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More Thoughts from William Barclay

Dear Friends,

Last week I sent out a “thought” from William Barclay’s book, “Many Witnesses, One Lord.” It focused almost entirely on the apostle Peter, after initially mentioning one of the slight differences of emphasis between him and Paul. A friend from England then wrote back asking if I might send out a similar post giving a summary of Barclay’s comments on Paul. I told him I would - today! It's another example of one Lord, one faith, one Gospel, but differences in each author’s emphasis. This is Paul’s. Enjoy.


“When Paul speaks of God ‘justifying’ the ungodly, quite simply he means that God treats the sinner as if he was a good man. In his amazing love God treats the hell-deserving sinner as a beloved son. The perfect example of ‘justification by faith’ is the parable of the prodigal son. The son planned to come back and to ask to be received as a hired servant. He never got the chance to make the request; he is welcomed as a son (Luke 15:11-32).

Here indeed is the Gospel. All that we could have expected is condemnation, and lo and behold we meet with welcoming love. The relationship between God and man has completely changed. We can now think of God not as the threatening judge, but as the waiting father, and we can come to him in heart-broken penitence but nonetheless in childlike confidence and trust…

The other name for all this is grace. Grace is something which a man can never earn, but which is freely and spontaneously given to him, and which he can only accept. The essence of the Pauline faith is the acceptance of the fact that we cannot save ourselves but can only trustingly and lovingly accept that which God so generously offers.

But… [some will say] if God treats the sinner as a good person, why worry about sin anymore? If grace is all-important, and if a person must stop striving and start receiving, why not simply relax all discipline… and go on sinning to one’s heart’s content?...

To that Paul would have returned three answers.

1st) What Christianity does is not to supply a man with an excuse to comfortably live the old life; it supplies him with a dynamic for the new life. That new life which comes with baptism is a sharing in the resurrection life of Christ. In it a man has died to sin and lives to God. He is no longer the slave of sin but the servant of righteousness (Rom. 6:3-19). The essence of Christianity is not that it makes a man free to sin, but that it makes him free not to sin.

2nd) If a man takes up that attitude, he does not know what love is. The fact that our nearest and dearest love us and will continue to love us and will forgive us no matter what we do is NOT a reason for doing the things which will break their hearts. Far from it. It lays upon us the responsibility of forever seeking to deserve that love. To know that we are loved, and to know that love will forgive, is not a reason for sinning as we like; it is an obligation to nobility.

3rd) The Pauline idea of justification by faith is incomplete without the accompanying idea of sanctification. When the Christian is freed from sin and becomes a slave of God, the return he receives is sanctification (Rom. 6:22). The sanctification of the Christian is the will of God (I Thess. 4:3). It is Paul’s prayer for the Thessalonians that the God of peace may sanctify his people through and through (I Thess. 5:23). Christians are chosen for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth (II Thess. 2:13)… Paul would certainly have said no man is saved by works; but he would equally have said that a man is saved for works (Eph. 2:10). And unless sanctification [growth in godliness] follows justification [being brought by faith into a right relationship with God], a man’s Christianity is sadly incomplete. But there is this one difference. The motivating power is not now law, but love. The constraint is now the love of Christ (II Cor. 5:14). The dynamic is not now fear, but devotion to the Savior who has loved us and gave himself for us…

When all this happens then life is ‘in Christ’ – a phrase Paul uses in his letters more than eighty times. It has been said that the only possible analogy to this phrase is in our relationship to the air which surrounds us. Unless we are in the air, and unless the air is in us, we die. And unless the Christian is in Christ, and Christ in the Christian, the spiritual life dies. Christ is the very atmosphere in which the Christian lives and moves and has his being, the standard by which he judges all things, the voice for which he continually listens, and the presence who is always and forever with him in life and in death.”


Living in His All-sufficient Grace, Pastor Jeff

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