Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie. Then I went to Syria and Cilicia. I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they praised God because of me.
Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain.
–Galatians 1.18-2.2 (NIV)
On this the feast day of the conversion of St. Paul, it is fitting that we look at some of what God has to say to us through him. In chapter 1 of Galatians, Paul has been making a case for his apostleship and for the Gospel he has preached. In today’s passage, he reminds us that our faith is to be lived out together, not as autonomous individuals. In other words, Paul is making a case for the Church, albeit indirectly.
Paul’s conversion was quite dramatic. The Risen Lord confronted him on his way to Damascus where Paul intended to persecute Christians there. As Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15, he was not part of Jesus’ inner circle of apostles. Instead, Paul considered himself as one who was “abnormally born,” i.e., an abortion. Paul alludes to this in the passage above when he talks about being unknown to the churches of Judea and how they had only heard of his dramatic conversion, giving thanks to God for it.
All of this background is necessary if we are to understand Paul’s remarkable humility expressed in today’s passage and the importance he ascribed to Christian fellowship and mutual accountability. Despite seeing the Risen Lord, despite being given the Gospel by Jesus himself, Paul felt it necessary to seek out Peter and the other leaders of the new faith to confirm what he had been given was true!
Remarkable.
It is even more remarkable when we consider Paul’s disposition. By his own admission he was a man’s man, a Pharisee’s Pharisee (he would work much longer and harder than the average bear to show his learned brethren that he was indeed holier than they were and therefore superior to them), and a Jew’s Jew, zealous for the Law and his people. He was a learned scholar and quite sure of himself.
So why would he have felt the need to visit Jerusalem to compare his Gospel with the Gospel of Jesus’ other followers? It is not unreasonable to believe that Paul understood the fickle nature of the human mind, how easy it is for us to get things wrong as often as not, and to believe and teach erroneous things. In other words, Paul understood the human condition with its proclivity to err and therefore understood the need for mutual accountability in the Christian faith along with a prerequisite dose of humility.
All this suggests the critical need for the Church and for mutual Christian accountability, and this should make sense to us. If indeed Jesus is the only way to the Father (John 14.6), it is critical that we get the Gospel right. If we truly love others, we will want the best for them, we will want them to have real life, the kind that we enjoy in and through Christ. This, of course, requires that we share the real Gospel with them, Christ’s Gospel, the one contained in the NT, and not one of our own making, which is really no gospel at all.
Today’s passage also suggests that there is no such thing as an isolate Christian. No one is an island. We were created to have relationships with one another and with God and there is a proper ordering to those relationships. We need one another to help us steer a straight course through life and we must be humble enough and realistic enough to acknowledge we are prone to get it wrong as much as we get it right. We don’t have to read very far in Paul’s letters to find “one another” passages that suggest Paul understood this dynamic too and placed a premium on it.
If you want to follow Jesus, you had better be prepared to do it together with other followers of Jesus, and this is for your own good. Yes, each of us needs to have a personal relationship with Jesus but we also must remember that he expects us to have that relationship in the context of his Body, the Church. When we commit our lives to Jesus, we acknowledge that he is Lord and we are not, and we expect to be transformed by his wondrous love for us. But we also must remember that he uses human agency, in part, to accomplish this transformation. And when we think about it, this is for our good because we can tap both spiritual and human resources to help us in along the way in our faith journey, a journey that is never mundane or ordinary.
Certainly we need spiritual resources to help us in our journey, resources like daily prayer and reading our Bible regularly. But we are also creatures of flesh and blood who need the human touch on an ongoing and regular basis, and here Paul tacitly acknowledges that this is part of God’s intention for the proper ordering of our relationships with each other, especially in Christ’s Body, the Church.
Do you trust Jesus enough to let him love you not only directly but also through his people? Yes, this will be terribly frustrating at times because Jesus’ followers are every bit as broken as those who do not follow him and that will inevitably cause problems and conflicts for us within the Church. But it will also be immensely satisfying and helpful to us when we get it right. “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” (Psalm 133.1)
Moreover, to try and enter the Christian journey on our own will ensure our failure because as Paul indirectly reminds us today, we were created for each other and need each other so that we can speak and act in ways that will ultimately bring Jesus honor and glory. What a wonderful privilege and opportunity that is!
If you have not yet done so, take the plunge so that you too can learn to enjoy life to its fullest. In doing so you can have confidence that you have tapped into the very Source and Author of all life, Jesus-God. You can also take additional comfort in knowing that you don’t have to live your new life in Christ alone. Because life in Christ is terribly costly, he wants you to do it with others to reduce the risk that you will stumble and fall away. Is that not way too cool?