Being a follower of Jesus Christ can be demanding. We feel worn out just living for ourselves! To live for others can feel even more exhausting, before we even start. Although being a disciple certainly demands a lot of us—patience, charity, commitment, and a lot of love—the good news is that we have more than enough to live the way Jesus calls us. In Jesus, we all have all the strength we need for this ministry of Christian living (1:12). Do you believe that?

          Jesus is the only one who can give what we need to do what he asks. He asks us to live committed to God and to one another—on the terms he lays out. Any of us can be committed to God, on our own terms, in our own way—“I love God, in my own way.” We can be committed to one another, on our own terms, in our own way. Who gets to set the terms in a relationship? Who gets to set the terms when the relationship is with God, and life is at stake? This may be the most difficult part for any disciple to accept: life is at stake. They who have sought relationship with God, a relationship in Spirit and Truth, they who have welcomed Jesus, even late in life, even in the last hours of life: they will have life and have it abundantly. Those who have never sought, never desired that relationship, those who live by their own spirit and their own truth will find condemnation: withered, bitter fruit.

Jesus gives us what we need in order to live the way he shows us. He doesn’t call us to impossible exploits. Are we challenged? Certainly! Have you ever wondered how you were going to get through something, some situation, some trial, some impossibility? That’s an acknowledgment that, in ourselves, we don’t have what we need. Only from Jesus can we obtain what we need. Only in him do we have what we need. We don’t know how we’re going to get through this, but we have faith that Jesus knows how he is going to get us through this, and in that faith we rest; in that faith we find our strength. Grace—such a small word for such a big blessing.

What we need for our discipleship, what we need in order to follow Jesus daily, is grace: the secure conviction of God’s blessing, God’s favor, God’s steadfast love and firm purposes for our benefit—spiritual benefit, benefit with an eye to eternity: the life to come. We aren’t living now to stay here and get all we can of what we can get here on earth. In Christ, we are living (it is in Christ that we can live, now) for what we have in him and shall have, through him: unbroken, complete, whole, perfect fellowship with God, forever. Jesus takes us back to the Garden, only it will be a new garden. Jesus makes it possible; Jesus has made us, believers, possible. Praise his wonderful name.

And how much more should we praise him, considering, with Paul, that Jesus has considered each of us worthy of the ministry he has given us (1:12): the ministry of growing together and loving one another in Christ, for the sake of our Father in heaven, who rejoices in those who live in Christ. What did we ever do, to deserve this favor of God? Are any of us so naturally kind, so naturally patient, so naturally loving and giving, so naturally righteous? Are any of us by nature so faithful? We haven’t deserved it. If you’re thinking in your heart of hearts, “Well, I maybe kind of deserve it; I kind of deserve the love and favor of God,” I’d just encourage you to think again. Read that Bible I talk about so much. See yourself in light of God’s Word, rather than God’s Word through your light. As you pray, reflect upon who God is more than on the list of things you want God to do for you.

In Christ, God finds us worthy of the trials and blessings of discipleship, finds us worthy of life with Him. There is a place for you in His kingdom. There is work for us to do, in it. Jesus, my Savior, thanks be to you.

Paul is amazed that God has been so gracious to him. When he was known as Saul, he had devoted his life to destroying followers of Christ (1:13). He lived to hate Jesus, to revile, to mock, to make Jesus a joke. Saul was too smart to believe in Jesus, too realistic to believe in that nonsense. Saul knew the way to live this life: it had gotten him pretty far. Saul was seeking to destroy Christians, to scrape the name of Jesus out of every heart. It took God, in Jesus, to set Paul straight.

Paul is always the first to say so, always willing to share his testimony. Some of us have grown up in church, maybe even this church: we can’t remember a time when we didn’t know about Jesus. Others have come here only after years spent, lost, away from Jesus, away from God. The thought of that lost time pains us still, but God has been merciful: He has called us here. We’re here now and, in God’s sight, in God’s judgment, this is what matters: we weren’t here, before, but, by God, thanks be to Jesus Christ, we are here now.

Mercy, grace, faith, love—they all come together in Jesus Christ. When we live for Jesus, when we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word, we are receiving, and sharing, mercy, grace, faith, and love.

Paul knows what God could have, should have done. Jesus called out to Saul on the road to Damascus; Saul didn’t know him, didn’t know God. Jesus struck Saul blind: Jesus’ way of revealing to Paul that he had been blind all along. Jesus struck Paul blind; he might have, maybe should have, struck Saul dead, and Paul knows it. But Jesus didn’t, because Jesus has other plans for him. Beloved, God could have struck all of us dead: not to be a party-pooper, but that is what we deserve from God. Let that sink in, every day, through Christ: it’ll change your life. In Jesus, though, God has other plans for us, not condemnation but plans for blessing, for life and for work: the work of discipleship. Let that sink in, too, deeply. God’s plans, His wish, have never been condemnation and death; God’s plan and wish have always been mercy; Jesus is the strongest, purest proof of this.

