6. Paul the Protagonist

A recent survey of 3,000 university students examined their fears. The three greatest fears they faced were having to stand to give a speech in public, the fear of failure and the fear of dying. All other fears were rated quite lowly.

The fear of having to stand up and speak about your faith is a fear shared by many Christians. At times when our faith is under attack and there is opposition to what we believe, many Christians feel they are unable to cope. They remain silent in the face of opposition, and subsequently are overwhelmed by guilt.

The apostle Paul was willing to any time to give a defence of his beliefs. He was also willing to go on the offensive and talk about his faith. When we combine this with the fact that we know he was regarded as a poor speaker in public and reticent to speak before people, we have an interesting paradox.

The aspect of personality that pulled Paul over his natural objections to witnessing to other people and facing opponents was his spirit as a protagonist. The Oxford Dictionary defines a protagonist as ‘one who champions a cause’. For Paul, the cause was Jesus Christ and he became the first and greatest champion.

The Greek word that describes both Paul’s defence of his faith and the way he was willing to go on the offensive to talk about his faith is apologia. In English this word is used of an apologist of the faith – someone who practices an ‘apologia’ – defending what he believes and going on the attack affirming what he knows to be true. Paul used this word several times such as when he said, ‘brothers and fathers, listen to me as I make my defence (apologia) before you.’ 1

If we learn how Paul proclaimed his faith and defended himself from attack we, in our turn, will learn how to cope with opposition.

Paul’s defence of his faith

Paul was willing to defend his faith, but he was not a pugnacious person, always wanting to get into a fight or an argument or dispute. He was a reluctant controversialist.

Theologians have frequently looked at the way Paul defended his faith using his insights as a trained pharisee, a philosopher and a teacher, and have sought to build a case that distinguishes between the simple teaching and preaching of Jesus and that theology which was expounded by Paul. This shows a misunderstanding of Paul’s thinking. When we examine his teachings closely, we realize that Paul was very conscious of the person, work and worth of Jesus Christ and understood his teachings in detail.

(a) Paul struggled with his old Jewish associates

These were the Jewish leaders who believed that Paul was committing heresy, who had opposed Stephen, and who were strongly resisting the changes of teaching and orthodoxy about which Jesus so compellingly spoke.

Paul faced two basic problems: his fellow Jews refused to accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah, and they rejected the Christians as the people of God.

The orthodox Jew saw Jesus as a political failure, a collaborator with undesirables, crucified as a criminal, belonging to an unorthodox priesthood, and concerned with people outside of the faith and the race! So they rejected him as Messiah.

They also rejected the faith because they could not conceive that an unusual group of slaves, fishermen, farmers and an occasional intellectual could be the basis of God’s new people, the family of the new Israel, and the first citizens of the kingdom of God.

Paul’s relationship with the Jewish race will be discussed in more detail in the chapter on Paul as a patriot. However, the rejection by the Jews of his day of himself and the other apostles was just as real as their rejection of Jesus which ended in his crucifixion.

(b) Paul also struggled with the other Jewish Christians

Among the earliest Christians, there were some who clung tenaciously to their Jewish traditions, customs and culture and wanted any who came within the church likewise to observe, as well as their new faith in Christ, the Jewish culture and customs. This struggle was the first major struggle that the church encountered. It was seen in Peter’s conflict and growth in his own mind about how Gentiles should be accepted into the church. His encounter with Cornelius became the turning point when he saw that God’s Spirit dwelt in the heart of the Gentile as much as in the Jew. Paul had seen this from the time of his conversion on the Damascus road and had dedicated his life to taking the gospel message to the Gentiles. For a long time, however, there was a reluctance by other Christians back in Jerusalem, where conservatism was at its height, to accept Paul’s way of treating the Gentiles.

The leading exponent of this emphasis upon Jewish culture and custom for the early Christians was James, the brother of Jesus, who gradually assumed leadership within the church in Jerusalem.

There was much about the Jewish faith that was important for Christians to understand. The Jews had a very comprehensive code of moral behaviour and, in a very licentious world, the best of the Jews lived a beautifully moral life. The early Christians needed to separate themselves from the immorality of the rest of the pagan world because their lifestyle was contrary to the Law of God, both Jewish and Christian. This moral quality in their lives attracted many in the Roman and Greek world who became sick of the self-indulgent lifestyle and found the simplicity and happiness of the family life of Christians and Jews something to be envied.

James strongly emphasised the quality of Christian life. ‘What God the Father considers to be pure and genuine religion is this: to take care of orphans and widows in their suffering and to keep oneself from being corrupted by the world.’ 2 The Epistle of James is a collection of examples of how a person must behave and the teachings of James emphasised practical Christianity and a quality of conduct that avoided prejudice, gossip, pride, quarrelling, boasting and the like.

