Abe and the Gospel Ship

Deb and I are on our first cruise.  Our ship is the Oasis of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world.  It holds 5,400 guests and 2,100 crew members.  

More than half these people are from countries other than the U.S.  This is literally a floating U.N.  And it is a beautiful parallel of God’s gracious saving act in Jesus.  

Just as He promises through Abraham to bless all nations the world, this massive ship safely carries people from just about every ethnic group on our journey.

While we ride as passengers on this huge cruise ship, God’s saints set sail on His amazing Gospel ship.

Paul tells the Galatians that they are saved through their faith in God just as Abe was.  No good works required.  No rule keeping needed.  The false teachers are wrong.  Very wrong.  

Once again, the apostle flips his Bible open to Genesis to explain the doctrine of justification by faith.  “We’re children of faith thanks to Abraham” (Gal 3:7).

He describes how the writers of Scripture looked into the future and saw how “God would justify the Gentiles by faith” (v8).  Paul uses the Greek word εθνος/ethnos to describe the Gentiles.  It’s where we get our English word “ethnic.”  

The Lord reveal to the prophetic authors how one day He would bless, save, and justify people from every ethnic group through the faith of Abraham.  He would actually do this through Abe’s descendant Jesus.

Paul uses a very interesting phrase when he writes how “the Scripture…preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham” (v8).  “Preached the Gospel”?  

In the OT?  Huh?  It’s another fabulous example that the Bible is really one story, not two.  And Jesus is THE Hero of that story.  The OT saints were saved the same way God saves believers in the NT.  By faith and trust in Him alone.

The apostle says that the Gospel that Abraham heard preached was God’s personal promise to him, “In you shall all the nations be blessed” (v8).  This is a quote from Genesis 16:3 that’s later repeated again in Genesis 18:18 and yet again in Genesis 22:18.

Here Paul equates the very words of Yahweh to Scripture.  This reminds us how the inspired words of the Bible are equal to hearing directly from the lips of the Lord.  It is indeed God’s holy Word.

God’s promise of future blessing qualifies as the Gospel because that future blessing of all the people groups of the world will happen through Abe’s eventual descendant, Jesus Christ, the radical Rabbi/Carpenter from Nazareth. 

It is through Jesus that we receive that blessing.  What is that blessing?  Ultimately it is God Himself.  He is my portion(Ps 73:26; Lam 3:24).

The beauty of God’s Gospel ship as opposed to our cruise ship is that He is still accepting passengers, just as He has been for thousands of years.  He is welcoming aboard people from every country, race, language, and religious background.  

They don’t need a ticket.  They don’t need a passport.  If they’ve placed their trust in Jesus, He lovingly welcomes them aboard.

©2012 

Jay Jennings

Just Say "When"

Paul is reminding the Galatians of his bio.  The message he preached to them during his visit wasn’t some manmade concoction, but personally given him by Christ Himself (Gal 1:11-12).  As he had done when he was with them, he confesses his background as the lead persecutor and terminator of Jesus’ followers (Gal 1:13-14).  

The apostle then describes the process of his conversion.  But he doesn’t start with the divine mugging on the highway outside of Damascus.  He goes back, WAY back.  Back before he was born.  “But when He who had set me apart before I was born…” (v15).  

God’s selection of Paul began before his birth.  He uses the Greek verb αφοριζω/aphorizo, which literally means to mark off a boundary.  It also means to choose or set apart for a special purpose.  God handpicked Paul before he was a gleam in his mother’s eye.  

This is the theological idea of election.  Election is God’s sovereign choice of those for salvation regardless of any merit, qualifications, resume or accomplishments on their part.  When the Lord drafts someone before birth, there’s not much the draftee brings to the table.  Election is all based on God’s goodness and grace.  Paul is telling the Galatians that Almighty God put him on His team despite his self-righteousness and sin.

Paul relates how the Lord “called me by His grace” (v15).  If we missed it when he wrote of being “set apart,” he wants to make it clear that this was about God placing His apostle-to-be under the waterfall of His undeserved kindness.  God called Paul.  

This brings us to another big theological idea: effectual call.  When God calls, people answer “yes.”  When God calls, people respond positively.  When God calls, people never RSVP “no.”  Later, Paul will write to the Romans about this breathtaking process.    “For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.  And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified” (Rom 8:29-30).  

Just as he describes to the Galatians, Paul’s point here is that God is behind it all.  He’s the One doing the work.  He’s the One knowing, selecting, calling, justifying and glorifying.  That’s grace.  

The apostle eventually comes to that fateful day outside of Damascus when God “was pleased to reveal His Son to me” (v16).  Notice that long before that the Lord Paul apart and called him.  To get the full picture of what God is doing, we need to do a little grammar work.  Verses 16-18 are actually one long sentence.  

Let’s diagram the sentence and put the subject with the verb.  “But when He...was pleased to reveal His Son to me…”  Paul says that the timing of the events on the road were not only God’s idea but it made Him happy.  Don’t miss “when He.”  Not only does everything happen for a reason, but everything happens at a particular time for a reason.  Throughout the Bible we see God moving according to His calendar.  He works when He pleases.  A quick search of the phrase the “appointed time” shows that it appears 26 times in Scripture.

Timing is everything.  And God’s timing is perfect.  He’s never early.  He’s never late.  He is the Who behind not only the What, the How, the Why, the Where but the When.  For some reason that Paul doesn’t explain, it put a smile on God’s face to reveal His Son to Saul the Terminator as he was rolling into Damascus on his black ops mission against Jesus’ followers.

While God didn’t explain the timing, He did explain the reason for the midday mugging.  “That I might preach Him among the Gentiles” (v16).  This was Jesus’ specific assignment for the man from Tarsus.  Actually the the Greek in verse 16 is interesting.  

The ESV uses “preach.”  It’s actually the verb form of Gospel (Gr. ευαγγελιζω/euangelizo).  Once again, Paul gets back to the basics of the Good News.  He uses either the noun or verb form of Gospel over and over in this emergency epistle to Galatia.  He says that Christ has called him to spread the Good News “among the Gentiles.”  Actually, the original Greek uses the word εθνος/ethnos.  

Paul says that Jesus sent him to people of every ethnic group in the world, not just Jews.  God was swinging the door wide in offering salvation to the entire world through Jesus.  And Paul was His handpicked ambassador to spread the news.  So you could actually translate this phrase in verse 16 as “that I might Gospel Him among the ethnic groups.”  The English is awkward but effective.

Paul tells us that once Jesus got ahold of him outside of Damascus, he didn’t go running to anyone to confirm what Christ told him personally.  “I did not immediately consult with anyone” (v16).  Since he got his assignment straight from Jesus, the apostle sees no reason to get someone else to sign off on it.  

He goes on to say that he made the intentional decision to not “go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me” (v17).  He pulls no punches.  He clearly sees himself as an apostle.  He understands that he is one of those personally picked by Jesus to represent Him with full authority.  

Instead of going to Jerusalem, Paul “went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus” (v17).  He’s talking about Nabatean Arabia, a desert wilderness that stretched from just outside of Damascus to the Sinai Peninsula.  We don’t know what happened during his Arabian retreat.  

I think Jesus used this time to personally disciple Paul in this radical Gospel to non-Jews.  Could this be where he had his amazing vision of heaven (2Cor 12:2-4)?  Something happened in the desert.  We just don’t know what.  It will be cool to find out. 

©2012

Jay Jennings