Called by the Grace of Christ – Galatians 1:1–17
Called by the Grace of Christ
Galatians 1:1–17
Galatians 1:6 I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel;
Galatians 1:15 But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased
Some Jews came to the churches in Galatia and stirred up confusion among the believers. They claimed, “Paul is not a true servant of God. He’s a fraud who gave himself the title of apostle and wasn’t appointed by God.” While Paul was briefly away, these agitators made a mess of the church, and the believers who were not firmly grounded were easily swayed and began to doubt the calling Paul had received. In response,Apostle Paul states in this passage that God had set him apart from his mother’s womb and called him by His grace.
The Jews insisted that one must keep the Law, but Paul declared the opposite: “We are saved by faith in Jesus alone.” He emphasized the grace of God and strongly proclaimed its power. Paul, deeply understanding just how precious, valuable, and glorious God’s grace is, spread the fragrance of grace throughout his life, like the deep fragrance of perfume.
First, God’s Grace Is a Grace that Goes Before Us
God’s grace goes ahead of us. When we plan or intend to do something, we may not know it, but God’s grace has already gone ahead of us. So when you pray, don’t just say, “God, my mind is dull, and I can’t understand. I want to do this with such and such a heart—what should I do?” Instead, I urge you to pray for God’s grace to go before you, working to accomplish all that you intend to do. The grace of God must always go ahead of us.
Before I was born, God had already chosen and called me by grace. This means that even before Paul was in his mother’s womb, and while he was still in the womb, grace had already called him. Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He thought that believers in Jesus were heretics, so he was a man who arrested, tortured, beat, and even killed them. Wasn’t Stephen arrested by the apostle Paul and stoned to death? Yet even before Paul persecuted the church, God’s grace had already called him. On the road to Damascus, a brilliant light surrounded him and seized him. Only then did Paul finally understand.
Some of you might be thinking, “No matter how much I believe, it’s useless. Nothing works out for me. Just look at my husband, my kids, my business—none of it’s going well.” But please don’t think that way. From today, when you pray, first recognize that God’s grace goes before your husband, your children—it comes before everything. Pray like this: “I have no idea where my husband, my children, my parents, or my business are headed. But because God’s grace goes ahead of all of them, please help me understand Your will, Lord. Help me see how You will accomplish Your plans through someone as lacking as me, by Your grace.” God chose you by His grace even before you were born.
This is what we call a divine calling (Gal 1:15). It means God’s grace goes before; the word “before” is key here. It’s not by our own strength or effort that we become who we are, but entirely by the grace of God. The apostle Paul always held close in his heart the words of Isaiah’s calling (Isa 49:1) and Jeremiah’s calling (Jer 1:5). These passages reminded him that God’s purpose and grace
were already at work, even before he was aware of them.
Isaiah 49:1 Listen to Me, O islands, and pay attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called Me from the womb; from the body of My mother He named Me.
Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.
By aligning his own calling with these two great prophets, Paul affirms the authority of his apostleship. He realized, though belatedly, that God had been at work in him from the womb and that grace had gone ahead of him even before his consciousness had developed. Do not think you succeeded because you met the right people. Every step of the way, God’s grace was there first. Think about infant baptism. It is the work of God’s grace, already preceding the formation of the human brain, to baptize the baby, and the parents are responding to God’s work on the child’s behalf. Through baptism, the mother has answered God’s call on behalf of the baby, and the child later realizes, “In God’s grace, when my consciousness was not yet properly formed, my parents answered the catechism on my behalf.”
In the same way, Paul says that his calling as an apostle did not originate with men, nor was it delivered by men, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father.
Galatians 1:1 Paul, an apostle (not sent from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead),
Beloved saints, do not think that you received grace because you worked hard, or earned money because you lived diligently, or even that you gained a good son-in-law or daughter-in-law by your own efforts. God’s grace had already gone ahead of you and moved the hearts involved. His miraculous work is at work in your heart. Paul repeatedly said that when he began to preach the gospel of Christ, he did not do it at anyone’s request. “When God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man. I didn’t even go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was.” He went to Arabia, and there, for three years, he prostrated himself and prayed earnestly before God with tears, and as a result, he was able to receive great grace. Without consulting others, he went to Arabia and Damascus and began to preach.
Galatians 1:16-17 to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.
Saints, I pray in the name of the Lord that we may all experience the work of realizing that it is God’s grace at work within us, not our own thoughts, plans, or worldly learning, that has made us grow in faith. Paul understood that even his faith in Jesus came about because God’s grace had worked in him before his own decision. It was God’s grace at work in him that produced faith. Everything was all by grace. He testified often to the amazing experience of God ruling over his heart.
Paul had gone to Damascus not to believe in Jesus but to capture Christians and gain credit by persecuting them. As a zealous Jew and a Pharisee of Pharisees, he sought to act as a blameless legalist and a faithful religious authority. But he turned 180 degrees because the light of God’s grace surrounded and captured him. “Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him” (Acts 9:3). He later told King Agrippa, “About noontime, a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me” (Acts 22:6–12).