Paul went to the heart of the matter when he stressed that our faith was not simply a matter of decent living but first and foremost of personal acceptance of what Christ has completed on our behalf on the cross. The Christians in the early church had a conflict with Paul over his emphasis upon people being made just by the grace of God through their faith, when the teaching of James seemed so practical and pure for their promiscuous world. The emphasis was different, but both were important aspects of the Christian faith.

(c) Paul was also troubled by opposing leaders who struggled for their position of power within the church

His letters frequently bristle with comments about people who are seeking leadership within the church, but who are doing so from wrong motives. This is particularly true of his letters to the churches at Philippi, Corinth and in Galatia. 3

So Paul constantly had to defend his faith, with much of his time taken up championing the cause. He needed to defend his understanding of the gospel from attacks by his old Jewish associates who refused to accept either Jesus as the Messiah or his followers as the new people of Israel. He had troubles with the leaders of the church who did not understand fully enough and quickly enough the significance of the Gentiles who came into the fullness of the Holy Spirit and therefore into the life of the church. He further had trouble with those false leaders within the church who constantly visited the churches where he had established the faith and sought to convert the new believers back into the old habits and traditions of the Jewish faith.

There is little recorded active opposition to Paul from non-Jewish and non-church sources. Certainly the Roman government, Greek educators and philosophers, local authorities, shopkeepers, showmen and magicians showed some sporadic objections to his teaching when it threatened their profits and power. There was lack of active, consistent opposition, however, partly because the Roman authorities, although not viewing Christianity as ‘true religion’ – a term they used for their own – treated it as a tolerated superstition at this time. During the last decade of Paul’s life, however, the attitude was changing. Because Christians were believed to be guilty of a whole range of criminal and anti-social behaviour, restrictions were placed on them and they were required to sacrifice to and acknowledge the Roman state gods. They refused to do this and many, Paul amongst them, were martyred. The scriptures do not deal with this period. So we shall here concern ourselves with Paul’s opponents within Judaism and the church.

The cause of the clashes

Although we have dealt with these issues in some detail, it would be well to look again at the causes of the clashes.

These issues came to a head on the occasions when Paul visited Jerusalem to confer with those he called the pillars of the church. On one occasion – probably the time he brought some famine relief when he and Barnabas came down from Antioch with money for the poor Christians of Jerusalem – he apparently had conflict with Peter and the other disciples over the role of Gentiles within the church and of the necessity for circumcision. Fourteen years later there was a further visit to the church leaders in Jerusalem. We assume that this was the council of the church held in Jerusalem when circumcision was the major topic of the church. Three aspects caused the greatest concern to Paul and others who followed his line of teaching in the early church:

1. The question of the Law

The Jewish mind was steeped in the understanding of the Torah – the Law of God. It would be inconceivable for traditional Jews to imagine that the Law had been done away with or superseded in any regard. Consequently the emphasis was made very strongly that Christians, Jews and Gentiles alike, follow the details of the Law, the observance of the rituals, and the fulfillment of the moral requirements. Paul indicated how shortsighted this was.

The question of the Law was the centre of much of Paul’s thinking. Was Christianity to be another chamber of the Temple? Were the Levitical rites, ceremonies, fasts and feasts permanent in God’s scheme of things? Or were they serving a purpose which no longer required their fulfillment? The key issue concerning the law lay in the question: Is salvation secured by rites, by initiation, by behaviour; in other words, by what we do? Or is it secured for us by God’s grace in action through Christ which is appropriated by our faith?

To Paul the answer was strikingly clear and the alternative extremely dangerous. But to the ordinary Jewish Christian other issues came quickly to mind. ‘Did Jesus fulfil the Law of Moses?’ ‘Did Jesus in his own lifetime pay tax to the Temple, offer sacrifices, keep the fasts and feasts?’ ‘Was he not circumcised himself?’ Some Christians then and since have sought to divide the Law into an inner and an outer, a ceremonial and an ethical, and stress that the Christian is not required to keep the ceremonial and the outer observance but the ethical and inner observance. But even this compromise would not have been acceptable to Paul.

Paul made three things clear:

(a) Our righteousness does not lie in our obedience to the Law. Paul said that we are made right with God, not by anything that we do through a righteousness of our own, but through our faith in what Christ has accomplished for us. 4

(b) The Law was to bring us to faith in Christ and consequently our allegiance is to the person of Christ not to obedience to the Law, no matter how great or good that might be.

