A worker showed up for the shift already knowing where he expected to be placed. He knew the hallway, the rhythm, the people, the work. Then the assignment changed. It was not the shift he would have chosen, but it was still the work in front of him. At some point, obedience stops being the plan we prepared for and becomes the place we are sent.
Where are you right now? Where are you going? What do you do if there’s a detour?
Paul knew something about detours. On a trip fueled by zeal, he encountered one of the most radical redirections in human history. He learned that obedience to God’s will would not shrink his world, but widen it. The gospel would not belong only to his own people, but to Jew and Gentile alike. Yet that same obedience also meant guarding the gospel itself. The church is sent to the world, but it is sent with the one true gospel of Jesus Christ.
To quote John Wesley, the Spirit asked the Antioch believers to ‘see the world as their parish.’
Bence, P. A. (1998). Acts: A Bible Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (p. 133). Wesleyan Publishing House.
Paul’s detour had led him to Antioch. There, he and Barnabas helped lead a thriving multicultural church. Most people would probably assume that’s the destination. You’ve arrived where God wants you! You’re doing his work! The truth is that we can always go further for Christ and have a deeper relationship with Him! Paul’s stay in Antioch led him to go to Cyprus, Pamphylia, Pisidia, southern Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia, Syria, and Judea, before the road to Rome carried him through Crete and Malta. In these travels, he planted at least nine churches, wrote thirteen books in the canonized Bible, and possibly wrote other letters that we haven’t read. If you told the Saul that was leaving for Damascus this, he might’ve spit in your face. This is the power of the true Gospel!
For the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame, since there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, because the same Lord of all richly blesses all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.
Christian Standard Bible (Ro 10:11–15). (2020). Holman Bible Publishers.
Paul is encouraging us to allow God to use us as God used him!! We need not desperately cling to our own plans or insist we know better. If the God of the universe wants to include us in His plans, why resist?
Paul identifies the order. Send people to preach so that others can hear the preaching and believe, and use that belief to call on Jesus, who will then bless those who call on Him. The beautiful thing here is that it requires us to send people! We cannot just sit around and wait for unbelievers to arrive; we have a commission to go to them. Paul calls us ambassadors of Christ. We represent Him to those who don’t know Him yet. In the sermon this Sunday, my pastor said that one of the most common forms of prevenient grace in the world is God’s people being these ambassadors.
In the Old Testament, God almost exclusively called on the descendants of Abraham to be these ambassadors. This group eventually became what we see as the Judeans in the New Testament. The terms “Jew” and “Judean” both derive from the tribe of Judah and refer to the Southern Kingdom. These were the people exiled by the Babylonians and returned home by the Persians. The Northern Kingdom is now what many refer to as the lost tribes of Israel. With what was likely too much explanation, you can now place the term “Jew” in the context of first-century Palestine.
Paul has, in other words, expounded an essentially Old Testament doctrine of salvation, composed his own variation on it, and shown that it has been fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah. Israel has been longing for salvation; God has provided it… This is why, as Paul has insisted over and over throughout this letter, part of the point of the gospel is that non-Jews are welcome into this renewed covenant family on equal terms with Jews. If Jews want the salvation now provided in their own Messiah, they must (as Paul has learnt) share their Messiah, and the covenant family redefined in him, with a much larger company.
Wright, T. (2004). Paul for Everyone: Romans, Part 2: Chapters 9–16 (pp. 32–33). Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
Jesus was Jewish, descended from the tribe of Judah. Paul, also Jewish, repeatedly demonstrates an idea of bringing the Gospel first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles. The Jewish Christians had to learn to share their Messiah because He was Jewish. He grew up studying the same scriptures as them. Now they were being told to accept polytheistic Gentiles into their gatherings. How could this be?!? This is what leads us to another problem.
We, too, must remember that a strongly positive response to a false gospel can, in the long run, be more dangerous than a negative response to the true gospel.
Bence, P. A. (1998). Acts: A Bible Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (p. 146). Wesleyan Publishing House.
In Galatia, this issue was faced twice. First was when Paul and Barnabas were mistaken to be Hermes and Zeus due to a folk tale in the area about a previous time Hermes and Zeus visited and almost nobody recognized. After the new churches were planted, the Judaizers arrived and told them that circumcision was necessary to be Christian. These were both potential false gospels. In today’s world, the most common false gospels are those of money, war, sex, and nationalism. The worship of none of these things has a place in the Church.
I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ. Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed. Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.
Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (Ga 1:6–10). Tyndale House Publishers.
This excerpt from Galatians refers specifically to the Judaizers, but the idea is still meaningful in other contexts. Despite this, we allow money, war, sex, and nationalism to pervert our congregations. Granted, these typically do not present together, though sometimes almost all of them can present at once. The true Gospel permits none of them. Our commitment to the Messiah and His Bride transcends all other commitments. This includes but is not limited to self, family, career, future plans, financial security, political allegiance, national identity, cultural belonging, romantic or sexual relationships, social belonging, reputation, loyalty to spiritual leaders, institutional loyalty, safety, and stability. Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, developed a hierarchy of needs with air, water, food, sleep, shelter, and clothing being the most basic necessities for humans. Even those needs pale in comparison to our need for a Creator and a Savior. If we build our foundation on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then all of those things begin to matter less. In our sinful and fallen world, they may still matter somewhat, but we should be more focused on eternity in the new creation than tomorrow in this creation.
Perhaps the best way to see why Paul attacks their teaching so vigorously is to read carefully the next few clauses. He has said in verse 6 that this Jewish-Christian preaching is ‘a different gospel’ (heteros, properly in Greek ‘the second of two alternatives,’ although in Hellenistic Greek such finer distinctions are blurred). He now goes on to say not that there is another [allo] gospel: it is only that there are some who trouble you, who are ‘throwing you into a state of mental confusion’ (tarassontes) and actually want to pervert the gospel of Christ. Here Paul is questioning not their sincerity but their theology: sincerity in itself is not enough, and indeed, if misdirected, may do more damage, as here.
Cole, R. A. (1989). Galatians: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 9, p. 77). InterVarsity Press.
We can sincerely want good things for people. Jesus commands us to love our neighbors. But the greatest love does not come from sincerity alone, and it cannot be reduced to earthly security. Love must be shaped by Christ, because sincerity without the true gospel can still lead people away from the One who saves. We face the daily challenge of knowing when to love others and when to share the Gospel. The best thing to remember is that we can’t outsource God. His prevenient grace and atoning sacrifice aren’t changed by our actions. We’re tasked with allowing God to use us. Having an outward faith and aligning ourselves with His will is how we face this challenge.
How we go and share the true Gospel looks different for every person. What’s important is that we are sharing the true Gospel. Modifying it for yourself or for your audience is worse than rejection. The Gospel should convict us. Watering it down so we’re comfortable hurts more than it could ever help. We do not get to make the gospel smaller than Christ’s lordship, and we do not get to make it broader than Christ himself. Our job is to be sent with obedience.
Moments with Emmanuel 