By J.D. Walt
Prayer of Consecration
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Scripture
What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written:
“See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall,
and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.”
Romans 9:30–33 (NIV)
Consider This
I had another BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) today.
Paul and Jesus were the same age (give or take a few years). They grew up in different places—about five hundred miles apart. They were both Jews. Relatively speaking, Paul was born into privilege; Jesus into relative poverty. Jesus—as the second person of the Trinity—was by order of magnitude in another category than Paul and yet both were otherwise ordinary first-century men.
Perhaps most significantly, both of these men had the same purpose, goal, and ambition in life. They both wanted to see Israel, the people of God, fulfill their God-ordained role as the light of the world. They both wanted the kingdom of God to come on Earth as it is in Heaven. They wanted to see scriptural holiness spread across the land—the glory of God filling up the whole Earth as the waters covered the seas.
Both of these men were men of the Law—of Torah. They both knew the story of God inside out and upside down. And that’s about where their similarities end. When it came to their method their approach could not have been any more different. Let’s say Jesus and Paul would not have been friends. Paul led the movement within Judaism that believed the way forward was 100 percent straight legalistic obedience to the Law. We should probably point out the absurdity of this approach at the outset here. Let’s call it a legalistic observance of the Law that paraded as self-righteous obedience. Jesus despised this approach.
It is oversimplifying it to say it this way and yet it is right. Paul set out to keep the Law with a legalistic observance.
but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works.
Jesus came to fulfill the Law with overwhelming love. Paul would have considered Jesus totally irrelevant. Jesus would have considered Paul very dangerous.
And in the irony of all ironies, Paul’s approach to the Law would nail Jesus to the cross.
Nope, Jesus and Paul would not have been friends . . . until they were.
They never met before Jesus was crucified. They actually met after Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended into Heaven. We will hear all about their meeting in the upcoming Wake-Up Call series on the Acts of the Apostles. (It is one of the great pieces of historical evidence for the resurrection itself.) Suffice it to say, after this meeting on that fated road to Damascus, Paul and Jesus would become best friends forever. In a move that would stun paupers and princes, Paul came over to team Jesus, and the rest is history. Talk about overwhelming love—Jesus picked Paul, his biggest detractor and the most fierce enemy of the church, to quarterback his team.
“See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall,
and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.”
Jesus, the great stumbling block for the Jews (and all seeking to attain righteousness and salvation by their own efforts), became the solid rock on which Paul would stand and beckon the Jews (and everyone else) to stand with him. All other ground is sinking sand.
Prayer
Abba Father! What a story! What a Savior! Jesus, we belong to you. We love this story because it is all at once too good to be true and yet it is the truest story ever told. You take the chief of sinners, who prided himself as the paragon of righteousness, and turn him into a preeminent saint. You take your worst enemy and turn him into your best friend. What a Savior! It raises my confidence in what you might be able to do in my life, with me, even me. I just want to stand on this rock and bow in awe for now. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.