A NEW CREATURE

GALATIANS 1:18-24

FEBRUARY 22, 1998

 

The Apostle Paul was facing one of the greatest crises of the early church.  In just a short time, the Christians in the Galatian region had gone from being enthusiastic followers of the apostolic gospel as preached by Paul, to skeptical, questioning, balking church members who were on the brink of being persuaded to follow another gospel.  It was a time for Paul to 'pull out all stops'.  He was no fatalist who blandly walked through life with a 'whatever-will-be-will-be' attitude.  Heresy lurked in the shadows of the Galatian churches.  So Paul rose to defend the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ.

 

At the heart of the crisis were two key issues:  the apostleship of Paul and the gospel of grace.  If the heretics, which we call Judaizers in this case, could convince the Galatians that Paul lacked apostolic authority, then they could deliver their false gospel under the guise of their "Jerusalem authority."  The gospel which Paul preached was the only gospel the Galatians knew until the Judaizers came into the region.  They were zealous to add circumcision and ceremonial aspects of the law to the gospel.  But to do this would have been an abandonment of grace for law.  It would have been a shift from a God-centered gospel to a man-centered gospel.  It would be a forfeiture of justification by faith alone to embrace a self-justification by adherence to the ceremonial law.

 

So before Paul expounds upon the content of the gospel of grace, he first seeks to re-establish his authority as an apostle in the eyes of the Galatians.  He understood that if his authority was undermined, then the content of his gospel preaching would quickly fall.  In the context of this passage, Paul explains that his understanding of the gospel did not come second-handed.  He did not travel to Jerusalem to discover the gospel or receive visits by apostolic delegates.  He received the gospel "through a revelation of Jesus Christ" (1:12).  As he explains later, the apostles in Jerusalem did not add one thing to his knowledge of the gospel (2:6-9).  What Paul received directly from Jesus Christ by means of divine revelation was precisely what the Lord had entrusted to the apostles during their three-years of training.

 

With this in mind, we find Paul candidly opening the details of his own testimony as a believer.  He does so, not for show, but to explain the genuineness of the work of Jesus Christ in his life.  In this autobiographical explanation, we find a description of Paul being a new creature in Christ.

 

We speak often of Christians being "new creatures in Christ," as Paul described in II Corinthians 5:17.  The new life of the believer results from a new relationship to God through faith in Jesus Christ.  Such a life changes the believer from the inside-out.  His whole nature has been radically affected by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  What he was before, described as "the old man," is gone.  Now "all things become new" for the believer, so that each day is an experience of growth "in newness of life" (cf. Eph. 4:20-24; Rom. 6:4).

 

In terms of external righteousness, Paul had little room for improvement, or so it seemed.  He said that when you measured his life by the "righteousness which is in the Law," he was "found blameless" (Phil. 3:6).  By this he meant the external adherence to the Law, rather than the inward conformity of life which Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7).  It would seem that there would be little change in his life when he was converted to Christ.  But that is not the case!  The gospel of Jesus Christ radically transforms those who come to faith in Christ.  Paul's life demonstrates this.

 

How was Paul's life changed by the gospel?  Perhaps of greater concern to us, how does the power of the gospel change lives today?  Unless our relationship to Christ has truly changed our lives, then we have no right to claim that we know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  We can find some needed help by evaluating the life of this religious man who became a new creature in Christ.

 

1. Attitude toward the brethren

 

We must keep in mind the kind of attitude the pre-Christian Paul had toward believers.  He described himself as seeking "to persecute the church" (Gal. 1:13).  Luke said that right up to his conversion, Paul was "still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord" (Acts 9:1).  To put it mildly, he did not have a friendly spirit toward Christians!   His goal was to eradicate Christians from the whole region of Israel.  This venomous attitude had been nurtured by Paul's zeal for Judaism and his success in bringing harm to the saints.  He likely had overseen the recanting of some who professed faith, while he had certainly witnessed the imprisonment of others (cf. Acts 22:4-5).  We can only imagine what kind of thoughts rambled through Paul's mind about Christians!

 

In Damascus, Paul became part of the small band of disciples.  He was considered a "brother" in the Lord (Acts 9:17) and was accepted by the very people he had just days before sought to imprison.  After having time for spiritual development as well as ministry, Paul made his way to Jerusalem.  He had a distinct purpose in mind.  "Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days."  Paul was not going to Jerusalem to be taught the gospel--a point he wanted to reiterate to the Galatians.  Instead, he went to Jerusalem because he wanted to get to know Peter.  The time he was there, fifteen days, was certainly not enough time for Paul to receive the gospel second-handed.  He continues to explain to the Galatians that he was not in Jerusalem and around the apostles long enough to be taught everything which he had been teaching them.  He had received the gospel through a revelation of Jesus Christ.  The Judaizers likely accused Paul of not getting a good enough understanding of the gospel during his visit to Jerusalem.  So Paul insists that this was not his reason for making such a trip.  He just did it "to become acquainted with Cephas" or Peter.

