SCULPTURE AND SCRIPTURE

We all have read of St. Paul's encounter with the living God on the road to Damascus. Years later Paul tells the Corinthians what he's gone through for the gospel of God.

He says he went through labors, imprisonments, beatings and the danger of death. He took lashes from the Jews, beatings with rods, a stoning, a shipwreck, dangers from rivers, robbers, Jews and Gentiles who were against him.

What kept him going through all of this?

When Saul met Jesus on the road, He resculptured Saul's soul from inside out. He changed his heart, his name, his mind, his resolve and his purpose in life. God was present in Paul in much the same way God was present in the Holy of Holies---powerfully, purely, and in ecstasy. In the manner in which God was present with Adam and Eve in the Garden, in the manner in which God was upon David, God's Spirit was upon Jesus, so God was present in Paul. His life was changed, his travels were changed, his mind was changed, his relationships were changed, his vision of God was changed.

The JB Phillips translation of Romans 12 brings this out:
let God re-mould your mind from within so that you may prove
in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all His
demands and moves toward the goal of maturity.

We might be more familiar with another wording of this transformation:
be transformed by the renewing of your mind...
but the mind does not transform the soul, rather the presence of God in the soul then transforms the mind. The mind does not originate, it recognizes what God has done, what God is doing.

It is the presence of God from Adam to Christ to us. When God's presence is in us, we will desire His truth, we will seek Him through our will, and love His through our heart.
John 15 is famous for the 'I am' statements. Jesus is describing God's presence as the vine and branches: he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, John 15.5. Jesus will describe this quality of Him in us and we in Him with several images--fruit, branch, abide, commandments, but they all will culminate in love. When Jesus comes to a Pharisee's house in Luke 7, a woman washed Jesus' feet with her tears and hair, and anointed His feet with perfume. Jesus says, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much... The forgiveness which Saul experienced on a road, the woman experienced at dinner.

We don't always know that God's presence is in us. Paul has to write to the Ephesians, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlighted, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, Eph.1.18. Notice that Paul says the inheritance is, in the saints. With the OT, God's presence was upon the Jews or in their midst with the Law but not in them as it is with us.


God's presence gives us a new heart, a new mind, a new soul and will and life. When we are different people from the inside out, we have a new life, a new marriage, a new relationship with our children, friends, employees and all the saints whatever the denomination.