(c) Christ superseded the Law by putting people right through faith. As Paul told the Romans: ‘Sin must not be your master; for you do not live under law but under God’s grace.’ 5

Even today many Christians do not understand that, and some churches still stress our reliance upon the ten commandments and our obedience to the moral law. Some churches even seek to continue some of the rituals, feasts and fasts of the old covenant, completely failing to realise that Christians live under a new covenant, in spite of the fact that every time they celebrate the Lord’s Supper they repeat his words, ‘this cup is God’s new covenant sealed with my blood, which is poured out for you.’ 6 The followers of Herbert W. Armstrong, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists make this error.

Paul is much clearer than that. Christ was the completion of the Law, he fulfilled the Law, and consequently he terminated the necessity of the Law.

2. The question of circumcision and food laws

At first the question of Gentile converts who became Christians having to be circumcised was not an issue. Cornelius, following the visit of Peter, believed, was baptised, and became a Christian. He was not required to be circumcised. The trouble began in a serious way in Antioch when Paul and Barnabas argued against some Jewish believers who said circumcision was necessary for salvation. As a result, a council of leading Christians was called to meet in Jerusalem. It was not a council of the leaders of all the churches, but of those leaders who were in Jerusalem, that is the more conservative and Jewish of the Christian leaders, and those who came to visit them from Antioch led by Paul.

At this meeting Paul was absolutely forthright. The day was carried, however, by Peter who recounted his own experience of how ‘God chose me from among you to preach the Good News to the Gentiles so that they could hear and believe… He made no difference between us and them; he forgave their sins because they believe. So then, why do you now want to put God to the test by laying a load on the backs of the believers which neither our ancestors nor we ourselves are able to carry? No! We believe and are saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they are.’ 7

After much debate James summed up the issue by telling them ‘not to eat any food that is ritually unclean because it has been offered to idols; to keep themselves from sexual immorality; and not to eat any animal that has been strangled, or any blood.’8

In one sense James merely confused the issue. Instead of indicating that not only was circumcision no longer required but neither were any of the other ceremonial or ritual requirements of the Law to be obeyed, he lay down four requirements, three of them having to do with food restrictions as was typical of the legalism of the Jewish upbringing, and the fourth concerning sexual immorality. These requirements, following on a statement that they were not required to be circumcised, still made some restrictions on the early Gentiles. These basically practical matters were concessions to make the Gentiles more acceptable to Jews who were meeting with them in their congregations. The council did not come out as clearly as Paul would have desired, but the concessions were minor and acceptable. So Paul remained quiet, having won the major issue.

Paul was a free man: he had no need to keep any laws, either food or ethical laws, provided he lived his whole life under ‘the law of Christ’ which gave him a higher standard of personal conduct and relationships. Although the question of circumcision had the capacity to divide the early church, it was an issue that soon died out.

3. The question of legalism

This was a much more difficult issue and one which in the long run was to continue to trouble the church throughout the rest of its life. Paul constantly ran into people who were emphasizing the necessity of a legalistic approach to the Christian faith: that Christianity was a list of ‘do’s and ‘don’ts’ and of living a life of obedience to them.

Paul was constantly to emphasise that Christians did not live under this kind of legalistic approach which ultimately led to living a life of misery, under the Law and ‘in the flesh’.

Those who lived with a legalistic humanistic attitude lived ‘in the flesh’. Ultimately that led to sin and to death. Paul argued strongly for a life lived in the Spirit, which was free from the demands, regulations and restrictions of the Law, and which was lived by the grace of God.

In every century since there have been those who have sought to make Christianity a matter of rules and regulations, of prohibitions and restrictions. Their statements were ‘a real Christian wouldn’t …’, ‘a true Christian would not wear such clothes or go to the …’. Christianity has been in constant danger of being made an exercise in cultural conformity, of decent behaviour. Consequently in different generations, dancing, make-up, theatre attendance, sports, activities on Sunday, hair styles, clothing styles, family outings, music and the like have been forbidden. To be a Christian has meant to obey the social and cultural rules.

But Paul argued strongly that Christianity was neither a matter of our conformity to culture, nor our moral behaviour: it lay in the essence of our faith in what Christ has done for us upon the cross.

The answer that has come back in every generation is that such belief is not enough and it must be accompanied by good behaviour. Of course, the person of belief will carry his belief out in practice. But Paul’s fundamental point is absolutely right – that our relationship with God precedes the quality of our behaviour, that faith determines our good works. A Christian is not saved by the good deeds he does, but because he has been saved he must devote his life to good deeds.

