A Conversation with Christ

The Scriptures, which contain His Law, are the yardsticks God uses to judge our lives. As our creator, God has every right to judge our lives and reward or punish as He sees fit! Do we do any less with our own children? Do we not set standards by which we expect our children to live? Do we not, within human society, also set rules and standards by which we are expected to conduct ourselves? Do we not judge one unto another by them? Do we not set the penalties for failing to abide by them? So then too with God!

Does the clay tell the potter what he shall make it into, or does the potter tell the clay? Would any of us accept our TV telling us it should have been a refrigerator, or our cars that they should have been made a truck? Should our children be able to tell us we were wrong for making them a boy instead of a girl, or a girl instead of a boy? NO!

God is the creator of all things! God‘s standards are all that matter! It’s not about our own thoughts, rules, desires, or standards, but His!

Mankind is not always fair in its laws! But God is!

Mankind doesn’t adhere to its own rules, standards, and laws. But God does!

Mankind doesn’t always make known the expectations are for all. But God does!

Mankind changes rules & expectations seemingly at random. But God doesn’t!

God is the absolute, and faithful standard bearer of right and wrong! God is also a loving God and wants to have a conversation with us. He wants to have a fair and faithful conversation with us. He wants to bring us back into fellowship with Him just as we do with our children when they transgress our rules. God, through His son Jesus Christ, wants to show us that and thereby change our lives to be that which He created us to be! Paul is an example of what a conversation with Christ will do in our lives if we but listen to him!

1. Challenged (How?)

a. God, if we let him, will point out in our lives those things contrary to His Will, our sins for one. He will Challenge us to evaluate our lives. The yardstick He uses is His Holy Word! It contains the very laws by which He judges all of creation! Just as our penal codes, statutes, and law books contain our rules of conduct, our statutes and our laws so too does God’s Word! However, unlike Mankind’s, His Word is infallible, inerrant, and sovereign! Let’s define those words so we understand what that means.

• Infallible - Entirely exempt from liability to mistake!

• Inerrant - Free from all error!

• Sovereign - Superior to all others. Supreme in power!

b. God’s laws set the standards by which the pinnacle of His creation, Man, was expected to live. Almost the entire Old Testament was about God’s laws once creation took place. Let’s look at the comprehensiveness of the laws of God.

God law contained laws covering, and this is not an all-encompassing list:

• Lawlessness & Defilement

• Justice

• Worship

• False Teaching & False Witness

• Violence to others

That’s just to name a few! God’s Word is a comprehensive handbook on how the God of all creation expects us to live, and the penalties for not living to that standard! Paul, himself, was a Pharisee which was a Jewish sect that distinguished itself from all others through obsessive and strict observance of religious ceremonies and practices; the hard-line adherence to oral laws and traditions; Paul was a zealous one by their own standards at that! To say that Paul was strict on adherence to the law would be a considerable understatement! Philippians 3:5 records of Paul: “Circumcised on the eight day, of the race of Israel, or the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrew parentage, in observance of the law a Pharisee.”

Yet, even one such as Paul failed to live completely and utterly without sin, even knowing and practicing the laws of God as deeply as he did!

The law itself was never meant to provide us with salvation! That must be made abundantly clear! It was meant to point out the weaknesses in ourselves by pointing out Man’s failings in contrast to the holiness and perfect nature of God! It was meant to be a mirror into Man’s soul to show our imperfections, and God’s perfections! We can see this in Galatians 3:24-25:

“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.”

We can see in Galatians 5:19-20 just a tiny portion of Man’s imperfections all which God’s laws reveal in us!

“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

c. If we compare out handling of our own lives, through the will and application of our own Will, might, and power we will, if we’re honest with ourselves, find we have made many mistakes, done many wrongs, and chosen paths that have led us to many wrong places in our lives. Even when we meant to do good we failed!

God will challenge us to see that, to admit that, to realize all the places we went wrong, where our will and desires took us to places we never wanted, or intended, to go!

2. (We are) Convicted

a. Once we accept God’s challenge to examine our lives in the light of His Word, we cannot help but to become convicted both of our failings and of our very sins against a Holy and Just God; against our very creator! Let’s also define the word Convicted

i. Convicted - To be proven and determined to be guilty, either by verdict of a jury or by the decision of conscience! The jury here is the very Word of God itself! The decision of conscience is our own!

Can we truly stand defiant and unscathed in the face of overwhelming evidence that we have failed in ourselves, failed those around us, and the very God of Creation? Can any of us deny God has just cause to convict us? Can there be any doubt that we have sinned against a holy and righteous God? Can there be any doubt that we deserve his punishment? His penalty for sin is death!

The Bible tells us this in the first half of Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death;”

Need more evidence? In Romans 5:12 “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”

And again, in Ezekiel 18:4, “Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.”

And again, in James 1:15, “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”

b. Jesus convicted Paul, then still called Saul, by:

· Taking his sight for 3 days. - That’s 3 days alone, waiting on God! 3 days to look inside himself and to face what he saw there! To look deeply at the man in the mirror. To see who and what he thought he was and his life until then!

· Faced with what he saw, using God’s own yardstick, Paul felt the weight of his crimes, his wrongs against God himself and realized just how far off track his life had become, just how sin filled and prideful he’d been! Won’t you take that same look?

3. (We become) Changed!

a. When we are convicted of our sins, using the yardstick of God, this leads us directly into an understanding of the magnitude of our transgressions. It leads to repentance of our sins! We come to see a Just and Holy God must convict us and apply His punishment for those sins! But God is a righteous God. He is a loving God! Right here, we can begin the steps towards Change! We can allow ourselves, from the sheer weight of our guilt and sorrow, to fall on our faces before our God and beg His forgiveness! If we truly see, feel, and realize the extent of our crimes against God, realize that there is nothing we could ever say or do that could atone for the wrongs we have done against Him, we can set our hearts towards Him and throw ourselves upon His tender mercies! We can open our hearts to Him, let the precious blood of His son, Jesus Christ, wash away our sins and set us right with the God of all! We can let Him begin to work a change within us! God is capable of this and so much more! We have but to ask Him and trust Him!

b. We see Paul was changed! Acts 9:18-20 tells us he arose, was baptized and started preaching Christ! Before he was changed, he was trying to stomp out all followers of Christ! He was trying to stamp out the very name of Christ if he could! He’d set himself to that task with every ounce of strength, every fiber of his being!

c. After his conversation with Jesus, he set out preaching the very name of Jesus! He became a potent and deeply changed Champion of Christ! So too can we be changed! So too can, and will, we become a Champion for Christ!

d. We see another change as well! In Roman times, many people had dual names. Paul did as well. Prior to his conversion Paul called himself Saul, which was his Jewish name! After his conversation with Jesus, he ceased calling himself that and started calling himself by his Roman name, Paul. I wonder just how coincidental it is that Paul means ‘small’ or ‘little’! Paul would do everything he could to remove himself in his future teachings and sermons. He would do everything he could to make sure that Jesus was lifted and that all would remember Jesus before they ever thought about Paul! he certainly lived out what John the Baptist said in John 3:30, which was “He must increase, but I must decrease.”!

We see from all this that Paul’s conversation with Jesus can be, and is, a mirror of our own conversation with the true and living Christ! Our lives can, and will be, changed forever! We then can begin again as a new creature in Christ! We can live walking talking and following our Lord and Savior: changed from what we once were into that which we were meant to be! All we must do is talk with him! Won’t you have a conversation with Jesus? He’s willing! He’s waiting…!

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