The Apostle Paul And 'Larry King Live'

Sermon by Pastor David Layman (Paul)

and Pastor John Hollis (Larry King)

June 12,2005

Romans 5: 1-11

Larry: Recently, I showed replays of some of my interviews ftom the past, with people such as Billy Graham, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon. Today, we'll go even further back to my interview with the Apostle Paul. If you didn't see that episode, it might be because you didn't have television back then! We welcome to the show Paul, the most renowned Apostle of all time!

Paul: I'd rather be known simply as Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ!

Larry: Paul, scholars call your letter to the Romans your masterpiece! Did you ever expect it would become a best seller?

Paul: I didn't write my letter to the Romans for personal gain, and

have received nothing for it. In fact, I didn't respond to Christ's

call for personal gain. Just the opposite has been the result. I've

been shipwrecked, beaten and thrown in jail many times. Friends in the faith lowered me down the Damascus wall. at night in a basket, to save my life. But this all pales in comparison with the joy of knowing Jesus Christ. I suspect one of the reasons my letter to the Romans is so

widely read is that my other letters are typically written to particular places I'd been and people I'd known. But I'd never been to Rome, and I wanted to present to the Romans a summary of the Christian faith. I didn't realize when I was writing that my letters would become scripture, and that 2,000 years later, some people would at times quote me out of context! But I did feel inspired by God to write as I did.

Yet remember, the people God uses are also fallible, sinful human beings. I consider myself the greatest of all sinners!

Larry: Some people note that understanding your writing may be more difficult than understanding the parables and teachings of Jesus. How would you respond to that?

Paul: I would hope that everyone would focus first and foremost on the teaching, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. I'm more like a philosophy professor who gazes back on Jesus, considers the history of the Jewish people and reflects upon the meaning of Christ. If you don't have a good grasp of the Hebrew scriptures, what you call the "Old Testament", you'll have a hard time understanding me.

Larry: At times, you speak of the "wrath of God". This puzzles people that think of God in terms of love.

Paul: Don't confuse God's wrath with human anger! God doesn't have what you call a "short fuse"! God has patiently sought to woo His wayward children back to him, but time and again, people ignored God's servants, and the nation Israel refused to fulfill God's desire that

they communicate God's truth with the whole world. There is such a thing as righteous indignation, anger and wrath. The opposite of love

is apathy, not righteous anger. Instead of destroying the world with another flood, God became flesh in the life of Jesus, making His supreme appeal not by punishing sinners but by taking that punishment upon Himself through Christ's death on the cross.

Larry: Let me interrupt here and ask, are you talking about what's called the doctrine of the atonement here?

Paul: Yes! Human beings have no gift valuable enough, no work righteous enough to atone for our sins. Americans know something about credit card debt, I understand! What I'm saying is that all we humans are debtors who cannot pay our debts. Christ bore our sins upon a

cross for us. The Hebrew people up to the time of Jesus practiced animal sacrifices, because we knew we had gone astray, and a price had to be paid for our sin. In Jesus, God was making himself "at one" with us...thus, the atonement. Jesus didn't die for himself, but for us.

That's good news, Larry!

Larry: I understand that in some, might I say, more liberal branches of the church today, there is criticism of the doctrine of the atonement. Some say "We don't like all these references to Christ's blood, sacrifice, dying on a cross, and so forth.

Paul: The cross of Jesus was a scandal 2,000 years ago as well. Making the cross the symbol of the Christian faith would be like, in your day, putting an electric chair up on a sanctuary wall. But I would maintain that God's glory shines through the scandal of the cross. Jesus didn't die on a cross because he miscalculated his opposition and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem, knowing full well He was giving his life as a ransom for sin.

Larry: Paul, people today don't like to talk about sin, and needing to be ransomed.

Paul: Larry, humankind is afflicted with a terminal case of self centeredness. Sin is a deadly disease, and there was no pain free way to deal with sin...thus, the cross. Those who scoff at the cross of Christ, or gaze at it and say "I don't need God's forgiveness", are condemning themselves!

Larry: Universalism, the belief that all will be saved, is popular now days. Are you a universalist?

Paul: Larry, if I believed everyone would be saved, why in the world would I be risking life and limb, going about proclaiming the good news of Jesus? Why would I be willing to suffer beatings and imprisonment, risking my own death, if I thought that everyone would be saved? And what kind of a God would create people that were mere puppets, that had no freedom to accept or reject Him? Wouldn't that make life rather pointless? Our God gives us choices. And the natural, human inclination is to take the easy, self centered way out, every time.

That path leads to destruction, not to God. It grieves me to think that people can look at the suffering love of Jesus, the only perfect person ever, and say "I don't need what Christ has done for me." Such people are choosing hell for themselves. And the sad thing is that their self-centeredness brings suffering and misery to others about them as well! Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and God weeps over all that might reject Him. God's mercy and love are His first choices, and God's wrath is our last choice!

Larry: Let me read to you from Romans 5:3, "We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us." May I ask, what are you talking about here? What good can possibly come from suffering?

Paul: Let me say first that I wrote to the Romans in Greek, and you're reading an English translation. Instead of the word "boast", I think a better word is "celebrate" or "rejoice". I know there's a modem inclination to regard not only the pursuit but also the attainment of happiness as an inalienable right. People look to technology to save them from suffering, and to lawyers to assess blame for it. Much of modem life is focussed on avoiding suffering. The ironic truth, however, is that a certain measure of suffering and struggle is necessary to bring about that which is truly good. Mothers endure birth pangs to bring new life into the world. The road is easy that leads to death, and the road is hard that leads to life. Jesus was willing to endure suffering because of the joy set before Him! Peter and others who knew the earthly Jesus said He was a very joy-filled person. And when we suffer and struggle for Him today, we sense the presence of Christ's Spirit. That makes us joyful even in the midst of suffering. I didn't say we celebrate our sufferings. We celebrate in our suffering. For we know God will work through our suffering to produce patience, and patience produces a tried and tested character. Neither patience nor character are highly prized in the 21st century. But the reason people today can enjoy what they have is that someone else suffered and struggled to help make those things possible.

Larry: Our time is almost up. Any final thoughts you'd like to share?

Paul: I grew up in a culture with many rules, where we tried to work very hard to keep those rules, believing we could earn God's love and approval by doing so. My zeal for keeping the law, however, led me to persecute the followers of Jesus, crucified on a cross just outside of Jerusalem only a few years earlier. I was on a journey to Damascus to continue this persecution when the risen Christ appeared to me, asking "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" I came to see that God had raised Jesus from the dead, and that Jesus had fulfilled the mission God had entrusted Israel with, but had failed to keep. Jesus' death and resurrection mark the turning point of all human history!

God proves His love for us, in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us! That's good news for you, for me, for the whole world!

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