The central themes of Paul’s apologia

Paul was a unique person in that he contended for his faith with every fibre of his being, yet in so doing promoted not himself, or his cause, but promoted Jesus Christ. There are five central themes in Paul’s apologia.

1. The love of God

To Paul nothing was more marvellous than the love and grace of God. He did not look upon God as severe, punishing and wrathful, although all of these aspects of his character belonged to his justice. Instead he was a loving Father whose character is perfect, who in love creates, orders and provides for all and who in Jesus makes us right with himself.

‘There is for us only one God the Father, who is the creator of all things, and for whom we live.’ 9 In every letter that Paul wrote he always called God, Father. There was one God who was the Father and creator of all. The nature of that Father was love. His love was expressed in the way he has cared for us, provided for us and, in Jesus Christ, brought us back to himself.

His character is perfect, and his motive in all of his relationships is love. ‘God has shown us how much he loves us – it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us! By his sacrificial death we are now put right with God.’ 10

2. The uniqueness of Jesus

Except in two letters of Paul (2 Thessalonians and Philemon), each letter stresses the fact that Jesus is the Son of God. Typical of his statements is ‘Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son, superior to all created things. For through him God created everything in heaven and on earth, the seen and the unseen things, including spiritual powers, lords, rulers and authorities. God created the whole universe through him and for him. Christ existed before all things and in union with him all things have their proper place.’ 11 His great passage to the Philippians was possibly and early hymn sung in Antioch, but it describes beautifully Paul’s concept of the uniqueness of Jesus:

He always had the nature of God.
But he did not think that by force.
He should try to become equal with God.

Instead of this, of his own free will,
He gave up all he had,
And took the nature of a servant.

And became like man,
And appeared in human likeness.

He was humble and walked the path
Of obedience all the way to death –
His death upon a cross.

For this reason God raised him to
The highest place above
And gave him the name that is
Greater than any other name.

And so, in honour of the name of Jesus
All beings in heaven, on earth
And in the world below
Will fall on their knees

And all will openly proclaim
That Jesus Christ is Lord
To the glory of God the Father. 12

The life and teaching of Jesus does not occupy a large place in the teaching of Paul. Indeed he seems quite indifferent to the details of what we would normally regard as interesting biography. He mentions nothing of the details concerning the birth of Jesus save that Jesus was born at the most appropriate time. He says nothing of his early life and hardly anything of his teaching.

The death of Jesus upon the cross was the central factor in the teaching of Paul. In letter after letter he proclaimed the significance of the cross. A typical statement is : ‘I made up my mind to forget everything except Jesus Christ and especially his death on a cross.’ 13 In the death of Jesus, Paul saw God’s purpose in bringing mankind back to himself. He changed us ‘from enemies into his friends and gave us the task of making others his friends also.’ 14 Jesus’ death upon the cross and his resurrection from it was the central act in the divine drama of human redemption.

The resurrections of Jesus completes what was accomplished upon the cross. God who allowed man’s sin to crucify Christ demonstrated his power and love through raising him from the dead. When Paul wrote his first letter to the Christians in Corinth he stressed the significance of the resurrection of Jesus in the mighty fifteenth chapter. The resurrection of Jesus is an act of power by God for our benefit. The most remarkable aspect is not that God raised Jesus from the dead, but that God incorporates our future life through his resurrection, that we too share in the benefits of the resurrection. Paul puts it succinctly: ‘By our baptism, then, we were buried with him and shared his death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from deadth by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might live a new life.’ 15 It was that power that God demonstrated in raising Jesus from the dead that becomes central to the effectiveness of our own living. ‘How very great is his power at work in us who believe. This power working in us is the same as the mighty strength which he used when he raised Christ from death and seated him at his right side in the heavenly world.’ 16

The uniqueness of Jesus – in his life and teaching, his death upon the cross, his resurrection and ascension – is all gathered together in Paul’s understanding of our relationship with him: we are ‘In Christ’. That phrase is the distinctive phrase found in the writings of the apostle Paul. More than two hundred times he uses it throughout his thirteen epistles and in his public speeches. It was the essence of his understanding of what it means to be a Christian. A Christian is one whose life is incorporated into the risen, ascended Lord. From the time we are baptised ‘in Christ’ our whole Christian experience in life, in death, and beyond death is lived ‘in Christ’.

Christianity is never a code of behaviour, or an article of belief; it is a living relationship ‘in Christ’. It is Jesus resurrected from the dead and ascended into heaven as Lord; the Messiah as foretold by the prophets is the one in whom our Christian experience exists. That theme was in Paul’s apologia.