Paul needed faith (1:13). Faith saves. Wealth doesn’t. Knowledge doesn’t save. Family doesn’t. Health doesn’t. Work doesn’t save. TV doesn’t. Politics doesn’t save. The internet doesn’t save. It takes faith. Faith is the way to life. Jesus comes to us by faith through grace—mercy, that is—and by faith, through grace, we welcome and come to know Jesus.

Plenty of people believe they are being faithful, in their own way. For nearly twenty years, I never set foot in any church and called myself a Christian. Doing my thing my way and Jesus along for the ride, I guess. Paul was sure of his faithfulness, on the way to Damascus to round up Christians and scrape the name of Jesus from the face of the earth. Only God can make us see the truth. God will show us our blindness, so that we can receive sight. Paul thought he was giving God his faith: “God, you know I love you. Did you see the way I believe in you?” God shows Paul a foundation-shaking truth: faith isn’t what Saul was giving God; faith is what God gives us, by grace, in mercy. There’s nothing we can give God that He hasn’t already given us. O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be.

We get on a path. It seems like it might get us somewhere good, get us something good, something we believe we want. At a certain point we figure out it’s not the right path. We had been so sure; our hearts so very much wanted this to be the right path—our fickle, broken, blind hearts. “I know what I’m doing!” “I know where I’m going!” we say. “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death” (Pr 14:12). Paul was on that way. He hadn’t realized it. He didn’t want to realize it; there was too much at stake: everything he wanted in life; everything he had been taught in this world to want most.

God has other plans. God’s plans have always been mercy. “Our Lord poured out his abundant grace on me and gave me the faith and love which are ours in union with Christ Jesus” (1:14). Paul’s words are our words, his testimony, our testimony. We may feel as if God’s grace comes to us only like a drip, a slow drip: a drop, every now and again, in the long, dry seasons of life. God pours. I need to say, though, that even a drop of grace would do. “Oh, no, I need a lot of grace, oceans of it!” Beloved, grace is very concentrated. I daresay one drop of Christ’s blood was enough to cleanse us all, but grace pours, God pours, love abounds, mercy flows. We are so accustomed to poverty, to lack, to insufficiency—God knows—that He has been pleased to pour. God isn’t stingy with grace!

When I find faith, when I feel love for God, that’s grace. God has led me to it, planted it, watered it. I find faith and feel love when I know Jesus Christ, not just knowing about him, but knowing him: thinking about him, valuing him, being glad because of him, wanting him in my life, wanting more of him so that my life becomes more—more than me, more than work, bills, my crowded schedule, the frustrations and disappointments, the pains and new limitations. In the midst of it all, I know God is there, with me, at work in me, for me. Above it all, I know God is there. Beneath it all, there is my God, my sure foundation, in Jesus, through the power, the ability of the Holy Spirit: ability set to work for us, enabling us to glorify God through our God-given ministry, our discipleship.

We have Good News to share. Listen up! Paul says: Jesus came to save sinners (1:15)! Not condemn. Save. Not death and hopelessness, not despair and poverty! Hope, abundance, joy, life! God’s plans, God’s wish, are and always have been mercy; He gives grace. There is no news better than this. Paul puts it into perspective. I’m the worst, he tells Timothy, but God was merciful to me (1:15-16). Me, of all people. You, of all people. I hated Jesus with a deep, nearly-religious hatred. Rather than making that the justification for destroying me, God made Jesus my justification for life.

God’s work in our lives has implications for the lives of others, too. God was merciful for a purpose larger than saving Paul; God was merciful (there it is, again: mercy!) so that Christ might show his full patience in dealing with Paul (1:16). Patience is mercy—remember that. The mercy has a purpose, because God has a purpose; there is a purpose in His love: to bring us to understand just how patient He has been with us and is being with us, so that, having perceived it, we would be moved to seek forgiveness and reconciliation, seek God, and seek to live the disciple’s way—which is not nor ever can be done perfectly in this life, but is always done through challenge, difficulty, temptation, stumbling, confessing, loving, and yearning, and hoping. Discipleship is always done in faith.

Paul knows Jesus has called, claimed, and loved him, and poured out mercy and grace upon his unworthy self “as an example” for all those who would come to believe and receive (1:16). If Jesus cares enough to call and claim Paul, who had made it his life’s work to oppose Jesus and ruin Christians, then Jesus surely cares for us, who spent too many years, wasted too many opportunities, not caring one way or the other, just engrossed in our own worries and pursuits, living for ourselves, finding that all we thought would satisfy us failed to satisfy, finding that nothing we had craved really filled the craving behind the craving.

Like Paul, then, each of us becomes an example, an encouragement, a beckoning, for all who will come to believe and receive that mercy, that grace, and that love. Like Paul, we, also, are examples of the power of Jesus for life. With Paul, how enthusiastically, how thankfully, we join our hearts in ascribing to the King, the only God, honor and glory forever!