An Interview with Saint Paul
Written by
Art Henkel (Paul’s answers are straight from Galatians
‘The Message’ translation).
Q. Paul, thanks for being willing to answer a few questions. It is
obvious God has given you a great love for His church so I’m sure your
comments will prove to be very insightful. Why don’t we get started?
What is your honest response to the message that is commonly proclaimed
through tod
ay’s church?
A. I
can’t believe your fickleness – how easily you have turned traitor to
Him who called you by the grace of Christ by embracing a variant
message! It is not a minor variation, you know; it is completely other,
an alien message, a no-message, a lie about God. (Gal. 1:6,7)
Q. Wow, that’s a pretty strong statement Paul. Way to start off with a
bang. You know, there are many good people in today’s church who believe
that having a right relationship with God is dependent on them trying
to serve Him faithfully. Is that correct? Was that the understanding
during the early days of the church?
A. We know very well that
we are not set right with God by rule keeping but only through personal
faith in Jesus Christ. Convinced that no human being can please God by
self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might
be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be
good. (Gal. 2:15,16)
Q. I’m told you were once a very religious man. What changed when you experienced Christ?
A. I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it
didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man.
Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified
myself completely with Him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ.
My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear
righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer
driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. (Gal. 2:18-20)
Q. I’ve heard you speak against living under the law while being a Christian. Is it that big of a deal?
A. Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping,
peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal
and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate
God’s grace. (Gal. 2:21)
Q. Many people in the church today
understand that salvation is only experienced through Christ Jesus, by
God’s grace. But once they come to faith they start thinking that they
must add something to the process by doing things for God. What would
you say to them?
A. How did your new life begin? Was it by
working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s
message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy
people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was
begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough and strong enough to begin it,
how do you suppose you could perfect it? Does the God who lavishly
provides you with his own presence, His Holy Spirit, working things in
your lives you could never do for yourselves, does He do these things
because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust Him to do
them in you? The person who lives in right relationship with God does it
by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the
opposite of entering into what God does for you. (Gal. 3:2-3, 5,9)
Q. But there are many Christians today who follow the example of those
in the Old Testament that faithfully obeyed the law. They believe that
by doing this, they will experience God’s blessings. What do you think?
A. But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent
His Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law
so that He might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law.
Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage. You can
tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as His own children because
God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, “Papa!
Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make
it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child,
you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance. (Gal.
4:4-7)
Q. If what you say is true, why do we seem to hear so much law teaching from our church leaders?
A. They want to shut you out of the free world of God’s grace so that
you will always depend on them for approval and direction, making them
feel important. Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your
stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. I am
emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision
or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won
gift of freedom is squandered. The person who accepts the ways of
circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for
the obligations of the slave life of the law. I suspect you would never
intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your
own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall
out of grace. (Gal. 4:17; 5;1-4)
Q. Okay, I get it. As
Christians we are no longer to live under the law but under a new
covenant of grace. But how do you go about doing that?
A. Live
freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the
compulsions of selfishness. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit
and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?
Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit,
let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a
sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail
of our lives. (Gal. 5:16,18,25)
Q. This sounds so different
from the message that many of us have been hearing. Are you saying that
what many of our church leaders have been teaching doesn’t carry any
substance?
A. People who are attempting to force the ways of
circumcision on you have only one motive. All their talk about the law
is gas. They themselves don’t keep the law! (Gal. 6:12-13)
Q.
If we start living out what you have been saying, there could be a lot
of church people that don’t agree. Shouldn’t we be concerned about that?
A. For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the cross of our
Master, Jesus Christ. I have been crucified, set free from the stifling
atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that
they dictate. Can’t you see the central issue in all this? It is not
what you and I do – submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is
what God is doing, and He is creating something totally new, a free
life! (Gal. 6:14-15)
Q. There could be a lot of people who will
strongly disagree with what we’ve discussed. How do you plan on dealing
with the possible fallout?
A. Quite frankly, I don’t want to
be bothered anymore by these disputes. I have far more important things
to do – the serious living of this faith. (Gal. 6:17)
Paul, I’d
like to thank you for sharing with us today. In talking with you it has
become very clear that the gospel message that many of us have been
hearing and proclaiming is very different from what you’ve been
teaching. It certainly gives us something to think about.
