up a bit.  Why did anyone – even the members of Jesus’ inner circle – give any meaning to his death besides that of “an empire’s got to do what an empire’s got to do”.  The obvious answer is what happened on the third day after the crucifixion.  Jesus’ resurrection from the dead demonstrated to his disciples that there was more going on with Jesus than they had previously supposed.  But still, the question remained – even for those who had “believed” in Jesus and who had followed him from Galilee to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Passover – what did these two events – this brutal public execution of an innocent man followed by his “rising from the dead” into a state of bodily immortality – mean?  Was it just the case that a certain 4-letter word beginning with “sh” and ending with “it” happens?  Or was there more to it?  Obviously, those early followers of Jesus believed that there was a lot more to it – that’s why some of them proceeded to write the documents that we now call the “New Testament”.  The NT authors tell us what Jesus’ death and resurrection mean.  For them, the cross and resurrection of Jesus were not only news-worthy events, but – here’s the strange part – the NT authors also believed these (apparently) tragic and (definitely) strange events to be “good” news (i.e. “gospel”)!  And yet – and this is where things are going to get interesting – our understanding of the cross and resurrection often don’t match that of the NT writers.  This sometimes becomes especially (and painfully) obvious when we try to “evangelize” someone, to share “the gospel” with people (assuming, of course, that we are trying; Paul himself said that it’s better to talk inadequately about Jesus than not to talk about him at all: Phil. 1.15-18).
New(s)?  I don’t know about you, but I was born into a (fervent) evangelical family.  I’ve gone to church all my life; I’ve been involved in “ministry” of all kinds for half of my life; I’ve been studying theology for almost the same amount of time (i.e. way too long) – I’ve seen it all and heard it all and read it all…  How can people like us possibly learn anything fresh about our faith and about the Bible, after so many years of church attendance, after hearing (perhaps, suffering through) so many sermons, after having done so much Bible reading, etc.?  Well, let’s see…
Story interpreting story.  The first Christians told the story of Jesus (i.e. “the gospel”), not as being some random event which for some reason was necessary in order to get certain people into heaven, but rather as being the fulfillment of another story – the story of Israel, i.e. the long saga beginning with Abraham (20th century B.C.) and stretching all the way to their own time (1st century AD).  As we see in the Emmaus Road story in Luke’s Gospel, where the risen (but incognito) Jesus takes a walk with two disciples on Easter day and explains to them that the death of Jesus of Nazareth (just imagine Jesus talking about himself in the 3rd person) “had been spoken about” in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms (cf. Lk. 24.25-27, 44-49).  Luke tells us: “He interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” (24.27)[1]; Luke has Jesus say: “everything written about me…must be fulfilled” (24.44).  Incredible!  In light of the resurrection, a whole new way of reading the (Hebrew) Bible was required.  This is where the story had been going all along!  Who could have guessed?  As one NT scholar (N.T. Wright) puts it: “God had done, in a totally surprising and unexpected way, what he had always said he was going to do”.  It is in light of the entire Old Testament story – not simply that Jesus “fulfilled” a few random prophecies, a few verses picked here and there from the Bible – that the NT authors interpreted the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  So, have you read your OT lately?  That’s the challenge, if we really want to understand what the NT is saying.  This shouldn’t be controversial; we are evangelicals, after all.  Bible reading is 2nd nature for us, right?  However, as Bible-loving Christians, we have often read the NT, not in light of the OT story, but in light of a different story.  The story within which we have often read the NT is the story of how I get to heaven, of how I “get saved”, of how I get “born again”, or, at the very least, of how I plan to avoid hell, etc.  Please don’t panic!  God willing, we’re going to see how this all works out as we go along this morning.

MUSICAL INTERLUDE – THE CROSS & THE LOVE OF GOD

A “ruined” life.  We’re going to shift gears slightly at this point and consider the effect of the cross in the life of a 20th-century person, as opposed to a 1st-century one.  A “kindred spirit” for me in my struggle to better understand and articulate “the gospel” is Rich Mullins (1955-97), who – surprise! – was not a theologian, but rather a singer/songwriter who wrote, among dozens of others, the song “Awesome God”.  Rich suffered a tremendous amount of spiritual and emotional anguish during his not quite 42-years-long life.  And yet, 20 years after his death, Rich is still having a tremendous impact on people though his writings and especially through his music.  The purposes of God continue to go forward in spite of – no, scratch that – because of all of Rich’s pain.  Brennan Manning (1934-2013), an evangelist and a close friend of Rich’s, said this about him: “Jesus of Nazareth ruined Rich Mullins’s life.  And out of the ruins he recreated a ragamuffin of startling originality; no human being who has crossed my path even remotely resembles him”.[2]
Song.  We are now going to listen to one of Rich’s songs, called “A Place to Stand” (1986)[3].  Rich wrote this song as a love song (for a girl that eventually turned down his proposal of marriage); be that as it may, I think the lyrics are very relevant to our daily reality as followers of Jesus.
