Epiphany 3 Paul's Epiphany

[HKHaugan]

Epiphany 3 Paul’s Epiphany

Logic, heart and action, they are the sequence that makes us human. We think, we decide and we act. This is the process for all human behavior. It is this humanity Paul saw exposed in himself as saturated with sin. But in Jesus it was God-planted perfection. What gave him that insight was the Word, particularly the 10th Commandment that said, ‘Thou shalt not covet.’

But before that we need to remember Paul was Saul. He was consumed in getting his life (and everyone else’s beside) right through the Law. He saw the Law as a thing in itself apart from God. To get the Law right became more important than knowing the God of the Law.

He had built an ethnic image on the basis of the Law that demanded a tunnel-visioned obedience to it, an absorption in it and from it a view of others whereby he believed himself superior. His mind was legally aggressive, his heart blindly obsessed and his behavior pridefully directed. Because he saw himself above criticism his self-awareness was locked in spiritual pride, which snowballed into his angry persecution of early believers in Jesus. From here it spread even to the self-justified smugness he felt as an accessory to the murder of Stephen.

But something dramatic and unexpected happened. His entire self-image, self-concept and self-awareness came crashing down on the road to Damascus. He came face to face with Jesus. He was able to see himself as he really was. He had become what the devil wanted, a self-accomplished, self-justifying, prideful, aggressive and obsessed-with-himself sinner. He was using God not yielding to Him. But in the presence of true perfection his castle of self-achievement crumbled. What he had worked so hard to accomplish, what he thought was a solid foundation, his ‘superior’ obedience to the Law, was built on the sand of self-induced conceit and spiritual arrogance.

The 10th Commandment showed him that since his covetousness was constantly there he was not perfect, he was not pure and that if you can’t obey the Law perfectly you can’t and never will overcome that imperfection. He saw sin in himself. He was a sinner and literally, a blind one at that. It then follows that you would begin to see how the rest of your obedience comes into question as well. Resultant depression, frustration and their discontent aggravate a latent anger, anger against himself and anger against God, he couldn’t control. Perhaps this explains his hostility toward the followers of Jesus and his intense determination to persecute them. He was simply taking out on others the frustration he couldn’t resolve in himself.

I would be willing to say that the ‘thorn in the flesh’ he describes in 2Cor.12 is his persistent covetousness. “8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” All of us have spiritual thorns. We just need to identify them, repent and allow the Spirit to show us what Paul discovered. They are the occasion to glory in our weaknesses because in them God exhibits His power. This is Paul’s whole approach in all his epistles.

No wonder he wrote as he did and became wrapped in a new cloak of humility, prayer, ministry and mission. He discovered that Christ was His righteousness. He was no longer motivated by a thing, a concept or a system that consumed him but by a Person who loved him. His life was now a submission to being led by God the Son through the Spirit as every new moment unfolded. His view of the Law changed from a thing to live by to God’s relational way of getting his attention to what separated him in the first place, sin.

And that repentance is not something we accomplish. To the contrary it is a pride-challenger, something that becomes a lifestyle allowing the Holy Spirit to displace our pride, aloneness, guilt and fear. Being a disciple of Jesus is a living relationship whereby we yield to His presence in every next moment. Paul’s epiphany is there in the Word for all to see. We pray it is our epiphany as well. Stay tuned……..