Will you please turn with me for a
little while to the words of Saint Paul
as they are found in the epistle that
is written to the Galatians in chapter 6
and in verse 17.
I would like to base the message that
I think the Lord has committed to me
tonight on the words of that verse as
found in the New English Bible.
There we read, I bear the marks of
Jesus branded on my body.
I bear the marks of Jesus branded on
my body.
Now this autobiographical statement in the first place
calls attention to the evidences of Paul's apostleship.
But at the back of that there is
something else.
Paul is unquestionably pointing here to what he
considered to be the price of discipleship.
Not to something which an apostle only was
asked to give or to do, but to
a price that all God's children in one
way or another are asked to pay.
What is the test of discipleship and the
price of discipleship?
You cannot judge a man's profession by the
manner in which he attends the means of
grace, nor even such a convention as this.
There are those who come to the house
of God and there are those who come
even to a convention such as Keswick, who
may not be really the Lord.
Neither can you judge a man's profession by
the manner in which he may speak of
various experiences in his life.
The one infallible indicator of an authentic Christian
experience is this, whether or not we are
obedient to the word and the will of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
If he loves me, says the Lord Jesus
Christ, he will obey my commandment.
And it is to the price of discipleship,
necessitating obedience, that I want to turn tonight
as it is illustrated in this remarkable word
that comes from the pen and from the
heart of the apostle Paul.
My dear friends, I need not remind you
tonight that we are living in an easygoing,
undisciplined age.
The cult of softness rules the life of
the nation, and the vast majority of professing
Christians are at ease in Zion, as the
prophet Amos would tell us.
Indeed, that is not all.
There are some who are genuinely troubled and
sometimes painfully hurt when told that though in
one sense they are free from the law,
in no sense are they free from the
duty of obedience to the lawgiver.
The Christian is essentially a bond slave of
Jesus Christ, the purchased possession of his one
and only Lord.
If the word of God has savingly wrought
upon us, and we have thus, in the
words of James, received with meekness the engrafted
word which is able to save our souls,
then the very fact that that law is
inscribed upon the fleshly tablets of our hearts
will mean that we shall desire to do
our master's will.
Truth that is not being endured to the
point of being obeyed has scarcely been endeared
to the point of being redemptive.
Now we turn then to Paul's revealing words
in order to see how he conceded to
Jesus Christ a place of unchallenged lordship, counting
it his life's greatest honor to be a
bond slave of Jesus Christ.
Now this we shall see looking at the
text, and seeing two main things here, the
mark and their message.
First of all let us look at the
marks which Paul bore in his body.
I bear the marks of Jesus branded in
my body.
Now these marks to which he calls attention
could very well have been holes or punctures
in the flesh, or the kind of impression
sometimes branded upon the body by a hot
instrument or by needles.
The point is, of course, that these marks
are actually embedded in the flesh, causing pleasant
disfigurement and pointing to a power-suffering of
an acute nature.
Now the word that Paul used is very
suggestive.
It has rather an illuminating history.
It was sometimes used as a mark of
ownership.
The stigma was a mark of ownership.
It was a branding upon an object, or
sometimes upon a slave, a branding that clearly
marked an object or a person out as
belonging to someone in particular.
And I suppose we have something of that
still perpetuated among sheep farmers and cattle farmers
in different parts today.
That's the way that Paul used, Paul uses
here.
Then a stigma was also at one time,
at any rate, a kind of military declaration.
When a soldier had proved his loyalty in
battle, he was sometimes permitted to have his
commander or his emperor's name or mark stamped
upon his body, sometimes upon the arm, sometimes
upon the body, sometimes even on the forehead.
Now this, of course, was not permitted to
the young recruit, but to the pride soldier
who's been in battle and proved himself faithful.
It was a mark of distinction and of
honor.
And then the same word had a religious
connotation.
It could be a token of allegiance to
a deity or to a god.
One historian tells us that at the shrine
of Heracles on the Egyptian coast, some years
before Paul was writing these words, it was
the custom to brand the devotees of the
religion that was practiced there with a stigma.
And so they were known everywhere, and if
there was anything that went wrong in their
lives, they could always claim the asylum of
the shrine there.
Now this is the richly flavored term that
Paul uses concerning his lacerated body with its
common, its military, and its religious usage.
And let us make it quite clear, he's
not grumbling at the pain, but he's glorying
in the privilege.
You will read a few verses earlier on
in the chapter, he says, God forbid that
I should glory, save in the cross of
our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world
has been crucified to me and I to
the world.
And if I interpret it rightly, that same
note of glorying is carried on into our
text.
Look, says the apostle, I bear in my
body the marks of Jesus branded.
There then are the marks, but now what
is the message of the marks?
