Cry Freedom, Part 2: Free to Change

The change industry is huge. I found 93,166 books on Amazon when I searched for “change.” There are books about personal change, business change, political change, climate change, style change, fashion change, partner change, sex change… You name it, someone out there will tell you how to change it!

Constant change is here to stay but most people don’t like change. Only 20 per cent of people are innovators or early adopters. That means 80 per cent of us are wired to resist change!

At the same time many of us would like to change ourselves. We’d like to be happier, healthier, fitter, better looking, wealthier, more popular, more successful…

We live in a world where all is changing; and that change is happening ever faster. In order to survive in that changing world we have to adapt and change.

So we live with this tension, where we want to change but don’t like change yet need to change!

The story of the gospel is the story of changed lives. This is either good news or threatening depending on your perspective! In his letter to the Galatians Paul tells a story of how he was changed by meeting with Jesus. Before he changed Paul didn’t want to change, or see his need to change, but he was eternally grateful that Jesus changed him.

Galatians 1:11-24

Everyone has a story to tell, and this is Paul’s story (which is also told in Acts 9). Paul was on his way to Damascus to persecute the church, when he was encountered by Jesus (we get further details about this incident in 2 Corinthains 12:2-4). Paul (or Saul as he was then known) was blinded in this encounter, and then received his sight when a believer called Ananias prayed for him. As Ananias prayed, Paul received not only his sight, but also the Spirit. He was then immediately baptized in water, and then went off preaching in Arabia and Damascus. Three years later Paul went to Jerusalem, to compare stories with Peter. After a couple of weeks with Peter, he was sent off to Tarsus (in Cilicia).

We can imagine Peter and Paul sitting with their feet up in front of the fire, saying, “This is what happened to me…”

Where Paul had come from
Saul was a man who wanted to impose order on the world. The followers of Christ were disrupting the social fabric and needed to be stopped.

Saul was a religious man; an ambitious man; a proud man. These are dangerous men! Saul was someone who wanted to override other peoples stories. But Saul became Paul and as well as a name change was transformed into someone who changed stories, not by force, but by the grace of God.

Peter and Paul were very different. Paul was sophisticated, urban, educated, while Peter was rural, rough. Paul never met Jesus (except on the Damascus Road) but Peter had walked beside him. But both Peter and Paul had a story to tell of how Jesus had changed them.

Learning to tell stories
Everyone loves a good story.

A love of stories is not something we have to learn – it is just hardwired into human nature. My children have loved stories from as soon as they were able to communicate in any meaningful way. At first the stories children love are very simple – ‘duck goes for a swim’ – but quickly the stories get longer and more complicated. Small children (very irritatingly!) love to hear the same story over and over again. As we get older we like to hear the same story strung out over a long time, as in a two hour movie or a novel, or even over a lifetime, as with Coronation Street! Some of the best moments in my family are when someone says, “Remember when…” Stories are important to us.

The big story
There are many types of story, and they can take many different forms, but they can all be pretty much boiled down to just two broad categories: TheLove Story, and the Rescue Story. Everyone’s personal story will contain elements of these types of story, and everyone’s personal story can at some point be connected with the story of God:

The Love story: Boy meets girl. Fall in love. Live happily ever after.
This is probably the most common story of all, and is told and retold in countless forms from ‘high culture’ (Romeo & Juliet) to ‘folk culture’ (Snow White) to ‘pop culture’ (Sleepless in Seattle).

Most people’s stories will contain a lot of this story, because it is the story of relationships. Everyone has a story to tell of love fulfilled, broken or unrequited. This is the story that fills acres of newspaper print and celebrity magazines. It is the story other people tell us whenever we sit down together and say, “Tell me about yourself…”

The love story is also the story of the Bible because God’s story is about him winning for himself a bride, the love of his life, who he will lavish his love on forever. From Genesis to Revelation the story is all about a God of love and the consequences of that love. Out of the overflow of his love God created the universe and people to fill it. Out of love God pursues relationship with these people, even when they sin and mess everything up. Out of love God chooses a people for himself – Israel. Out of love God remains faithful to Israel, even when she divorces him. Out of love God comes to the earth in Jesus Christ to win his bride back for himself. The climax of the whole story is a wedding feast when Jesus and his Bride are at last brought together in the new heavens and earth.