There’s a lot of things working against us – besides all the junk that comes with just being human, we – as Christians – are called to demonstrate to the (hopefully watching) world a new way to be human; Jesus calls us to follow him, and we’re trying to figure out just what that means and how that works.  And while we’re trying to take all this on, there are people, as well as spiritual forces, who are actively and (often) intentionally working against us and trying their best to make us give up.  Satan doesn’t so much want to destroy us as he just wants us to give up following God’s plan for our lives.  Remember when someone said the following to Jesus: “Lord! God forbid you should be crucified!  This must never happen to you!” (cf. Mt. 16.22-23)?  Even well-intentioned friends can trip us up as we try to follow the path God has laid out for us.  Satan doesn’t care what we do with our lives, as long as – to quote John Piper – we waste it.  On the cover of Piper’s book entitled Don’t waste your Life, there is an image of Jesus on the cross – the picture says it all.  Following Jesus means changing our definition of success.
There’s a lot of things working against us, But we know we can’t lose – as Jesus followers, we have been caught in – what Rich Mullins called – “the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God”[4].  Nothing, as Paul told the Christians in Rome, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (cf. Rm. 8.38-39).  Through the death of Jesus on the cross, the Creator has won the victory over sin, death and every force of evil.  The battle has been won, we belong to the champion and nothing can change that.  No hurt, pain, brokenness, illness, disappointment, adversity, persecution – not even death itself can do anything to change the fact that we belong to the One who loved us to the point of fighting (to the death) our battle on our behalf – the battle that we could never hope to win on our own.
There’s a lot of love locked up inside of us, that we’re learning to give – we were loved into existence.  Over and above the love that our parents might or might not have had for each other, God loved us even before we were conceived (cf. Ps. 139).  We were created to be loved and to love.  Easier said than done.  A big part of the Christian life is learning how to do the following three things: how to accept the fact that God loves me, as I am, now – before I’ve done anything in response to his love; how to respond to God’s love with my entire being over the course of my entire life; and how to love others unselfishly.  If we do those things, the words spoken by Jesus to a certain lawyer also apply to us: “You shall live” (cf. Lk. 10.28); in other words, you will not waste your life.  We’re all aware that we need love, but we have a lot of trouble both recognizing real love and truly loving others.  My prayer is that as we reflect on Paul’s gospel this morning, we will catch a glimpse of the reality of the love of God, as it was demonstrated in Jesus.
We need a place to run to and a place to stand – “safe places” are now a thing.  Over and above the need for a place to “hide” when we feel overwhelmed with anxiety is our need for a place where we know that we are on solid ground, where we are in touch with truth, with reality, with love.  We need a place to stand, which may or may not turn out to be a “safe” place, but a place where we know who we are and what we are called to do, a place that gives us assurance of our ultimate future.  I propose that for the apostle Paul, that place where he could “stand” was at the foot of the cross.  As Paul imagined himself standing below Jesus as Jesus was hanging, helplessly attached to that instrument of torture, Paul discovered who the true God was, that this God loved him (as well as the whole world) and that he was called to be an agent of this God’s love in the world.  Nothing easy about that.  For us Christians, the cross of Jesus (re)defines love. Paul’s gospel is all about the love of God, revealed supremely in the death of Jesus of Nazareth on a Roman cross, and that Jesus’ embracing of the vocation to incarnate the Father’s love cost him everything – it “ruined his life”.

Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth and told them this:
“Let me remind you, brothers and sisters, about
the good news which I announced to you. You received this good news,
and you’re standing firm on it, 
and you are saved through it,
if you hold fast the message I announced to you
(1 Cor. 15.1-2: Kingdom NT).
So, the title of today’s sermon is brought to us by Rich Mullins & the apostle Paul – we “stand” on the gospel, i.e. on the message that Paul proclaimed to the Corinthians centuries ago and proclaims again to us, today.

