…Jesus
Christ, our Lord, 5through whom we received grace and apostleship
into a hearing of faith among the Gentiles on behalf of His name, 6and
you also are among them – called ones of Jesus Christ.
I found it instructive to stop and ponder pretty much every
word of verses 5 & 6.
Verse 5 starts with “through whom.” Through who? Jesus. Once
again, He is “the point of it all” and He is everything. Everything is “concerning His Son!”
Whatever good Paul received, He received it through Him, through Jesus. That is
not at all surprising since, “For by Him all things were created: things in
heaven and on earth, visible and invisible…all things have been created through
Him and for Him” (Col. 1:16). David said of the Lord, “You open Your hand and
satisfy the desires of every living thing” (Ps. 145:16). It is a wonderful
freedom to realize it true that “Every good and perfect gift comes down from
the Father of Lights” (Ja. 1:17). Sin, Satan, and this world promise us everything
our hearts desire, then instead kill us; but we can look to the hand of Jesus
and know we will receive good from His hand. Everything truly good comes “through
Him.”
“We received.” These two simple words, when sincerely grasped,
are the death of pride. If there is anything in my life that is good or right,
why is it there? I received it.
School always came easy for me. My whole life I’ve watched other people
struggle with math, struggle with simple spelling, with proper English. That,
of course, means I’m “better” than them, right? Wrong, of course. I Cor. 4:7
speaks directly to this matter: “For who makes you different from anyone else?
What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do
you boast as though you did not?” Boasting? Yes. Every second you or I think in
any way, shape, or form we’re “better” than anyone else, our hearts are “boasting.”
We may in fact be better at
something, but that doesn’t make us “better.” The fact is, no matter who it is,
there are things they are better at than me. We all have our own gifts and
talents. In our text, even something as “great” as the gift of apostleship only
belonged to Paul because Jesus gave it to him. We all need to see our gifts as
something we were given – something we received.
“Grace.” Paul here says through Jesus he received “grace.”
Grace, in and of itself, is the death of pride. By its very nature grace is
undeserved. That’s the point. Grace is God’s favor and kindness shown to me in
utter disregard of what I do or do not “deserve.” Even in human terms, grace is
about the person giving, not the person receiving. A gracious person is someone
who gives good because they’re good,
because they have a generous, kind heart. If you or I happen to land at the
feet of someone else’s grace, we can only be thankful. Hopefully at those times
we are keenly aware that their kindness has nothing to do with whether I do or
do not “deserve” it. It’s just who they
are. I enjoyed working several years under one boss who was like that. It
seemed like every time we turned around he was giving us something. Working
with him personally for those several years I got to see clearly it all came
from his gracious heart. But the best news is that our Jesus is a God of grace.
Even in what may be seemingly the most difficult of times, our hearts can be
encouraged to remember He said, “My grace is sufficient for thee.”
“Apostleship.” Woah, dude. Raising the dead, healing the
sick, casting out demons, visions from God. Woah, dude. Although the apostles
may be scorned by the world, by us believers they are held in very, very high
esteem. Amongst us Christians, we might all agree it would be amazing to
actually be an apostle – to preach one sermon and see 3,000 people saved in a
single day! Wow. I mean, we all want to be used by God. We want to think we
could actually be used in some mighty way. We wish we could be. A few people
get selected. “He gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be pastors
and teachers,” and for what reason? “… to prepare God’s people …” Some are
chosen for gifted leadership. And who are the rest? Just “God’s people.”
The vast majority of us will always be simply “God’s people.”
Most of us will not be given “amazing”
gifts. We are just “God’s people.” We get up in the morning and go to work. We
brush our teeth and mow our grass. We’re fathers and mothers and neighbors and
friends. But the genius of the Gospel is that there are a LOT of us! As Lincoln
said, “The Lord must love common people – He made so many of them!” In the
church, Paul’s “gift” was apostleship. Our gifts are just to be “God’s people” –
to go out into a world of people who desperately need Christ and live the very
truths God’s gifted leaders have taught us – to be living epistles, known and
read by all men, written not on tablets of stone, but on the fleshy tablets of
human hearts.”
“Into a hearing of faith.” This is the reason why Paul
received “grace and apostleship.” The word I’ve translated “hearing” is exactly
that. Many translations say some form of “obedience of faith.” What is
happening is, just like in English, the verb “to hear” also can mean “to obey.”
The parent says to the disobedient child, “You’re not listening to me.” I don’t have any
problem with understanding this passage as addressing the obedience that comes
with faith. When we truly “hear” what faith is about, it will change our
lives. To real born-again Christians, that is not something threatening, it is
to us “Good news!” We don’t want to be who we were. We want to change. We want
to be better. The wonderful thing about real faith is that is exactly what it
does. It raises us. Our God is a Redeemer. His specialty is gathering up the
broken shards of our lives, putting them back together, and giving us a “future
and a hope.”
“Among all the Gentiles.” As the hillbilly would say, “That
means us’ns!” We’re “the Gentiles.” We’re the people who were “having no hope,
without God in the world;” but now “we are brought near by the blood of Jesus.”
We can thank God for all eternity that faith burst out of Israel’s borders and
hunted you and me down – in every corner of this world. Actually it had to be
that way. Jesus is too great a Savior just to save the Jewish people. His grace
explodes to cover our globe. This was actually prophesied in Isa. 49:5,6, “And
now the Lord says: “It is too small a thing for You to be My servant to restore
the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also
make You a light for the Gentiles, that My salvation may reach to the ends of
the earth.”
“On behalf of His name.” Once again, it’s all about Him.
Verse 6 goes on to very deliberately express, “and you also
are among them – called ones of Jesus Christ.” Paul would have every believer
to know, we’re “among them.” No matter who we are, we are His.
So much encouraging truth in just a few short words!
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