It's a Gift

This morning we're starting week five of the Community Bible Experience, spending this week reading Matthew's account of the life of Jesus. But the last 2 1/2 weeks have been spent reading Paul's letters. That's quite a lot of reading but reading the whole lot in just a few days does highlight some of the themes that Paul keeps on coming back to. Some of the words that I highlighted as I read were: Jesus, Christ, Spirit, love, righteousness, grace, peace, faith, power, gospel. There are two problems with this approach.

The first is not really a problem at all: after you've read through a few letters you come across a new theme which means you need to go back over the material you've already read and see whether it was there or not.

The second problem is that eventually you run out of highlighters and crayons - even after raiding your children's boxes of colouring in materials.

Having finished Paul's letters there are a couple of additional themes/words that I would like to go back and have a look at.

When we read these books as letters from Paul to real people in real situations it is good to remember who Paul was. He was someone, as we read in Acts, who was totally opposed to the message about Jesus. He was travelling around arresting and persecuting Christians. And then he met Jesus on the road to Damascus - and there in that encounter, rather than face the consequences of his actions against God's people, he experienced the forgiveness of God.

And so it is no wonder that Paul's letters are always talking about Jesus and that grace is frequently mentioned. Grace is getting what we don't deserve, as opposed to mercy which is not getting what we do deserve. Paul was treated by God in a way that he did not deserve - it was all a gift from God, Paul knew what that was all about - he experienced it first hand.

Everything that Paul did was a consequence of that encounter with Jesus. And Paul wants us to encounter Jesus - because when we do nothing is ever the same again.