SEEKING TO DEFINE THE “GOSPEL”

Jesus’ “gospel of the kingdom”.  So, what exactly does the word “gospel” mean?  “Gospel” is a buzzword, and it’s extremely easy to fill it with all kinds of content that wasn’t intended by the NT authors themselves.  You only have to read 4 chapters into the NT before stumbling across this (in)famous word: Matthew’s “Gospel”, i.e. his book about Jesus, tells us: “Jesus went throughout Galilee… proclaiming the gospel (euangelion) of the kingdom…” (Mt. 4.23).  So Jesus himself preached … “the gospel”?  What was the content of Jesus’ gospel?  Well, Matthew told us that Jesus proclaimed the gospel “of the kingdom”.  “Right”, we think, “Jesus was preaching the message about how to get into the ‘kingdom of God’ i.e. ‘heaven’ (after you die)”.  Wait a minute though; what did Jesus say 2 chapters later?  Jesus taught his disciples (that’s us) to pray this way: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name; Your kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven” (cf. Mt. 6.9-10).  In the “Lord’s Prayer”, Jesus has turned our eschatology upside-down.  It’s not about escaping earth and going to heaven; it’s about (the kingdom of) heaven coming to earth (cf. Rev. 21.1-5).  What’s more, the coming of the kingdom of God to earth can never be limited to my life (or “my heart”) as a Christian individual, or the life of a local church community, or even to the Church “universal”.  The prayer for the Father’s kingdom to come is a request that – in the words of a theologian who was also the prime minister of the Netherlands (Abraham Kuyper: 1837-1920) – every “square inch” of creation submit to the authority of its Creator.  And by praying the Lord’s Prayer, we are signing ourselves up to be participants in the realisation of the prophet Isaiah’s dream that: “the earth…be full of the knowledge of Yahweh as the waters cover the sea” (cf. Is. 11.9).  So, according to Jesus, “the gospel” is not about me getting to heaven; it’s all about the “reign of heaven” (i.e. the kingdom of God) coming to earth, starting with my life.  As another NT scholar (Michael Bird) put it, “Some gospel presentations give me the impression that God is either some kind of self-help therapist who wants me to feel better about myself or else is much like the leader of a cult who promises to transport his adherents to the far away planet “Blisstonia” on death.”  As we’ve already seen, (God’s love revealed on) the cross is on a whole different level from “self-help therapy”.
The ruined life of Paul.  So, Jesus preached the “gospel of the kingdom”; what kind of gospel did Paul proclaim?  Indeed, if Saul of Tarsus (as he had been formerly known) had been an extremist Pharisee, willing to go to any lengths to defend his Jewish faith from all threats, Paul the apostle of Jesus was no less extreme.  Once Jesus had “ruined his life”, Paul was all in – he laid everything on the line in the attempt to (literally) spread the “gospel” of Jesus “to the ends of the earth”.
It’s a wonderful life.  Rich Mullins, Jesus & Paul – three men whose lives were “ruined” by the love of God.  Wait a minute!  That can’t be right!  What’s the first of Bill Bright’s 4 spiritual laws?  “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life”.  I’m sorry – perhaps some here today became Christians as a result of having read a tract entitled “The 4 spiritual laws”; I sincerely apologize, but my feelings of remorse are in no way going to stop me from doing what I’m about to do.  This morning, I am totally going to deconstruct Bright’s first spiritual “law” (falsely so called).  And I’m going to use the Bible to do it.  There, you’ve been warned.  I mean, can you possibly imagine Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the eve of his crucifixion, praying: “Father, um, remember that wonderful plan you had for my life? …”  Of course God loves us.  Of course God has a plan for each one of our lives.  There’s absolutely no doubt about that.  But here’s the thing – at the end of the day, it’s not about me and it’s not about you; it’s all about …God, God and his purposes, his plans for us, yes, but firstly for his world.  God has saved us so that we can partner with him in his purpose of bringing salvation to the entire creation.  That’s the way it was for Abraham: “I will bless you”, God told Abraham (great!), “and you shall be a blessing for all the nations” (cf. Gn. 12.1-3) and that’s the way it is for us.  God has a plan for his world and he has a role for each one of us to play within it.  God does indeed have a plan for each one of our lives.  However, it might turn out that God’s “wonderful” plan for me may NOT involve me living the American dream.  Am I OK with that?  Can I (honestly) say “Not my will, but yours be done”?  (Heavy stuff for a summer Sunday morning… the truth ain’t easy, but it’s worth it).
