A gospel of grace



Paul writes to the Galatians:

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God?
Or am I trying to please people?
If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
                                                            (Galatians 1: 10)

 He can look back on his life, his actions following the death of Stephen and his persecution of the church, and see that what drove him was this need to win the approval of human beings, or even a need to win the approval of God. So many of us can recognise this- the need for approval is so deeply ingrained in our culture, and fed by the influence of social media, that we even fear that as we approach God, we need to be doing it right.

Paul seemed to be doing so much right- in his education, his eloquence, his influence and his righteousness. But on the road to Damascus, a light was shone into his soul and what it revealed to him was the inability of any of these things to save him.
As he struggled to complete his journey, blinded and needing to be led by the hand, did he hear  muffled laughter at his helplessness, or was he imagining it? The crusading arrival into Damascus that he had planned now looked very different- the approval of those whom he had sought to impress was lost, and did he maybe fear he had lost God's approval too because he couldn't complete the task he had set himself?

He himself explains what he came to realise in those three days of darkness:

For whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him...
                                                                                      (Philippians 3: 7-9)
As we read the words from Galatians, do we see ourself reflected there?
Perhaps today is a day to let go of what we think we need to bolster our self esteem.
This Advent time, as we wait for the coming of Christ, may we take a long look at the places where we have been trying to gain approval and hear instead the gospel of grace, that Paul discovered makes all else seem like garbage.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

advent day two

Advent Day TWO~ Every one of you, hide among the rocks and in the ground, Because the LORD is fearsome, marvelous, and glorious. When the LORD comes, everyone who is proud will be made humble, And the LORD alone will be honoured. The LORD All-Powerful has chosen a day When those who are proud and conceited will be put down Isaiah 2: 10-12 What are we waiting for? Its good to remind ourselves  of who God is. What words would you use to describe God? Glorious?...Marvellous?...Fearsome? Try to spend some time today in a place where you can see something of God’s glory– it might be at the sea, under a starry night sky, watching a sunset or down on your hands and knees with the insects. God created this world we live in. He controls it, orders it, sustains it. He breathed life into our bodies– and He will decide when life leaves us. This is the LORD we worship. And he has chosen a day to return to earth in unmistakable power and glory. The angel choirs who sang to shephe...
Read more

Peter- walking a rocky road

Sometimes reading self help books or well-meaning blogs can make us feel that adopting a regime, a mantra or a new habit will lead to measurable results in a steadily increasing way. We feel as if we should be drawing a progress chart that climbs steadily upwards- but real life is just not like that. Maybe that's why so many of us find Peter an encouraging character in Scripture. When Jesus changes Simon's name to Peter, meaning the Rock, we cheer for him as we see Jesus recognising his strength of character. Jesus replied,  ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter,   and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades [  will not overcome it.   I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be  bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be   loosed in heaven.’   Then he ordered his...
Read more

Isaiah 8

Why do people not read the Old Testament more? I imagine it's because of passages like this one- it's full of incomprehensible Hebrew names and places, which seem to have had some sort of significance to the first people to read them, but are off-putting to us today. Is the only way to read a passage like this to get out a concordance or commentary, and work out who all these people are? Or should we just ignore the stuff we don't understand, and skip straight to a verse or two that we can make sense of? One thing that reading through Isaiah one chapter at a time is showing me, is that the second option is not a valid one. the bits we might chose to pull out rarely mean what we might expect them to. It is worth pausing and asking what message they gave to the people of the time- even if that doesn't seem to be a message that is relevant to us today. This is a book that tells us about God, not offers us a quick fix for our problems and concerns. So in the middle of this ...
Read more