Not Who I Was

I want to tell you this morning about a guy I used to know.

He was raised in church, and his family were all followers of Jesus. At the age of 7, he made a profession of faith after an emotional revival service.

But by the time he turned 12, he’d pretty much quit going to church. By the age of 13, he’d discovered lust. By the age of 15, he’d discovered alcohol. And by the age of 18, he’d found drugs.

This guy spent the first night of college in Blacksburg passed-out drunk in a McDonald’s restroom. And his college experience just went downhill from there.

As an adult, this guy was selfish, self-centered, and unaccountably angry at the world. He hated other people almost as much as he hated himself.

His self-destructiveness manifested itself in his the various addictions he toyed with — drugs, booze, pornography, and more.

For many years, he tried to fill the hole he had in his life with these things, and he knew everything was coming apart, but he didn’t know what to do about it.

One day, when he was in his mid-30s, he met and fell in love with the woman he would marry. SHE would fill that gaping void in his life, he thought, the one that seemed to swallow joy and spit out anger.

But, as often happens in such situations, what he found was that, instead of just destroying his own life, now he was destroying the life of his wife, too. Within two years of saying, “I do,” this guy and his wife were headed for divorce.

And then, one afternoon while he was on his riding lawn mower, this guy began thinking about his life. And he remembered a couple of verses from his old church days about the fruits of the Spirit.

The verses are, interestingly enough, from the Book of Galatians, which we’ve been studying the past few weeks.

I’m sure they’re familiar to you:

Galatians 5:22–23 NASB95

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

And when this guy started thinking about his life, he realized there wasn’t evidence of ANY of these fruits of the Spirit in his life. Which raised the question of whether his profession of faith at the age of 7 had been real.

The very next Sunday, he and his wife were in church together for the first time. Within a month or so, they’d found a church that seemed to fit them. And within another month, they’d been led to Jesus by that pastor on the couch in their living room.

And things began to change for that guy and for his wife. Not all at once, and not overnight. But now, with both of them following Jesus, he began to learn how to love her.

Their marriage was saved, and people who’d known him for a long time began to comment on the changes they saw.

And he began to recognize a calling in his life. He began looking for ways to glorify God in his work and at home. And he began to be involved in the ministries at their church.

A few years later, he and his wife went on their first short-term missions trip, and while teaching a class in that foreign country, this guy felt a calling into the ministry.

He didn’t know it at the time, but that call would eventually lead him and his family to Liberty Spring Christian Church, where he now serves as pastor.

I know most of y’all think of me as a big ol’ teddy bear, but I wasn’t always the kind, compassionate, and patient person I am today. God changed Res Spears.

I’m still a work in progress. I still wrestle with temptation; I still sin; I still say and do things that hurt the people I love. In short, I’m still a sinner. But now, I’m a sinner saved by the grace of God.

God is still at work in me and ON me. I’m not what I will be one day. But, praise God, I’m ALSO not what I once was. And it’s all by the grace of God.

Now, some of you have heard versions of my testimony before. Some of you haven’t, and now maybe you’re scandalized by it. I hope not, but I can understand if you are.

I share this with you this morning to remind you of the goodness of God. And I share it this morning, because I want you to remember that if you’ve followed Jesus in faith, then you ALSO are not who you were.

Who you were is an important part of your testimony, but what really matters now is who you ARE now in Christ Jesus.

As we turn our attention this week back to Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia, we’re going to see the Apostle relate a portion of his own testimony for his readers.

Paul’s historical account of his life before Jesus, his conversion experience, his calling as an apostle, his early preaching, and his experiences with the other apostles take up a chapter and a half of this six-chapter letter, about a quarter of its content.

It seems clear that he’d been smeared by the Judaizers who’d come to Galatia with their false gospel.

They’d said he was just trying to curry favor with the Galatian Gentiles by preaching what in modern times has been called “easy believism,” the idea that only grace working through faith can bring salvation from the penalty we all owe for our sins.

The Judaizers were preaching that Jesus is, indeed, the Messiah and Son of God, but they were claiming that faith alone wasn’t sufficient for salvation.

A person would also need to follow the Mosaic Law — especially regarding circumcision and the Jewish holy days — to be saved.

But to attack Paul’s message, they first had to try to discredit him as the messenger.

And so, Paul dedicates a fourth of this letter to his testimony — not to try to rescue his reputation in Galatia, but to return the one, true gospel to its proper place of authority there.