 

When the Lord told Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road that he was persecuting Him, the Lord was identifying the entire body of Christ with Himself (Acts 9:4-6).  As Saul persecuted the Christians of Jerusalem or Damascus, because they are so linked organically with Christ, he was in essence persecuting none other than Jesus Christ.

 

But when a man becomes a new creature in Christ his whole attitude toward Jesus Christ and His people changes.  All of the hatred and harshness of attitude which Paul had toward Christians had changed to one of love and holy affection.  Even the term, "acquainted," which he uses describes the idea of spending time investigating and pondering something admirable.  Chrysostom says the word was used of those "who seek to become acquainted with great and splendid cities" [The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, XII, 13].  Paul's visit was, in our vernacular, a 'get-to-know-you' visit.  At one point he would have loved to imprison Peter.  Now he loved having the opportunity of being around the leading apostle and expressing his own affection for him.  Paul was indeed, a new creature in Christ.

 

The new creature in Christ does not have a take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward other believers.  Instead, he desires the fellowship of kindred spirits.  He delights in expressing his love to those who share the same faith.  He finds the company of other believers a precious delight in his life.  What is your attitude toward the brethren?  This is an excellent barometer of the reality of a true faith in Christ.  For John has written, "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.  He who does not love abides in death" (I John 3:14).

 

2.  Integrity in confessions

 

In what he had written to the Galatians, Paul assures them that he is not lying to them.  For you see, his story and that of the Judaizers was different.  They were saying one thing about Paul and Paul is giving them a totally different story.  Who would they believe?  Paul assures them, "Now in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying."  The Greek of the text is even stronger.  "Accordingly now I am writing to you, behold in the sight of God that I am not lying!"  Paul was willing to use the form of an oath to affirm the veracity of what he had been telling them.  Now, who would they believe?

 

Probably most of us know someone who is a perpetual liar.  Such liars have a propensity for assuring you that they are not lying, even though you know they are!  They often will couch a statement to you by prefacing it, "I'm not lying...."  You may want to believe that person, but the reality of his character as a perpetual liar keeps you from believing him.  He may tell you he is not lying but without integrity of character you have no basis upon which to believe his assertions.

 

Paul was making a very frank confession before the Galatians, one that flew in the face of what the Judaizers had been promoting.  But there was a distinction in the message of Paul and that of the Judaizers.  His stood on the strength of personal integrity.  The trustworthiness of his character which the Galatians witnessed over and over, served to anchor the reality of his personal confessions as truth.  His holy life helped to affirm the reality of the gospel message he preached.

 

How important is our integrity with what we say?  Without going into all of the aspects of it, I remind you that our nation is facing an integrity crisis.  Everyday on the front pages of the newspaper, the question of integrity is brought before us.  Our integrity means that what we are in secret we are in public as well.  There is no disparity between our profession and our actual practice.  A lack of integrity does not demonstrate newness in Christ.  He who is Truth works truthfulness in the character of those He redeems.

 

On one occasion some blackmailers sent a letter to C. H. Spurgeon to the effect that if he did not place a certain amount of money in a particular place at a designated time, 'they  would publish some things in the newspapers that would defame him and ruin his public ministry'.  Spurgeon left a letter in reply to the blackmailers:  "You and your like are requested to publish all you know about me across the heavens."  He knew that he had nothing to hide [Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, 308].  That's integrity.  Such integrity gave Spurgeon's message credibility even more than a century beyond his death.  That is the kind of integrity in which God can be called as a witness to its truthfulness.  It is the integrity of a new creature in Christ.

 

This is where we find Paul.  His character as a new creature in Christ gave him credibility with those who had watched him in both joyful and distressing times.  Do you have this kind of integrity with your family and friends?

 

3.  Faithfulness in ministry

 

 One of the most dominating characteristics of Paul's life was his faithfulness in ministry.  At the end of his journey he could write to Timothy, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith" (II Tim. 4:7).  And to the elders of Ephesus he could state, "Therefore I testify to you this day, that I am innocent of the blood of all men" (Acts 20:26).  As a new creature in Christ, Paul stayed by his calling.  This is important to see in light of what the apostle faced in fulfilling his ministry.  At every turn there were those who wanted to harm and destroy the apostle who proclaimed the good news of Christ.

 

He writes, "And I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea which were in Christ; but only, they kept hearing, "He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.""  At the very beginning of his ministry, the Lord told Paul through Ananias that he would have a ministry accompanied by suffering (Act 9:15-16).  This was not a man out to line his pockets with silver while using the gospel as his gimmick.  No man could have endured such suffering for the sake of the gospel had he not been serious about it.  Even in the Galatian region, Paul was stoned and left for dead.  Anyone who lacked faithfulness in ministry would have walked away at that point.  But the apostle kept right on preaching the Word and demonstrating faithfulness in the work of ministry.

