¹ I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, ² that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart.

Usually when someone says, “I am not lying,” this poses a humorous dilemma. If he is lying, he certainly wouldn’t say, “I am lying.” On the other hand, maybe he is lying when he says, “I am not lying.” In Paul’s case, he uses this phrase to emphasize the truth of what he is saying. Essentially he says, “If you don’t believe what I am saying is true, then you must believe that I am bold-faced lying.” He leaves no option for anyone to think he was simply mistaken or making up things.

Actually, he uses the identical phrase three other times. He reserves it for conveying the truth of something in the strongest possible way. In one case he boasts in his weakness (2 Cor 11:31), and he wants to assure people that he is not just using hyperbole, or exaggeration. In another case, he asserts that his authority did not come from the apostles but directly from God. Thus he explains that his first visit to the apostles came at least three years after his conversion and appointment to ministry, and then only involving Peter and James (Gal 1:19-20). To emphasize this chronology as important to establishing his independent authority, he adds, “I am not lying.” The last time he uses the phrase, he again emphasizes his appointment to apostleship (1 Tim 2:7).

Paul is about to talk about his very strong feelings about his Jewish brethren. In coming to Christ, in being appointed as an apostle to Gentiles and in preaching the gospel of Grace and not of Law, he hadn’t forgotten his roots. Being identified with Christ did not mean he no longer identified with his people, the Jews. In fact, the truth of what he preached was so compelling that he had a visceral, a gut-level, instinctive, reaction to the Jews’ rejecting the message of God’s grace. He calls it “great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart.”

One can imagine Paul’s attitude being challenged: “You don’t care about your people of origin; you have abandoned us for this new, heretical theology.” It certainly did not come easy to know that his own people would question his affection for them. For Paul, though, belief in the grace of God was not a sterile theology, but was intensely personal. It was the solution to the Jews’ dilemma, the inability to gain true righteousness through the Law. It was the means to gain freedom from the slavery to sin. He genuinely wanted them to come to know that their God, in whom they believed, would grant them righteousness as a gift. And it pained him to see them reject the message of His grace.

Lord, I pray for my family to come to know Your grace like I have.