We’re going to look at this autobiographical section in three parts during the next couple of weeks. So, today, let’s read the first section together, starting in verse 10 of chapter 1.

Galatians 1:10–17 NASB95

10 For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. 11 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it; 14 and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. 15 But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased 16 to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.

With what authority did Paul preach the gospel? And to what end? Those are the questions he’s addressing in this passage.

The Judaizers seem to have come to Galatia claiming that Paul had brought them a corrupted version of the gospel that he’d heard from the other apostle in Jerusalem.

And he’d brought that message, they said, to build himself up in the eyes of the Galatians. The Judaizers were accusing Paul of preaching grace in an effort to win the favor of the Gentiles of that region.

But what Paul wants the Galatians to understand in this passage is that both his calling and his message came from God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, His Son.

If the Galatians rejected Paul’s gospel, it was not him they were rejecting, but God Himself.

And for his own part, if Paul had been looking for the approval of men, he’d still have been persecuting Christians, instead of evangelizing for Christ.

The gospel he preached wasn’t from man. Paul didn’t learn it from any of the other apostles. He wasn’t taught it in Sunday school or in the synagogue.

He’d received it in a direct revelation of Jesus on the road to Damascus, where Paul had been heading to persecute the young church there.

The word translated as “revelation” in verse 12 refers to an unveiling or laying bare of something, the removal of that which conceals or obscures.

In Luke’s account of Paul’s conversion experience in Acts, chapter 9, he writes that Ananias laid hands on Paul after he’d been struck blind on the road to Damascus, and “immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales.”

Paul’s eyes had been opened to the truth. He was no longer physically OR spiritually blind. Jesus had opened Paul’s eyes to the truth, and the scales that fell from Paul’s eyes were a physical manifestation of his new spiritual sight.

It’s very likely that Paul had been in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. He didn’t need Jesus to reveal Himself to prove that He is real. He needed the revelation of the risen Christ to prove WHO Jesus IS.

As one commentator puts it, “The essence of Christianity is knowing and trusting Jesus Christ, not in the abstract but precisely as Lord, the incarnate Son of God, as Prophet, Priest, and King, as Savior, Redeemer and Victor.” [Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 104.]

Jesus had revealed Himself to Paul, and Paul had believed, not just in the historical facts about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but also in the doctrinal facts about who Jesus is and what He has done.

Therefore, he’d shared with the Galatians the very words of Jesus, the gospel of Jesus Christ FROM Jesus Christ.

And just to be sure we wouldn’t miss what an astounding display of grace his salvation represented, Paul reminds us who he’d been before Jesus met him on the road to Damascus.

Everything in Paul’s pre-conversion life seems to point AWAY from him becoming a follower of Jesus.

He used to persecute the church, he reminded them. He was seeking to annihilate what he considered to be a heretical and blasphemous sect of Judaism.

He was distinguished, even among his fellow Pharisees, for the zeal with which he persecuted the new followers of Jesus and for his devotion to the traditions of Judaism.

His religious convictions and moral expectations drove him to persecute the church. But when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, everything changed. And he realized that, despite his good intentions, his life had been aimed AWAY from God, rather than TOWARD God.

“Thus all the greater his shame and remorse when he realized that in seeking to please God he had actually been striving against God; in aiming for the best he had sunk to the worst. Those things he had called ‘profit’ he now realized were ‘loss,’ refuse, trash, skubala, human excrement fit only to be hurled onto the dung heap of his life.” [Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 116.]

It’s significant that Paul doesn’t try to hide who he was when he was lost. It’s part of his testimony. It shows that God’s grace is freely available to all who will believe, and it reminds us that nobody is too far gone for God’s grace to reach them.

Furthermore, if this message of the gospel that was being preached at the time were a fabrication by the Apostles, we wouldn’t expect such transparency.

People who are trying to get others to follow THEM tend to whitewash the ugly parts. But people who are trying to get people to follow JESUS recognize that the ugly parts help tell the story of their redemption.

And what a redemptive story we see in the life of Paul. In just three verses, we see him go from persecutor to believer to preacher.

And I suspect that nobody was more surprised by the change than Paul himself. He never forgot who he’d been.

But notice that he’s also not obsessed with who he was. He spends just two out of 36 of these autobiographical verses telling about his pre-conversion life. And that’s because the hero here isn’t Paul; it’s Jesus!