 

Paul reminds the Galatians of this fact by pointing to their Jewish Christian brethren in Judea.  They acknowledged Paul's faithfulness to the gospel, so why could the Galatians not do the same?  The Judean Christians, right in the heart of Judaism, agreed that Paul was faithful to the gospel.   They would have refused the advances of the Judaizers, siding instead with Paul.

 

The use of the present tense to describe Paul's "preaching the faith" indicates that he did so with consistency.  The Judean Christians were amazed to see the great persecutor of the church now serving as a preacher of the gospel!  It was no fad for Paul, no passing fancy that he took up to change the course of his life.  Because Christ revealed Himself in Paul, he could do no other than preach the gospel in faithfulness (Gal. 1:15-16).

 

At the heart of a new creature in Christ is this same spirit of faithfulness in ministry.  All of us who belong to Christ are ministers in the sense of being servants of Christ.  Certainly our ministries vary.  But as the Holy Spirit has gifted us we will find ourselves moving in the direction of service for the Lord's sake.  Some minister in teaching, preaching, and evangelizing.  Others minister in administrating, serving, and helping.  Still others minister through enlarged giving, acts of mercy, and exhortation.  Whatever the Spirit of God has equipped us to do, as new creatures in Christ, we must be faithful.  This faithfulness is part of the evidence of the new life we have in Christ.

 

4.  Reversal in preoccupations

 

No one was a greater persecutor of the early church than Saul of Tarsus.  So it was the most shocking thing that he came to faith in Christ.  He would have been the last person whom we would think could repudiate his past and embrace the risen Lord.  Yet the message was clear in Judea among the churches:  "they kept hearing, "He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.""  Paul's preoccupation had been persecution.  The term he uses for persecuted implies hunting someone down.  It was used to describe a hunter chasing after his prey, not stopping until he had captured it.  In this case, the present tense is used to give it heightened meaning.  It seems to suggest the idea that the lingering reality of what Paul had been still weighed on their minds, so that now they could glory in the Lord who saved the very man bent on their destruction.

 

You can almost sense from this quote that these believers stood in absolute amazement at not only Paul's salvation, but the fact that he now passionately proclaimed the very gospel which he tried to destroy.  Paul's whole preoccupation in life drastically reversed!  Everything was different.

 

Personality-wise, Paul was still the same.  He still had the same voice and same mind.  He probably had the same little idiosyncrasies which are unique to each individual.  But the great love of his life had totally changed.  He was now a gospel proclaimer through and through.  His faith in Christ had reversed his life.

 

The gospel alone has the power to change the direction of a sinner into a faithful preoccupation with Jesus Christ.  If you spoke with Paul very long at all, you encountered a man who beamed with conversation on Jesus Christ.  From reading his epistles, Paul probably was interested in a broad range of subjects, from philosophy to literature to athletics to the military.  But the great focus of his life was upon Jesus Christ.

 

Has there been such a reversal of preoccupation in your life?  Has Jesus Christ worked savingly in you to the degree that you honestly can declare that Jesus Christ is your life?  This is a challenging question for us to face.  For there are multitudes who claim to be Christians yet they have no daily preoccupation with Jesus Christ.  They are satisfied to attend church, acknowledge the Lord in worship services, then live the balance of their week with hardly a passing thought concerning Jesus Christ.  When the gospel of Christ transforms us into new creatures, the focus of our lives changes.  Certainly we must go about our normal responsibilities of work, school, duties at home, responsibilities in the community.  But threaded throughout the whole fabric of our day is the reality that "I am His, and He is mine."  It is a consciousness that in my work I am to labor as unto the Lord.  In school, I am to do all things heartily as unto the Lord.  In my home life, I am to be a servant for the Lord's sake.  In my community, I am to live as though my citizenship is in heaven.

 

One of the things that I noticed shortly after coming to faith in Christ was that I thought of the Lord throughout my day.  I still had the same personality and temperament, but there was a new preoccupation in my life, one that seemed to grow week after week.  There was a new consciousness of wanting to be pleasing to the Lord that I had not known before.  It was the wonderful reality of being a new creature in Christ.

 

5.  Passion for the truth

 

None of us are saved apart from the truth of the gospel.  This truth is spoken or perhaps we read it.  It was truth that was stated in precepts in a reasoned way, so that by God's grace we came to understand our separation from God and the great sufficiency of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross to justify us before God.  This truth was something articulated to us and something which we found ourselves being able to talk about to others.