New law.  So what can we salvage from Bill Bright’s first “spiritual law”?  It would be easy to paraphrase the first “law” as follows: “God loves us and has a plan for our lives that involves ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’”.  Rather, I propose the following “amendment” of this “law”: “God loves us and has a plan for our lives that involves eternal, divine life, liberty from ourselves and the pursuit of holiness”.  If we go out on the street and tell that to people as opposed to the “wonderful plan” stuff, we might get fewer converts, but the converts we do get will have less of a shock when they come to church and start hearing sermons telling them that the “wonderful plan” involves stopping extramarital sex, pornography, alcohol abuse, hatred, anger, jealousy, retaliation against enemies, selfishness, etc. and starting marital fidelity, single abstinence, self-control, peacemaking, loving your enemies, giving your lives (and your money) away, etc. 
There was a famous doctor in the 2nd Century whose name was Galen. In his book on Plato’s Republic, he made an interesting comment about the Christians with whom he was in contact.  In his book, Galen said he knew two (to him, equally weird) things about the Christians: they believed in the resurrection of the body, and they didn’t sleep around.  Of course, for Paul, that would have made perfect sense; he told the Corinthians: “The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power” (1 Cor. 6.13-14).  Since, at the return of Christ, our bodies will be resurrected to share in the bodily, immortal, glorified reality of Jesus’ resurrection, what we do with our bodies now matters.  Salvation is not a one-time deal.  Some people write the date of their “conversion”, “being born again”, etc. inside their Bible.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But let’s not assume that just because we made a commitment at some time in the past to follow Jesus, we don’t have to “confirm” that commitment on a very regular basis.  As Paul had reminded the Corinthians of the good news “through which… they were being saved, if they held firmly to the message that Paul had proclaimed to them” (1 Cor. 15.2).

Paul’s gospel about the Son of God.  OK, OK – so what was Paul’s “gospel”?
·        Our text today was written after Jesus had been busy ruining Paul’s life for about 25 years: Romans 1.1-17
Content.  A lot of people read the first 15 verses of Romans very quickly, in order to get to verses 16-17, where, it’s commonly believed, we get to the centre of what Paul’s “gospel” is all about: “in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed”.  “The righteousness of God” – this is the theme of Paul’s letter to the Romans.  There’s a lot of debate about what this concept means (Here we go again.  I know, I know, but wrestling with the meaning of biblical words – especially those words that express the very core of our faith – is a non-negotiable.  It’s a bit scary sometimes to realize that “I’ve always ASSUMED that I knew exactly what these words meant, but now… I’m not so sure.”  Once again, let’s remind ourselves that the very fact that we’re trying to figure this stuff out is a sign that we have already been caught in the “reckless, raging fury that they call the love of God”.  God’s got us.  It’s OK.  But we still have to struggle to understand God’s word…).  “The righteousness of God” – there’s a consensus now among NT scholars that this refers neither to something God gives us (e.g. moral uprightness, holiness, etc.) nor to God’s “moral quality” (i.e. his holiness).  Rather, the “righteousness of God” refers to God’s faithfulness to the promises he made (first) to Abraham (when he established a covenant with him) and the promises that he made to his covenant people Israel during all of the 20 centuries between Abraham & Jesus.  There we are: Paul gave meaning to Jesus’ death and resurrection by understanding these events in light of the biblical story of Yahweh & Israel.  God’s “righteousness”, i.e. his covenant-faithfulness, was revealed in “the gospel”.  So!?  What exactly is Paul’s gospel?
Quadripartite proclamation.  To discover the precise content of Paul’s “gospel”, we need to look closely at the first 4 verses of Romans.  “The gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son…” (vv. 1b-3a).  Paul is setting us up for the knock-out punch (here it comes): “his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord” (vv. 3b-4).  There it is!  This is the content of Paul’s “gospel”.  When he had written to the Corinthians, Paul had defined his “gospel” this way: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and…he was buried, and…he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15.3-4).  Paul’s gospel is a 4-point message about Jesus: (1) Jesus was crucified; then (2) he was raised from the dead, demonstrating that (3) he is the “Christ” of Israel and (4) the true Lord of the whole world.  Let’s break it down.