Paul had been changed completely through the revelation of Christ. No longer the persecutor, he was now the persecuted. No longer the striving for the approval of God and man, he was now the one who could rest in the assurance of his salvation by grace through faith in Jesus.

And this had been God’s plan for him since before Paul had even been born. This had been God’s plan for Paul, even as Paul had watched Stephen be stoned to death for his faith.

This had been God’s plan for Paul, even while Paul was seeking to annihilate the Church.

On the road to Damascus, Paul was struck blind and heard Jesus ask him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” And in that moment, by the grace of God, Paul was called to salvation through faith.

God had revealed His Son in Paul. Notice that the preposition here is “in” and not “to,” as we might expect. God HAD revealed Jesus TO Paul, but now that Paul had turned to Jesus in faith, God was revealing Jesus IN Paul.

”God revealed Christ in Paul in order to reveal him through Paul.” [Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 120.]

And to the extent that we cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s work to make us more like Jesus, God does the same thing through us. We, just like Paul, are called to manifest Jesus in our own lives.

Too many followers of Jesus turn to Him in faith and let that be the end of the story of their salvation.

But we are saved so that we might bear spiritual fruit — those qualities listed in that passage from Galatians, chapter 5. And that spiritual fruit serves to draw OTHERS to Jesus.

If you’ve followed Jesus in faith, you’ve been saved for a purpose. God has a Kingdom purpose for your life, even if you don’t wind up in “the ministry.” His purpose for you is to manifest Jesus in your life and so draw others to saving knowledge of Him.

Paul would do that in his ministry to the Gentiles. YOU can do it at home, among your neighbors and friends, at family reunions, at work, and even at the restaurant you visit after church today.

What Paul says here is that, from before he was even born, God had set him apart for this service. He’d revealed Jesus to Paul and called Paul to faith in Christ SO THAT Paul could then go and preach Christ to the Gentiles.

Now, you and I might have done things differently from the way Paul did it. Fresh from the miraculous events in and around Damascus, we might’ve gone looking for the Apostles to learn the details and doctrines of our new faith.

But Paul went to the source. He didn’t get together with the other apostles to work out his theology. He got it directly from Jesus, probably in the three years he spent seeking the Lord in Arabia and then Damascus.

He understood that the gospel of grace was something completely different from the works-based salvation he’d pursued as a Pharisee. And he certainly must have had some questions.

As Timothy George imagines it: “How was the good news of salvation through Christ related to the divinely given Torah? Have God’s promises to Israel been annulled or abridged by the coming of the Messiah? What role does circumcision have in the new community God was now calling forth? As one who had persecuted the first Christians in Jerusalem, Paul doubtless knew a great deal about the structure and leadership of the church there. How should he relate to them now? The resolution of these and other questions would require extensive time alone with God, a time for prayer and searching the Scriptures, a coming apart to be prepared for being sent back forth.” [Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 125.]

And speaking as one who has experienced it, I can only imagine that Paul must have been struck anew each day by the goodness of God’s grace and mercy toward him. He could never forget what he’d been before he met Jesus, and he could never thank God enough for not giving up on him.

Listen, I don’t know all your testimonies. Maybe, like me, your life before Jesus was a train wreck. Maybe, like me, you’re amazed that God WOULD save a wretch like you.

If so, I want to encourage you today to remember who you were, perhaps even to use it as part of your testimony. I do. And so did Paul.

But don’t forget that Paul spent just two verses out of 36 on who he WAS.

If you’re a follower of Jesus, then who you WERE is not who you ARE. Don’t forget the past, but don’t get bogged down in it. You are a new creation in Christ Jesus. You are an adopted son or daughter of God. A citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven.

And it’s ALL because of His grace!

But if you’ve never turned to Jesus in faith, then maybe you’ve noticed a void in your life that you can’t seem to fill. Take it from me: Drugs and alcohol won’t do it. Not even the love of a committed spouse will do it.

Only God can fill that void. And He’s promised that He’ll fill it with His Holy Spirit — that you’ll have the presence of God WITHIN you — if you’ll repent from your sins and place your faith in Jesus.

If you’ve never followed Jesus, then what you ARE isn’t what you were meant to be. And you can never be what you were MEANT to be without the presence of God in you.

Today might very well be your road-to-Damascus moment. How will you respond?