This light is a glorious light brighter than the sun. In the end, it all comes down to this: it was all God’s grace. Paul confessed that God had poured out His love and grace endlessly, like water streaming down in a shower. If we, like Paul, have come to grasp God’s grace, then we must not say, “I succeeded because of my talent, my effort, because I endured hunger, lack, sleepless nights.” No—it was all God’s grace. Believe that His grace was with you. And never forsake that grace.
Second, It Is the Grace of Salvation
The apostle Paul boasted that the cross of Jesus Christ, the work of salvation, was also God’s will, saying, “Christ gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father. All of this is the grace of God.” Just last night, I searched through the Bible from Matthew to Revelation to see how many times the phrase “the grace of God” appears—it appears 153 times in the New Testament alone. Most of these are found in Paul’s epistles, where the conditions for salvation are clearly written. That which goes before us, and that which saves us, is God’s gift and grace. Even waking from sleep, breathing, being able to see all the beautiful things of creation—these ordinary daily things are also the grace of God. Do not forsake His grace. How precious is this message!
The starting point of salvation is not faith, but the grace of God. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8).
It is God’s grace that comes first and leads us to believe. It is not faith, but grace that precedes all. It is not because of any merit or worthiness in us. Grace is the gift that God gives unconditionally. What a reason to give thanks! Even the fact that we come to church is by the grace of God. When you are debating whether to go or not, first, God’s grace works in our hearts; then second, faith
helps us go. Even faith cannot be maintained without the grace of God. The grace of God is supporting it.
Grace is God’s gift of love. The Word became flesh. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Jesus came in the flesh, yet He was without sin. But we, born of sinful parents and inherited their blood, are born in sin. So even if we commit no personal sin, we bear Adam’s original sin, the sins inherited from our ancestors, and the consequences of all evils, like deceit, theft, adultery, that flow down to us. Yet God’s grace was at work so that we would come to believe in Jesus. By that faith in Jesus, the blood of Christ on the cross covers our original sin, inherited sin, and personal sins. He declares us “not guilty,” and by that declaration, He credits us with righteousness. This is the grace of God. This is what Romans chapters 3 and 5 testify to.
This 2006 Summer Conference is a gift from God, a grace I will never forget for the rest of my life. We have no merit. All the effort we made in dawn prayers and on prayer mountains we supported by God’s grace in ways we’re not aware of. It is only because God gave grace and was with us that we were able to pray at all. Without God’s grace, we cannot live past a single step.
When Scripture says the prophets of old were “accompanied by the grace of God”, it is the same as saying they “walked with God”. Grace is Jesus Himself. John 1:14 says, “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” And John 14:6 declares, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Therefore, to receive grace is to receive Jesus. To understand the truth is to receive Jesus into our hearts.
Dear saints, please remember that this very moment is the most blessed time. I earnestly urge you, in the name of the Lord, to never turn away from God’s grace or grieve it. Instead, follow that grace which goes ahead of you to the very end. Another Secret We Must Understand Is the “Salvation” Spoken of by the Psalmist
Psalm 85:9-10 Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him, that glory may dwell in our land. Lovingkindness and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
God has both the stern heart of a father and the tender heart of a mother. He possesses both of these divine attributes. The sternness of the Father is righteousness, and the tenderness of the Mother is grace. Within grace are compassion and the will to forgive. Salvation is possible because of God’s will to forgive.
Romans 3:23-24 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;
In other words, these two attributes are “unbending truth” and “merciful forgiveness”. Righteousness demands that the price of sin be paid for, and peace accepts the sinner back. This God’s love. So when these two divine attributes embrace, that union is called grace—and it is by this union that the work of salvation is made possible.
The grace of God comes without discrimination even to a wicked murderer or a vicious person who can hardly be treated as human. True grace of God has no enemies, no place it cannot go, and no one can stop it. Grace forgives all wrongdoing and gives a renewed heart of peace. Even those who have suffered injustice are helped by grace to understand and find peace again. Grace is not biased. Grace has no enemies. Even a wicked, murderous criminal who doesn’t deserve to be treated humanely is not excluded. God’s grace comes without discrimination. True grace has no enemies and no boundaries. Nothing and no one can stop it.
If you have received God’s grace, then your life must reflect that grace. Jesus said, “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart” (Matt 18:35). How precious, then, is the grace that unconditionally forgives! Even when we harbor evil thoughts, grace comes in and changes them to good, so that we no longer view others with malice. There is no partiality in God’s grace. Scripture says, “There is none righteous, not even one” (Rom 3:10). Our throats are open graves, our words spit out like venom, and our hearts are filled with greed. No matter what murderous sin one has committed, that person can still be visited directly by God’s grace. How great is this grace! It is unstoppable. It is greater than the universe. The cross of Golgotha loves and embraces any sinner and listens to their situation. Being kissed by this glorious grace comes from none other than the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is grace itself. He is the Word from the beginning. The Bible declares: “The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:18).