1-2: Crucifixion & resurrection.  We’ve already said a lot about the cross; let’s consider the resurrection.  The resurrection was not just a freak miracle – the “necessary” happy ending to the otherwise tragic story of the cross.  Au contraire, when Jesus walked out of the tomb on Easter morning, this was the first instance of Jesus’ prayer for the Father’s reign (i.e. “kingdom”) to be established on earth being answered.  When the kingdom of God comes to earth, new creation happens.  Jesus’ crucified body (i.e. the body that carried Mary’s DNA) was the first “piece” of creation to be re-made, i.e. re-created into the resurrected, glorified, immortal body with which he exited the tomb.  God’s promised new world begins here (cf. Rm. 8.11, 18-23; 1 Cor. 15.20-25).  In Paul’s words, the risen Jesus is the “firstfruits” – the guarantee – of the promised harvest – i.e. the resurrection of all believers when Jesus returns.  The Church exists in the “time between the times” (cf. 1 Cor. 10.11) – i.e. between Jesus’ resurrection, on the one hand, and his return to fully and finally establish the kingdom of God on (the remade) earth (i.e. to permanently unite “earth” & “heaven”) on the other.  Jesus’ resurrection is the demonstration of the truth of points 3 & 4 of Paul’s gospel.

3: The (true) King of Israel.  The word “Christ” is another one of those words that we’ve become so accustomed to hearing that it has become (almost) meaningless.  Well, maybe not completely meaningless.  I was sitting in church at Easter-time and I overheard a conversation between a child and her mother in the pew behind me.  The child exclaimed in shocked surprise: “Mommy, the priest said ‘JESUS CHRIST’!”  Well, at least the name of Jesus is still present in our popular culture…  (It’s up to us to tell people that it’s not just a swear-word).  When the New Testament applies the word “Christ” to Jesus, it means that Jesus is the Messiah, i.e. the “anointed” king of Israel.  Why is that important?  Remember, we can only understand Jesus, and his death and resurrection, in light of …the biblical story of Israel.  In the Old Testament, starting at the time of King David, God made the promise to his people that a descendant (“son”) of David would one day rule, not only over the nation of Israel, but over all the nations of the earth (cf. Ps. 2, 89; 2 Sam. 7.12-16; indeed, “Son of God”, in these passages, refers to the king of Israel).  Going further back in time to the call of Abraham, God had promised to bring salvation to the world through Abraham and his descendants.  “Salvation is of the Jews” as Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well (cf. Jn. 4.22).  But of course, and Paul will make this point in Romans chapters 2-3, Abraham’s descendants – as someone once said – “were like everyone else, only more so”.  The members of the people of God were also sinful, just like the pagan nations.  So, God has a dilemma – how can he be faithful to the covenant-promise to save the world through the descendants of Abraham, as well as provide atonement for the sins of Abraham’s descendants themselves?  Solution: what was required was a faithful Israelite who would represent God’s people, and atone for their sins as well as those of the entire world, thereby fulfilling the purpose of God’s covenant with Abraham (i.e. to save the world).  You guessed it: Jesus was the answer.  Jesus, the King of Israel, who represents the entire nation – as a human being and by laying down his life on the cross – offered to God the faithfulness that God had always required from Israel, his covenant-partner.  On the cross, Yahweh’s faithfulness met the faithfulness of Israel’s Messiah (“Christ”), and the covenant (whose intention had always been to save the world) was thereby fulfilled.  So, there’s a lot of meaning packed into the word “Christ”.

4: The world’s true Lord.  “Jesus Christ our Lord” says Paul (Rm. 1.4).  Once again, let’s ask ourselves our (annoying?) question: What does that mean?  It’s a commonplace for us to utter the phrase “Jesus is my Lord & Saviour”.  And we usually understand that phrase in the context of the story of “how I get saved”.  However, for Paul and the Romans, the phrase “Jesus Christ our Lord” was “fighting talk”.  There was already a “lord” in the Roman world of the first century – Caesar, the emperor.  When Paul wrote to the Romans (c. AD 57), Nero was on the throne of Rome; he was the first emperor to systematically persecute Christians (and would eventually have Paul himself executed c. AD 65).  Among the many imperial titles that surrounded the image of Nero on Roman coins were: “lord”, “saviour”, “son of the divine [in Nero’s case] Claudius”, (i.e. “son of [a] god”), etc.  It’s no accident that Paul begins his letter to the Christians in Rome with this power-packed declaration of “the gospel of God concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord”…  As far as Paul was concerned, there was only room for one “Lord” in God’s world – the “Christ” of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and risen (cf. 1 Cor. 8.5-6).  As Yahweh had said to the king of Israel in Psalm 2: “You are my son…Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession” (Ps. 2.7-8).  By preaching the gospel and founding communities of people who were loyal to Jesus, Paul was establishing – even in Rome, right under Caesar’s nose – a counterculture that was subversive – not because the early Christians were violently rebelling against the empire – but simply by its very existence.  The man from Nazareth – the Son of (Israel’s) God – crucified and risen, was Israel’s King and the world’s Lord.  That is Paul’s gospel.