If you can but feebly envisage the sight
that greeted the onlooker as Paul reticently rolled
up his sleeves or bared his back, then
you will be face to face with a
permanent scar.
And the silent witness of the wounds in
Paul's flesh speak unerringly of what he considered
to be the demands of discipleship and the
deserves of the Savior.
Now there are two main messages here that
are effectively preached by those gaping wounds in
the body of the apostle.
Those wounds speak, first of all, of the
mastery that he gladly conceded to Jesus Christ.
And they speak, secondly, of the ministry that
he gallantly pursued for Jesus Christ.
First of all, then, those wounds speak of
the mastery that he gladly conceded to the
Lord Jesus and to Jesus Christ alone.
Let's ask the question, whence came that hideous
mass of weals and scars that now disfigure
the once pain-free, proud soul of Titus?
Where did they come from?
Why is it that he is gladly accepting
the opprobrium of being called the obscuring of
all things, the refuge of the world?
Why?
Has he been involved in what we sometimes
and wrongly think of as an accident?
Has he fallen prey to wild beasts or
something like that?
The answer is no.
These marks branded on the body of the
apostle are the telling tokens of his bond
slavery to the Lord Jesus.
Every solitary mark on that body and every
corresponding wound upon his heart is the direct
consequence of his obedience to the Lord Jesus
Christ.
You see, the folk that inflicted those wounds
in the body of the apostle Paul had
basically no argument, nothing to quarrel with Saul,
the man.
Their argument was not with him, but with
his Lord.
Their hatred was not against Saul of Tarsus
as such, but it was with the Lord
Jesus Christ and what he stood for.
Paul, the apostle, receives those wounds in his
spirit simply because he represents the Lord Jesus
Christ among his folk.
The darks are aimed at his master, and
the apostle, let us say so quite clearly,
the apostle could very well have avoided those
darks.
He could have abandoned his Lord.
He could have turned his back upon him.
He could have said, no, no, not for
me.
But such was his concept of the Christian
discipleship and of the Christian life that he
could not do that.
He had made himself the bond slave of
Jesus Christ.
And therefore, he submits to every humiliation and
every pain and anguish of body and of
soul that is involved in being loyal to
the Lord Jesus.
Now, if you carefully look at this passage,
you will find that the obedience that is
thus rendered by the apostle Paul is both
passive and active.
And all truly Christian obedience is both passive
and active.
By passive obedience we mean this, the sometimes
wincing but always willing acceptance, by the apostle
or by the Christian, of any insult or
injury that is aimed at our Lord.
You have only to read the record and
see what this meant.
Take, for example, just a few verses from
2 Corinthians chapter 11, where Paul allows us
to know something that otherwise we would not
have known.
Just let me just, just let me quote
a few verses, a few words rather from
there.
Often he says, I am near death.
Five times I have received at the hands
of the Jews the forty lashes less one.
Three times I have been beaten with rods.
What's he referring to?
The forty lashes less one was the maximum
penalty meted out by the Jews under the
Deuteronomic law.
And though administered within the synagogue in Paul's
day, it was a brutally savage operation.
The bear's victim was scarcely alive when it
was over.
The deeply furrowed body oozed with blood and
smarted with pain.
And once a man had been thus mutilated
and humiliated, he very rarely went that way
again.
There were very few that were thus beaten
a second time, and few indeed that were
thus beaten the third time.
And yet, my good friends, listen to me.
Up to the time of Paul's writing the
second letter to the Corinthians, which corresponds with
the nineteenth chapter of Acts probably, he had
been beaten five times.
The first thirty-nine strokes were received upon
the body.
Paul recuperated.
What does he do now?
Does he leave the country?
Does he abandon ship?
Does he forsake his Lord?
He continues on the pathway of obedience, and
it comes again.
And the third time, and the fourth time,
until a total of one hundred and ninety
-five strikes have left their indelible mark upon
his flesh.
That was not all.
The beating with rods was no less savage.
This was the Roman form of punishment administered
by lictors, armed with rods of birchwood.
So very humiliating was it that no Roman
citizen was allowed to be subjected to such
indignity.
And yet, interspersed with a Jewish flogging, Paul
was three times subjected to this gruesome savagery
up to the point of Acts 19.
It is no wonder that he says that
he was oftentimes near death.
There were many who never recuperated from one
of these floggings.
Paul says, I've received five of the one
and three of the other, and they're the
mark.
I've branded indelibly upon my body.
They can't be covered.
But we would be wrong if we thought
of Paul's obedience as being merely passive.
It was active as well.
In obeying the known will of God, Paul
was actively giving his life away.
Now, this to me is something which is
terrifyingly challenging.
I blush when I come to this.
To him, obedience meant nothing short of actual
life-giving, the pouring out of his life
of the libation.
