PAUL'S RELATIONSHIP TO JESUS

 "Christ...the Son of God...loved me, and gave Himself for me."

(Gal. 2:20)

In Paul's letters he lists many of the numberless attributes of Christ; but some intimate things, I'm sure, are left unsaid, as it should be. Some personal things he kept between him and the Lover of his Soul! But of all the things he mentions most was Jesus' love for him. He never got over the fact how a person as himself, with such an unrelenting hatred for Jesus, could be loved by Him with an unfathomable love. Over and again in his epistles he speaks not only of Jesus' love for his brethren, but of him personally. It's a wonderful thing to know God loves others, but even greater to know he loves me!

After his meeting Jesus, Paul abandoned all for Him. Jesus was his all and in all, he tells us. He had an unreserved surrender; everything in life revolved around Jesus. He was ever upon his lips and heart. Jesus had all the crown rights! Paul's was a childlike effortless faith in Jesus; He was more real to him than life itself. As Gypsy Smith said when in his 80's, "I've never lost the wonder of it all!"  So it was with Paul.

When pastoring in Florida for some ten years, I had a blessed experience that I want to relate to you. In the Sunday evening service I was preaching on the text in Gal. 2:20. Like so many preachers do, I got hung up, so to speak, on the words, "for me." I began a long list of all the things Jesus had done for me. A little boy by the name of Dougie Thorpe leaned over and said in his mother's ear, "Mama, Jesus sure has done an awful lot for that preacher." AND SO HE HAS! Bless His Holy name!

O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee.

I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine oceans depths its flow may richer, fuller be.