Character.  So, we’ve seen what the content of Paul’s gospel is.  But what kind of message was it?  What was its peculiar character?  As we’ve seen, Paul’s gospel was NOT an explanation about “how you can get saved, born again, justified, etc.”  All of that is a result of having believed the gospel.  But Paul’s gospel itself is an announcement about events that have happened in the world, about what God has done in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  The gospel is good news. 
Once again, the early Christians were not the only ones going around the Roman Empire of the first century proclaiming a euangelion, i.e. “gospel”.  As I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon, “gospel” was a common word in the Roman world.  So, what would be considered “good news” to an ordinary run-of-the-mill Roman at the time of Paul?  The word “gospel” was used by ordinary Romans to refer to events concerning either the emperor (birth, enthronement, etc.) or concerning Caesar’s legions (military victory).  Usually, the two (Roman) meanings of “gospel” were linked – the enthronement of a new emperor was “good news” because it usually meant that there would be no more civil conflict among competing candidates to the imperial throne.  Also, a victory for the Roman armies against the “barbarians” (i.e. non-Romans) was “good news” – either way, “justice” would be done and the empire would have “peace”.  There are indeed biblical roots to the word “gospel” (cf. Is. 52.7), but the way Paul used the word was bound to be heard as ushering a (implicit) challenge to the Roman imperial ideology.  By proclaiming his gospel, Paul is (subtly) saying, “Rome, in all its glory, has been upstaged by a young Jewish man who was condemned to death by the empire.  As a matter of fact, the very death of that young Galilean and his resurrection from the dead is the real ‘good news’ that should make the world rejoice (and make Caesar shiver in his shoes)”.
Paul’s gospel was news about what God had done in and through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, Israel’s King and the world’s Lord.  So what was the right response to such news?
Challenge.  We’ve looked at both the content and the character of Paul’s gospel.  But what was the challenge of Paul’s gospel?  “We have received…apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations”, says Paul (Rm. 1.5).  This is the appropriate response to the proclamation of the gospel (of Jesus) – “the obedience of faith”.
Actually, this was also the response that Caesar expected to receive to the proclamation of the gospel “concerning him”.  The word (don’t panic!) “faith” (pistis) means “trust”, “belief” and also “loyalty”.  So, when the gospel of Caesar was proclaimed – e.g. Nero has just been crowned emperor! – he expected the inhabitants of his empire to respond with “loyal obedience”, i.e. pay their taxes, offer incense in front of his statues, be nice, submissive subjects and of course, not do anything to disturb the imperial peace.  So much for Caesar – how did Paul intend people to respond to the gospel of Jesus?  Ironically (and perhaps, disappointingly), Paul also expected Christians to pay their taxes (cf. Rm. 13.6-7).  Presumably, the early Christians – for the most part – very well-behaved when tax season rolled around.  However, many Christians would choose to lose their lives rather than offer public acts of worship to the emperor.  This was the paradoxical nature of being a Christian in the first century – Paul wanted the members of his churches to be “model citizens” to the extent that that was possible without ascribing to Caesar the honour that was due only to Jesus.  It was a delicate and difficult balance to maintain.  Actually, whenever we fully think through the implications of our faith vis-à-vis public life, we will find that it is an art and a science to faithfully follow Jesus in a (western) world that has – for all intents and purposes – “dethroned” Jesus.
(However), nothing can change the fact that Jesus is Lord.  He is the “supreme ruler” (don’t worry, he’s not part of the “First Order”…Star Wars reference…) of God’s world and he is the one to whom “every knee will (ultimately) bow” (cf. Phil. 2.9-11).  Paul was travelling around the empire where everyone was aware of Caesar’s “gospel”; Paul proclaimed his own “gospel”, according to which Jesus of Nazareth – not Nero – was Lord, was the true “emperor”.  Paul was claiming that the (known) world no longer belonged to Caesar – it now belonged to Jesus.  Yes, Nero was sitting on the throne of Rome, but from the perspective of (first Jewish, then) Christian faith, he was merely a “servant of God” and his purposes (cf. Rm. 13.3-4; cf. also e.g. Is. 44.28), someone to be respected, but acknowledged as being someone who served the will of the true Lord.  So, the challenge of Paul’s gospel is to be constantly aware of the fact that Jesusnot any government, any economic or political world-body, the G7, the UN, NATO, not Vladimir Putin, not even Donald Trump (not sure whether I should bother mentioning Trudeau) – Jesus is Lord, he is the one who claims our ultimate allegiance; Jesus is Lord now, he was enthroned at the right hand of God following his ascension 2,000 years ago (cf. Ac. 2.33-35), and he has been Lord ever since.  We live in God’s world, the world in which he has launched his kingdom (through the resurrection of Jesus), the throne of which was given to Jesus and over which he will rule “until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (cf. 1 Cor. 15.25-26, 28; cf. also Ps. 110.1).  As Christians, we are even called to share in the reign of Jesus over the world – not by “conquering” the world, not by dropping bombs on the “axis of evil” (in September 2001, American President Bush spoke of launching a “crusade” to “rid the world of evil”) – but rather by bringing the “cruciform” love of God to every corner of the world, starting in our own backyard.  Yes, it will mean suffering, but Jesus said that that’s the only way (cf. e.g. Lk. 24.26).
