Saul of Tarsus met Jesus on the road to Damascus and a man who was brutally persecuting Christians became an avid follower of God. His experience of Jesus formed and fashioned his doctrine, his faith, and his passion for God.  Paul becomes the churches greatest advocate and evangelist.  His vision of God propelled him to overturn his love for the Mosaic covenant of Law and proclaim a doctrine of salvation based on grace and the faith of our father Abraham.  Rather than proclaiming the Jewish identity of being the chosen people of God, he puts forth a doctrine that now includes the gentile as being available to salvation through faith apart from the Law.  His vision made Paul unique.  His message is very strong like his faith and he is loved in scripture or despised.  He suffers greatly throughout his Christian life to bring the message of salvation and righteousness through faith in the blood and death and resurrection of Christ to Jew and gentile and his message is lost to the religious who retreat to Law, ritual, and tradition.  His letters portray the depth of the vision and the struggle.  He is a model for the early persecuted church of steadfast faith and endurance in spite of the opposition and threat to life and limb.  What Paul gleaned from his vision is what God the Father is all about.  Where Jesus brings freedom from sin and the past, where the Holy Spirit becomes our advocate and our comforter, the Father stands alone as the one calling us to ever deeper conversion, to ever deeper abandonment to the world, and to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to win the lost.  Paul reveals God in a different light to a gospel of joy and peace to one of unconditional love and obedience, hardship and suffering.  Unless one captures the vision of Paul who was transfigured by his vision of God, one may not come to a place of real victory.  Just as Jesus overcame the world by his love and obedience to the Father, just as Paul overcame the world by his love and obedience to Jesus, we will only overcome the world by faith, the same faith as Jesus and Paul.  That means we cannot dismiss the passion of Christ and Paul and not follow the Spirit of God who calls us further to higher heights and deeper depths to become a living witness to God the Father who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son who left the glory of heaven behind to suffer and yield to God even experiencing death on a cross for our salvation.  Paul’s vision had a price.  Jesus vision had a price.  If you capture the vision you too will pay a price.  That price means offering your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God which is your reasonable service.  The church suffers disgrace when it does not capture the vision and yield to scripture, faith, and the Spirit of God as testified by Paul and Jesus. 

Amen