{"id":5769,"date":"2020-08-16T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2020-08-16T00:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=5769"},"modified":"2022-04-27T05:41:18","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T21:41:18","slug":"256-paul-life-reborn-in-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=5769","title":{"rendered":"254. Paul, Life Reborn in Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #008080;\"><strong><sup>3\u00a0<\/sup>Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.\u00a0<sup>4\u00a0<\/sup>He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, \u201cSaul, Saul, why do you persecute me?\u201d\u00a0<sup>5\u00a0<\/sup>He asked, \u201cWho are you, Lord?\u201d The reply came, \u201cI am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.\u00a0<sup>6\u00a0<\/sup>But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.\u201d\u00a0<sup>7\u00a0<\/sup>The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one.\u00a0<sup>8\u00a0<\/sup>Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.\u00a0<sup>9\u00a0<\/sup>For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank<\/strong>.<\/span> (<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Acts 9:3-9,<\/span> <em>NRSV<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/St-Peters-Church-Leuven-Belgium.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-6527\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/St-Peters-Church-Leuven-Belgium.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"478\" height=\"270\" \/><\/a>\u00a0<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/DnJGORgXoAAczO9.jpg\" alt=\"Image result for St Peter\u2019s Church, Leuven, Belgium.&quot;\" width=\"403\" height=\"268\" \/>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0\u00a0(L) St Peter&#8217;s Church, Leuven, Belgium. (R) Paul on Road to Damascus, in St Peter&#8217;s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Paul\u2019s experience on the road to Damascus, highly dramatic, has long been of interest in \u201cconversion\u201d studies. The portraits of the earlier and later Paul seem to present themselves as the ideal model of <em>the life reborn in grace<\/em>. He was around the age of 28-31 at the time, in around AD 33-36. That encounter between Paul and the Risen Christ stood at the origin of Paul\u2019s \u201c<em>conversion<\/em>\u201d experience and <em>the<\/em> turning point in his life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong style=\"font-size: 15px;\">1. Our understanding of St Paul starts with his personal <em>experience<\/em><\/strong><em style=\"font-size: 15px;\">.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Before his conversion, Paul, known then as Saul, was an intense member of the Pharisaic group in Judaism. In that way of life, he \u201cpersecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it\u201d (Galatians 1:13). He also witnessed the stoning of Stephen and approved it (Acts 7:57-8:3).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In view of who he was and what he was doing persecuting the Church, Paul experienced the love of God as an entirely unmerited gift while he was deep in sin.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">When conversion visited upon him, it led to a drastic transformation. From a life centered on a pharisaic-religion, he shifted to a completely different vision of faith, centred in Christ. This new faith is one\u00a0that is liberated from the notion that you can earn your salvation by the merits of performing the works of the Law. Paul hailed from a pharisaic-religion that had developed a system of 613 laws, 365 negative commands and 248 positive laws. That experience of encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus would ultimately change his previous understanding of justification from the works of the Law to justification by faith in Christ.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">St Paul\u2019s conversion experience not only brought about a radical change to his own life, but it is one of the most important and sea-changing moments in the history of Christianity.\u00a0He later became convinced that while still a sinner destined for hell, Christ graced his life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">What Paul did next was, he extended his theological conviction to cover the whole of humanity of his generation: \u201cBut God shows his love for us in that <em>while we were yet sinners<\/em> Christ died for us\u201d [Romans 5:8]. And then, later theologians further extrapolated it to cover the whole of humanity, past, present and future.\u00a0In their theology, Christ died not only for sinners of the time, but for the whole hoards of humanity before and after them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Self-justification would stand starkly contrary to Paul\u2019s experience; he would henceforth practise a spirituality of modesty and humility. In that revised spirituality, he came to understand that all that we have is God\u2019s gift:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cWhat have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?\u201d (1 Cor 4:7).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Realising that all the zeal of his dynamic personality was being wasted, his new life of grace became a tireless proclaiming and living out of the message of the cross.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In that new life of grace, we must not miss the fact that Paul experienced grace as, at the same time, a task. He sets it down in Galatians 5:5, where he refers to faith as not a passive attitude but \u201cactive in love\u201d. It is a gift that is at the same time a mission. So, the revelation he received was the starting point of his mission to the Gentiles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong style=\"font-size: 15px;\">2. Paul recognised the deadly force of sin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In Paul\u2019s <em>Letter to the Romans<\/em>, sin is personified as a power or force in world history that keeps human freedom in bondage.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Sin worked havoc in Paul\u2019s life, apparently, causing the self to be divided.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cFor I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me\u201d (Romans 7:19-20).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The power of sin is a universal force in the world, and it resides in each one of us. All the more, he insisted, would we need grace in our lives. In Romans 5:12-21, Paul, Apostle of Grace, tells the story of his life.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">12\u00a0\u2026 as <em><u>sin<\/u><\/em> came into the world through one man and death through sin \u2026<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">17\u00a0\u2026 grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">20\u00a0\u2026 where <em><u>sin<\/u><\/em> increased, grace abounded all the more,<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">21\u00a0so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In the Genesis narrative, we have a projected explanation of present human condition. There, Adam the symbolic first human being, through his sinful disobedience of the divine commandment, was seen as negatively affecting, the world in which he lived. That was in turn\u00a0compounded by a history of humanity\u2019s actual personal sinning. Even then, Paul <em>does not<\/em> explain this causality by <em>inheritance<\/em>. Church doctrine on original sin in which all is said to participate by inheritance was read back into this passage of Paul, but scholars today agree it \u201ccannot be found there.