So, this is Paul’s gospel.  This is the place, the solid rock on which we take our stand in the midst of the (sometimes hostile, often indifferent) world. 

BECOMING GOSPEL-PEOPLE

So, we have a place to stand.  We also have “a place to run to”.  Our place to run to is the (local) Church.  John Calvin said: “God is our Father and the Church is our Mother”.  Our church community is the place where we are nurtured, where we discover our (spiritual) giftings, where we are healed and ministered to, where we learn how to minister to others – our church is where we learn (to be loved and) to love.  It’s not for nothing that Paul’s favourite way of referring to the members of his churches is as his “family” (i.e. “brothers [and sisters]”).  Life in Christian community is not to be characterized by individualistic ambition, achievement and “success”, but rather mutual solidarity and humble service.  Paul tells the Philippians: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil. 2.3-4).
From riches to rags to resurrection.  Once we’ve grasped – or rather, been grasped by (cf. Gal. 4.9) – the gospel (according to Paul), we are called to become “gospel-people”.  This means that we will say, along with Paul: “I decided to know nothing (among you) except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2.2).  As we’ve seen, embracing the gospel that Paul preached can NEVER be a question of simply “getting saved” and then sitting around waiting, either to go to heaven or for Jesus to come back.  Yes, Christians who die before the return of Christ are “with him”, as Paul tells the Philippians (1.21-24).  Yes, Jesus will return; Paul says this over and over …and over again.  However, Paul has a very “active” (to put it mildly) understanding of the Christian life.  Writing to the Philippians, Paul uses the image of Jesus “grabbing hold of him” as he tries to “catch up to Jesus” as Paul “runs the race” of a disciple.  Listen to Paul:
“I’m not implying that I’ve already received ‘resurrection’, or that I’ve already become complete and mature!  No: I’m hurrying on, eager to overtake it, because King Jesus has overtaken me.  My dear family, I don’t reckon that I have yet overtaken it.  But this is my one aim: to forget everything that’s behind, and to strain every nerve to go after what’s ahead.  I mean to chase on toward the finish line, where the prize waiting for me is the upward call of God in King Jesus.” (Phil. 3.12-14: Kingdom NT)
Once we are “overtaken”, “overwhelmed” by Jesus, by the gospel of his death and resurrection, it is unthinkable that we interpret that as simply meaning: “Great, I believe that Jesus died for my sins; I accept him (into my heart).  I can’t wait to get to heaven.”  What’s wrong with this picture?  I, my – it’s all about me.  That is the OPPOSITE conclusion from the one Paul drew after he found himself “caught” by Jesus: “For the love of Christ urges us on…he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them” (2 Cor. 5.14-15; cf. Gal. 2.19-20).  This is incredible!  Paul says that the reason Jesus died was so that we would now live for him.  Jesus has things for us to do, and this flows straight from the gospel itself (cf. Eph. 2.8-10).
Right before the previous passage I quoted, Paul had said this to the Philippians:
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel,
of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews;
as to the law, a Pharisee; 
as to zeal, a persecutor of the church;
as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had,
these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.  More than that,
I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things,
and I regard them as rubbish, (skybala)
in order that I may gain Christ  …
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection
and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,
 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
(Phil. 3.4-11; cf. Gal. 1.13-14; 2.19-20)
These are the words of a man who had it all …and then lost it all “for the sake of Jesus”, “to gain Christ”.  “I want to know Christ”, says Paul, “and share his sufferings by becoming like him in his death”.  Paul had been “branded” (cf. Gal. 6.17), “scarred” with the “crucified-and-risen” nature of Jesus.  The cross and resurrection have left an “indelible mark” on Paul’s soul.  Paul wants to so deeply identify with Jesus that he can “re-live” Jesus’ (cross-)experience in his own life – as I put it – “from riches to rags to resurrection”.