He was dying daily, daily spending his life
at any cost.
As long as there was breath left in
his nostrils, there was life to be given
away for Jesus Christ.
And that was the sole purpose of life.
It was to be given.
It was to be sacrificed for his Lord
and in his service.
And the fear of the last beating or
lashing must not be allowed to deter him
from such obedience.
He must go on.
Brethren, the high watermark of obedience known among
us, with some shining exceptions whom we salute
from recent days, the high watermark is far,
far short of this.
We are only prepared to serve and obey
insofar as we can keep our life intact
and unscarred.
Is not that the reason why so many
of the more dangerous and difficult stations in
the kingdom of God and the church of
Jesus Christ are tonight unmanned?
Let us not forget that this concept of
service, the apostle Paul of God, from his
master of whom it is written, even the
Son of Man came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister and remember, to give
his life.
There is a kind of service which performs
what is asked of one without this giving
of one's life, the pouring out of a
life in sacrifice for Jesus Christ.
Paul is giving his life, the mastery he
gladly conceded to the Lord Jesus Christ, his
Savior.
And lastly, think with me for a moment
of the ministry that he gallantly pursued for
Jesus Christ.
You remember the story?
You remember the Shekinah glory that blazed on
that Damascus road and halted this maddening dig
up on his career of hate?
Almost instinctively the cry comes from his soul,
Lord, may we dare translate it Jehovah?
I think so.
Jehovah, what wilt thou have me to do?
The reply was not given immediately nor directly,
but in his own good time the Lord
gave the word to Ananias, and Ananias brought
to Saul, now converted, the commission that was
from above.
You have a record of that in Acts
chapter 9 verses 15 and 16, and there
we read these words.
Tell him, says the Lord to Ananias, he
is a chosen instrument unto me to carry
my name before the Gentiles and kings and
the sons of Israel, for I will show
him how much he must suffer for my
name's sake.
Now will you notice the ministry that is
committed to the apostle Paul?
It's put in the delightful words, to be
a bearer of the man.
Time is going and I can't say anything
about that.
Paul's ministry was one of exploring and expounding
the wonders of the name of Jesus.
What I want you to notice is this,
the method whereby he was to perform his
ministry.
The Lord told him, I'm going to tell
him, says the Lord Jesus, not yet but
in due course, what great things he must
suffer for my name's sake.
If he is to be a bearer of
the name, he must suffer.
Now will you please notice this, when Paul
says in my text tonight in Galatians 6
17, I bear in my body the mark,
he uses precisely the same words as Jesus
did in his commission.
He shall bear my name.
Jesus said, he shall bear my name.
Paul said, I bear in my body the
mark.
Now that's not an ordinary word for bearing.
Alexander McLaren writes in these words, he says,
it is a somewhat remarkable word, which does
not express mere bearing in the sense of
toleration and patient endurance, although that is not,
nor mere bearing in the sense of caring,
but it implies a bearing with a certain
triumph, as men would do who coming back
victorious from conflict and being received into the
city, were proud to show their scars, the
honorable signs of their courage and their constancy.
Listen again, Jesus said, I've appointed him to
bear and carry my name, so that everyone
can see and understand, to bear it a
lot.
Paul says, look at my wound, look at
my body.
I bear in my body the mark.
By that he is indicating this.
Not only has he been true to the
task that was commissioned him in a general
way, and been an expounder and a preacher
of the name, he has submitted to every
lush, every ignominy and pain, because he has
sought to do it in his master's way.
Oh, my good friend, how far are you
prepared to obey the Lord Jesus Christ?
How absolute is his lordship over you?
My dear unscarred friend in this tent tonight,
or listening to my feeble voice elsewhere, you
who have managed to avoid the cross and
evade the clear pathway of obedience, you who
are tucked away somewhere in a cushy job,
where the will of God is that you
should be spending and being spent elsewhere, I
want to tell you tonight that there is
a day coming when beneath the luster of
the eternal throne of God, and the glare
of his all-seeing eye, you will give
anything for a scar.
Now is your time.
A scar that proves to whom you belong.
A scar that shows that you have stood
the test and obeyed, and proved that you've
worshipped the Lamb's claim.
Let me close with these words.
Hath thou no scar, no hidden scar on
foot or hand or side?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the
land.
I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star.
Hath thou no scar?
Hath thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers.
Fence leaned me against a tree to die,
and rent by ravening beasts that compassed me,
I swooned.
Hath thou no wound?
No wound?
No scar?
Yet as a master shall the servant be,
and pierced are the feet that follow me,
but thine are whole.
Can he have followed par, who has nor
wound, nor scar?
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is
your reasonable service, and be the wounds in
body or in spirit at last.
They will earn for you his well-done,
good, and faithful service.
May it be so.
God is the answer.