Of all the types of story there are, this is really the one big story, because every other story is really in some way about our search for love.

The Rescue story: Boy meets girl. Fall in love. Girl captured by evil monster. Boy kills monster, gets girl. Live happily ever after.
Many of our most popular movies and TV shows are rescue stories: Die Hard, 24, The Matrix. A hero does something impossible and saves the day. Often the story ends with him getting the girl, but it might be something more than that, like Oscar Schindler rescuing hundreds of Jews from the gas chamber.

This story connects with us so powerfully because many of us (especially men) indulge a fantasy to do something heroic, and because in some way all of us need rescuing (from addictions, disappointment, mundane jobs, debt, etc.)

This is also a Bible story because Jesus is our great hero who rescues us from our most deadly enemy – Sin and death. Jesus does the impossible in going to the cross, but, just as the closing credits are about to roll, he bursts back into life unconquered and undimmed. The last enemy to be destroyed, as 1 Corinthians says, is death. This is the big one. In films, the last enemy to be destroyed is always the head villain (it wouldn’t be quite the same if Alan Rickman died half way through Die Hard, or if Jack Bauer killed the chief terrorist by 11am). The last enemy is always the most dangerous villain of all, and the reason why the other villains are there. It’s the same in Scripture. Death is the biggest of the enemies and the explanation for the others. If there was no death, there wouldn’t be any war or injustice or fear or sickness. So if you can abolish death, you can totally strip all the other enemies of their power.

And that’s the Gospel of Jesus and resurrection. On Easter Sunday, the biggest of all the villains was totally and completely undone. The tomb was empty, and it still is. And that means that at least one person has conquered the grave, smashed the last enemy, and overturned the curse of death that has afflicted every human since time began. A champion only has to be killed once. Death had a pretty strong track record, until it faced Jesus, to whom it had no answer whatsoever. His resurrection life was simply too powerful. So, as Paul taunted: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O grave, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

Telling our stories
Every other type of story there is (tragedy, comedy, parable, myth, legend, biography, fairytale, fable, mystery, whodunit, epic, etc.) will contain at some point these two greater stories.

The way that we get to know people is by listening to their stories. We need to listen to one another’s tales of love and rescue. We need to share together the stories of what God has done for us, and we need to help others see how God’s great story connects to their personal story. We need to help people see that they can actually become part of the story of God – that he is the one who loves them, and can rescue them.

Paul’s story
How was it that Paul had undergone such a dramatic change? Clearly, the vision on the Damascus Road was an overwhelmingly powerful experience, but there was more to it than simply that. In verses 15-16 Paul describes for us how God had changed him…

God was at work in Paul long before he was born. God always had a plan for Paul, even when he was living in a way that seemed hell bent on destroying the work of God.

Paul was called by God’s grace. This grace was undeserved but free. That’s the point about grace! Paul deserved only God’s wrath, but instead received his love.

And then Jesus was revealed to Paul, in that encounter with the Savior on the Damascus Road.

My story is different from Paul’s, but similar as well. I haven’t seen Jesus in an overwhelming vision, but I know I have been set apart, called, and Jesus has revealed himself to me. This has changed me! It means I have a story to tell; a story of a life changed by the grace of God.

What a story! What grace! What a change!

It doesn’t matter where you come from – whether you are a Saul, or a Peter – by the grace of God you are free to change!

Paul tells the Galatians that the end result of this change is that others will worship God. This should be our aim, that we live our lives and tell our stories in a way that causes worship to raise to the Savior who has changed us.