Success story?  We often understand someone having a “calling” to the ministry in the same way that one can have a “professional vocation”.  Some people study welding to become welders; others study theology for the purpose (of realizing that most of what they are being taught is irrelevant and then getting back to the real task) of becoming preachers.  Sometimes it works out that way; that’s the convenient and respectable vocational journey.  Or, within our Christian sub-culture, we praise and (almost) “idolize” those who are called to exercise an “official function” in the church.  People get ordained to the ministry and everyone says, “Congratulations, we’re so happy for you!”  I think that if Paul could attend a modern-day ordination service, he would find it bitterly comical.  Just imagine the Bishop (or whoever) inviting Paul, the brilliantly successful missionary theologian, to come to the pulpit to grace all the young and eager seminary graduates with a motivational speech.
“Greetings graduates,” Paul might intone, “Let me tell you about my journey to the apostolic ministry and becoming a world-renowned Christian thinker.  Well, as you know, I was a Christian-killer for a few years (this was my period of trying to “find myself”), then the risen Jesus appeared to me on the road to Damascus and I decided to make a …life-change and stop killing Christians, and become one myself.  I became an over-night …fugitive, having to repel down the wall of Damascus in a bucket because the Damascene king wanted to kill me.  Then I tried to join the hippest, coolest megachurch of the first century – the Jerusalem Church, you know, the one that Jesus’ brother James was pastoring.  But my application for membership was denied because – can you believe it? – they held my past life against me. Then I spent a decade in obscurity back in my home town of Tarsus, getting publicly beaten every time I tried to preach in the synagogue, bringing tremendous shame on my family and losing all my friends in the process.  Then, I had my big break, I was …discovered by Barnabas, who brought me to the successful Antioch Church, which served as a base of operations for my numerous travels around the Eastern Mediterranean as a church-planter.  Life on the road as an evangelical superstar isn’t easy; it’s basically just an endless series of …prison cells, and mobs of people chasing you from town to town, in the hopes of having a chance …to stone you to death …um, where was this story going?...”
As far as Paul was concerned, “being set apart for the gospel of God” (Rm. 1.1) was not something to call home about!  From the perspective of normal, respectable, middle-class folks, being “called to be an apostle” of Jesus was the worst possible thing that could happen to you!  Paul’s “calling” was far from being an occasion of joy and community pride; au contraire, the moment Paul was “called” by Jesus was the moment that his life as he had always known it was utterly and irreversibly ruined.
Life “in Christ”.  This is the pattern of the life of those who are called to Christ’s service – and we’re all called to serve our Lord – our life has to be “ruined”, i.e. our vision for our lives has to be dashed to pieces (i.e. “crucified”) so that we can be captured by Jesus’ vision of how he will bring healing (i.e. “resurrection”-life) to the world, through us, and indeed, through our wounds.  Sound familiar?  It should.  After all, in the Gospels, Jesus is always saying “Pick up your cross and follow me” (cf. Mk. 10.21; Lk. 9.23; Jn. 21.19, 22).  This is – in the words of Watchman Nee – the “normal Christian life”.  As Christians, we are – as Paul is constantly saying – “in Christ”, i.e. what is true of Jesus is true of us (cf. 1 Peter 2.21, 24).  We are the “cross-and-resurrection” people, sent out from the cross into the world to be sources of healing and hope.  Paul says this in a dozen different ways:
“I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” (Col. 1.24) (Stop the presses!)
Our mission as a local church is nothing less than to model genuine humanness to the world, i.e. our neighbourhood.  We are the people of God, we are the true humanity – we are the women and men who are “being transformed into the…image [of Jesus, who is himself the image of God, i.e. he is the true human: cf. Col. 1.15; Gn. 1.26] from one degree of glory to another”, as Paul puts it (2 Cor. 3.18).
May our crucified and risen Lord fill us again with his Spirit so that we may be empowered to, as Jesus put it, “let our light shine before others, so that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven” (Mt. 5.16).  Amen.



[1] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are from the NRSV.
[2] Brennan Manning, “Foreword” in Smith, James Bryan, An Arrow pointing to Heaven, Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2000, p. x.
[3] https://youtu.be/ngF-9BZDN0Q (accessed July 18, 2018).
[4] https://youtu.be/IhKZn8gdN-E (accessed July 18, 2018).

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