\u201d Paul only asserted that all are sinners and that all share in a universal situation from the beginning. But, Paul <em>did not<\/em> provide a developed doctrine of original sin; the emphasis of the entire passage being on Christ as Saviour.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">What Paul wanted to stress was the power of divine grace. In view of his earlier attempts to completely eradicate Christianity, he perceived his conversion as evidence of the power of Divine Grace. His story has drawn adoring remarks for grace:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There is \u201cno fall so deep that grace cannot descend to it\u201d\u00a0and \u201cno height so lofty that grace cannot lift the sinner to it.\u201d (Johann Peter Lange)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It also demonstrates \u201cGod\u2019s power to use everything, even the hostile persecutor, to achieve the divine purpose.\u201d (Jean Marie Hiesberger)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>3. Paul\u2019s conversion cannot be separated from communal help<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The biblical accounts of Paul&#8217;s conversion experience have commonly described it as a miraculous and divine revelation, with the Risen Christ appearing to Paul. Says Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong><sup>11\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not man\u2019s gospel.\u00a0<strong><sup>12\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.\u00a0(Galatians 1:11-12)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">One cannot deny that St Paul\u2019s conversion points to conversions as being a work of sovereign grace where God intervenes in on our lives and surprises us with joy. Equally, in Paul\u2019s case, one cannot deny that God had all humanity in view when he saved Paul. If for nothing else, Paul\u2019s conversion encourages us not to be despairing for those who show no signs of being prepared for conversion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">That said, however, St Paul\u2019s experience of deep conversion cannot be detached from the concrete, real life, witness of Christian individuals and the community of faithful. The love of God, we must insist, is useless, unless you can <em><u>feel<\/u><\/em> it, <em><u>touch<\/u><\/em> it, unless it is <em><u>concrete<\/u><\/em>. Three concrete elements in Paul\u2019s conversion experience may briefly be mentioned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">First, we must never lose sight of the fact that, God used Paul\u2019s experience of the <em>love and generosity<\/em> of the Christians whom he persecuted, and the <em>great freedom<\/em> in their lives, to bring him by grace to faith. Second, he went away to Arabia for three years of preparation (Galatians 1:15-18). Third, when later on the Christian community and its leaders were suspicious of Paul and would not accept him, let alone to commission him for serious missionary work, Barnabas rigorously vouched for him. [See our webpost No. 34. \u201cTarsus and <em>the Spirit of St Paul<\/em>\u201d dated 16 June 2011.]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Their <em>genuineness<\/em> made him admit the emptiness of his own life and beg God for enlightenment on the truth about Christ in God\u2019s plan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It was <em>the community as the Body of Christ <\/em>who provided the witness that God could use, and still uses today, to reveal the reality of salvation in Christ and the path we should follow to do God\u2019s will.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Nearer home, today, have we not heard stories from priests who say that they became better priests precisely by encountering Christ in the faithful? And take a look at this powerful story of witnessing from a group of early teens junior secondary school girls:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>A girl in their class was killed in a traffic accident. None in her family has embraced the Christian faith, but that did not stop a group of her Christian classmates \u2013 young teenage girls all of them &#8211; from coming to her home to pray the Rosary for her every night for a month. They wanted so much to be able to comfort her parents for their loss. Her parents were so touched by the Christian love of those young girls for their daughter that they decided to take instruction for baptism so as to join the faith community.<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Have we not heard too of repeated complaints by (and about) the RCIA newly baptised who, so soon after their baptism, drifted away from the Church because of:\u00a0[a] lack of serious Christian witnesses, [b] lack of faith-companion, and [c] lack of community\u2026?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Then, have we not heard\u00a0 of random stories of Church-exiting by grumbling members allegedly because they are so very \u201cscandalised\u201d and \u201cfed up\u201d with hypocrites \u2013 priests and parishioners. Problem is, ultimately all this may be more an excuse than anything else. One may literally go through a list of possible reasons that underpin such exits, one of which is perhaps a common, and fundamental, failure to comprehend what a Mass essentially is. From there, the reality may emerge that there is a wrong focus on scandals rather than <em>thanksgiving<\/em> and <em>worship<\/em>, on which the life of Saint Paul may teach us a serious lesson or two.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Copyright \u00a9 Dr. Jeffrey &amp; Angie Goh, August 2020. All rights reserved.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">You are most welcome to respond to this post. Email your comments to <strong><u><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"mailto:jeffangiegoh@gmail.com\">jeffangiegoh@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/u><\/strong> You can also be dialogue partners in this <em>Ephphatha Coffee-Corner Ministry<\/em> by sending us questions for discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>3\u00a0Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.\u00a04\u00a0He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, \u201cSaul, Saul, why do you persecute me?\u201d\u00a05\u00a0He asked, \u201cWho are you, Lord?\u201d The reply came, \u201cI am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.\u00a06\u00a0But get up and enter the <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=5769\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Dr. Jeffrey &amp; Angie Goh","author_link":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?author=1"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?cat=1\" rel=\"category\">From Our Perspective<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"3\u00a0Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.\u00a04\u00a0He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, \u201cSaul, Saul, why do you persecute me?\u201d\u00a05\u00a0He asked, \u201cWho are you, Lord?\u201d The reply came, \u201cI am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.\u00a06\u00a0But get up and enter the&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5769"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7123,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769\/revisions\/7123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}