 

I point this out in light of the phrase found in verse 23:  "He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy."  The term which we must see is "the faith."  By "the faith," did Paul mean to infer a subjective experience of believing in the Lord?  Certainly he did not want people to believe in the Lord, that is until he himself had come to faith in Christ.  But he also did not understand faith at that point.  He did not know what it was to trust in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ and in the resurrection.  But he knew that people taught that Jesus was the Messiah and that having been crucified, He had been raised from the dead.  They taught that by believing in this Christ a person would have a standing of righteousness before God.  Paul could try to intimidate people from hearing the gospel, but what he really wanted to do was to silence the message of the gospel completely.  He knew that if no one was "preaching the faith" then there would be no new followers of Jesus Christ.

 

So Saul of Tarsus was bent on trying to destroy "the faith" which Christians referred to as "the gospel of Jesus Christ."  This "faith" is a body of truth found in the Word of God which comes under the category of "gospel truth."  In Saul's case, he would try to destroy the teaching that no one is saved by their own works of righteousness or by adherence to the Law.  He would try to stamp out the teaching of the Incarnation, that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself."  He would repudiate the teaching of the satisfaction of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on behalf of sinners being all that was necessary for justification before God.  He would denounce and try to rid the world of any who claimed that Jesus was raised from the dead and that He ascended to the right hand of the Father where He continues to intercede for His own.  Saul would battle against the teaching that repentance and faith alone are the means through which the atoning, justifying work of Christ is appropriated.

 

Saul did battle as hard and zealously as he could against the gospel, that is until he was crushed by the weight of divine love in the gospel.  Christ came to Saul!  He was not seeking to know Jesus Christ.  But out of the greatness of God's mercy and grace, Jesus Christ revealed Himself in all of His saving offices to Saul so that the enemy of the gospel now bowed before the throne of Jesus Christ!  Now Paul's passion was for the very truth which he tried to destroy.

 

Do you have a similar love for the truth of the gospel?  Are you passionate about the truth?  How can anyone be a new creature in Christ and not passionately love that truth that transformed him?  Unless someone had proclaimed the gospel truth to us, this faith which Saul tried to destroy, then we would not be saved.  If our ears had not been opened to hear the truth, then we would still be at enmity with God.  If there are any people on the face of the earth who ought to be passionate for gospel truth, it is those who have eternally profited by that truth!  New creatures in Christ have a new passion for the truth of the Word.  They cannot help but have such a passion, for without this truth they have no life.

 

6.  Attention drawn to God

 

What was the response of those who stood in amazement that the persecutor of the faith was now a preacher of the faith?  Did they heap accolades upon Paul for being such a wonderful person?  Did Paul so present his message and himself that the crowds would begin to glory in his wisdom and abilities?  Hear the simple response, "And they were glorifying God because of me."  The focus of Paul's life was not on Paul any longer.  His life pointed in a solitary direction:  to the Lord God who showed grace to an unworthy sinner.

 

That is a good evidence of being a new creature in Christ!  For the person who persists in self-centeredness and self-glorying has not known the grace of God.  Our natural bent in life is to heap glory upon ourselves.  That is the nature of pride.  But the gospel of Christ humbles us in the dust.  We see ourselves for what we really are, self-centered, vain-glorying, self-righteous sinners.  The picture is not a pretty one!  The truth of the gospel exposes what is really in our hearts so that we see how vain it is to draw attention to ourselves.  When grace is given to us, then we seek to deflect all attention back to the One who has made us a new creature.

 

I think Paul expressed this most clearly toward the end of this epistle when he wrote, "But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (6:14).  As a new creature in Christ, for what can we boast except in the cross of our Lord?  Can we boast that we were a 'prize catch' for the Lord?  No sinner is a 'prize catch' for Him who is infinitely holy.  The Lord needs no trophies to improve His worth.  Can we boast that we worked hard at seeking the Lord and finally found Him?  "There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one" (Rom. 3:11-12).  Can we boast about adding to the work of Christ for our salvation?  "No one is justified by the Law before God" (Gal. 3:11).

 

Does your life point to the Lord?  Think about this for a moment.  Is there the humility of one who has been transformed by the grace of God, so that you live in thankfulness to the Lord for all things?  The way we talk as well as the way we act, serves to direct others' attention either to ourselves or to the Lord.  As  new creatures in Christ, may we ever cause others to glory in the Lord!

 

Conclusion

 

Being a new creature in Christ has content.  It is not just a designation because you made a profession of faith.  It is a living reality.  All things in your life have been affected by the power of the gospel operating savingly in your life.

 

Could it be that you have simply made an empty religious profession but you've never become a new creature in Christ?  Then flee to Him who alone can transform the darkness of your heart, the sinful direction of your life, and the self-centered focus of your ambitions.  Flee to the cross of Christ, casting yourself upon the mercy of the only Mediator between God and men.  Rest in the sufficiency of the work of Christ for your salvation.  Exchange your rags for His righteousness.

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