The phrase “receiving grace” is used too broadly nowadays. But to truly receive gracemeans to receive Jesus. To understand the truth is to recognize Jesus. John 1:14 says, “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us… full of grace and truth.” We have no freedom if we do not know the truth or Jesus (John 8:31-32). Even when we gain wealth, we are filled with anxiety, afraid to lose it, afraid of suffering loss. Entrust all of that to the grace that goes ahead of you. Wherever you are, whatever you do, grace has already gone before you. So believe that when you walk forward with a thankful heart in prayer, God’s power will be at work.
When Scripture tells us to “pray with thanksgiving,” we may not have known why. But today’s message gives the answer. Grace is what resolves all things, and thanksgiving is the fruit of that grace. When you pray with thanksgiving, grace is already there. Once you realize this, you cannot help but give thanks. The Gospel of John says that the “law” came through Moses, but “grace” came through Jesus Christ. We have all received abundant grace, grace upon grace, from Him. How wonderful this Word is! Jesus gives grace—and grace upon immeasurable grace. No matter how much humanity receives from Him, that grace never runs out. Like an endless stream, it keeps flowing. When we receive grace, we are receiving it from the abundance of grace upon grace. The reason we sometimes fail to receive it is because we have not come to realize it.
John 1:16-17 For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. There is a hymn that moves my heart every time I think of the grace I’ve received, and that is hymn 405 (Amazing Grace).
Amazing Grace! How Sweet the Sound!
Amazing grace! how sweet the sound!
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace ap-pear
The hour I first believed!
Thro’ many dangers, toils, and snares
I have already come.
‘Tis grace hath bro’t me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
When we’ve been there ten thou-sand years,
Bright shin-ing as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.
Third, Grace Is the Source of New Life and the Foundation of Salvation
The driving force and strength for our entire lives is the fountain of grace. When we keep the grace of God in our hearts, no matter what we do, God’s grace will never leave us but will always be with us, embracing us, helping us, and working for us. In Acts 6, Stephen worked for God’s will with a spirit of martyrdom, filled with grace, faith, and the Word. No matter how much we work, we cannot work for a hundred years. Even if we live to seventy, subtracting sleep and other necessities, we may only have about 35 years of active time—and even then, we don’t spend every moment doing the Lord’s work. How much, in the span of a single day, do we actually recognize God’s grace, give thanks for it, pray for it, or act in faith because of it? Perhaps not even one hour
out of the twenty-four.
God’s grace has already gone ahead of us. If we understand that even entering a grave is part of God’s grace, we would not fear death. Jesus has already taken our death upon Himself, and we can even live without dying and be suddenly transformed. When that moment comes, the blood in all our organs will disappear, the impurities of our bodies will vanish, and we will be made into spiritual bodies. Jesus’ resurrected body was a spiritual body, both spirit and flesh together, and could pass through walls.
When we are transformed, the light of that glory will be seven times brighter than the sun. The blazing summer sun in May and June is already too bright to look at—yet this light will be seven times stronger. Isaiah 30 describes it as, “The light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days”. In that moment of sudden transformation, we will no longer need perishable food. That world will hold only the hidden spiritual manna of God. In that world, even a 100-year-old grandmother will be transformed like a child. I bless you in the name of the Lord, that you may become saints who do not flee from the light of sevenfold glory but are transformed in that brilliant light.
Isaiah 30:26 The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days, on the day the Lord binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise He has inflicted.
If moonlight became sunlight, imagine how bright it would be. But this is not just sunlight—it is sevenfold light, a light the strength of seven suns. It is a great blessing even to believe this. God is faithful, and His Word is flawless. How good it is to trust that His Word will be fulfilled exactly as spoken! In that place, there is no need to worry about what to eat or drink. There is no anxiety about aging or appearance. Everyone will be equally beautiful. The kingdom of God is a place where no one marries or is given in marriage.
Romans 14:17 for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 22:30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
Luke 20:35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resur rection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage;
Isaiah says that that world is filled with joy and laughter. “The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” It is a place full of eternal joy, and it is not a temporary measure, but a world that will last forever and ever.
No matter how hard or weary life is in this world, if we do not forsake God’s Word and the grace we have received, and quietly keep walking forward, God’s grace will already be there waiting for us. A brilliant joy and gladness will shine in your heart. It is not by our doing, but God’s grace that makes it so. Please believe that God’s grace will not leave you until the day you enter His kingdom, that it is helping you now, and that whenever you set your heart to do something, grace has already gone before you to accomplish it. As we reflect on today, may we repent of all the times we have failed to recognize God’s grace, dismissed it, and taken it lightly. And may we pray that for the rest of our lives, we never let go of God’s grace and live each day together with His grace.
July 31, 2006 (Mon) Summer Conference
launching service
Sermon by Pastor Abraham Park
- 25년 7월호