3. Justified by God’s grace through faith

Martin Luther described the doctrine of justification by faith as ‘the article of faith that decides whether the church is standing or falling’. 17 For Martin Luther justification by faith was the keystone of a church that was true to New Testament doctrine.

For Paul, as for Luther himself, the struggle to be righteous before God was man’s ultimate struggle and in our strength it ends in despair and misery. The only righteousness that we can obtain is through the righteousness of Christ.

Paul uses a number of words that describe our relationship with God through our faith.

(a) Justification is the means by which we are made right with God through his grace. Fifteen times in Romans and eight times in Galatians, Paul declares that we have been justified or made right with God. Justification is a metaphor which came from the law courts and describes the legal process which has resulted in the guilty being acquitted.

I have complete confidence in the gospel; it is God’s power to save all who believe, first the Jews and also the Gentiles. For the gospel reveals how God puts people right with himself: it is through faith from beginning to end. As the scripture says, ‘The person who is put right with God through faith shall live’. 18

Our justification by faith is not salvation by belief, but salvation through the saving righteousness of God through incorporation into Christ Jesus by an active decision of our will, evidenced through our response of faith and baptism.

Justification is God’s act of acquitting us of our sin. We are now ‘in Christ’.

(b) Adoption is a metaphor of our justification that comes from family relationships. Under Roman law an adopted person could pass from one family into another, thus receiving a new father and immediately entering into the family and becoming an heir jointly with the other sons. ‘Because of his love God had already decided that through Jesus Christ he would make us his sons – this was his pleasure and purpose.’ 19

His teaching concerning our adoption into the family of God contrasted in its freedom with the spirit of bondage that existed between a slave and his master. We are now no longer slaves, but sons adopted into the family of God. 20

(c) Mediation was the task Jesus undertook following the example of Moses who was the mediator between God and Israel, only now and mankind. This world which Paul uses comes from the concept of a covenant. As Moses had established the covenant at Sinai, so Christ established a new covenant with himself being the mediator, and his blood being the means by which the new covenant is effected. Only one person in all of history could have established that relationship between us and God. ‘For there is one God, and there is one who brings God and mankind together, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself to redeem all mankind.’ 21

(d) Expiation, or as it is sometimes also understood, propitiation, was also used by Paul to describe the result of our justification. This was the technical term used for the covering of our sin before the eyes of a wrathful God. Although mentioned several times in other passages of scripture, it was only used by Paul on one occasion. Nothing man could do could make God forgive, but God himself makes for our forgiveness. ‘God offered Jesus, so that by his death he should become the means by which people’s sins are forgiven through their faith in him.’ 22 His blood shed for us, at the mercy seat of God, covered over sin and therefore saved us from the wrath of God which we so justly deserved.

(e) Redemption is a theme that Paul delights to use. To redeem means to set free from captivity, or to buy back that which has been pawned. It was used in the slave market and the pawnshop. Captives were ransomed after having been taken prisoner. God had redeemed Israel from Egyptian bondage.

This redemption sealed at baptism, guaranteed by the giving of the Holy Spirit, will only be complete with the redemption of our whole being and the universe with us at the coming of Christ. ‘For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth. But it is not just creation alone which groans; we who have the Spirit as the first of God’s gifts also groan within ourselves as we wait for God to make us his sons and to set our whole being free.’ 23

(f) Reconciliation is the result of our redemption. It means that peace has been made between us and God, that we have been brought back to our rightful king after we have rebelled against him. In Romans Paul says: ‘Now that we have been put right with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ 24 That reconciliation is God’s work. God is never reconciled to man but man is reconciled to God and as a result we have peace.

(g) Sanctification is the process by which we as saints of God grow in our Christian experience, being ‘in Christ’ and becoming more like him. We were made complete, holy, when we were made right with God. Once we became a living sacrifice we were an offering to God. At the same time Christ was the sacrifice made on our behalf with the result that we have been made holy. The only sacrifice we make to God is our complete self and even this is made pure and acceptable by the way he has cleansed and redeemed us.

Because we are in him we have already been ‘purified from sin; you have been put right with God by the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.’ 25 Although we have thus been presented before his presence without spot or blemish, there is still a continuing process by which we are still made clean.

We now live a life avoiding those things that would take us back to our old life, and seeking to be perfect even as he is perfect. This has been one of Paul’s great themes.

4. Christian life in the Spirit

When God established the church on the Day of Pentecost he gave to it the dynamic which enabled the great commission of Jesus to be implemented throughout the known world.

Jesus had said that he would send his Holy Spirit who would abide with the believers, equip and empower them, bring to their remembrance his teaching, and be the agent through which the people would be convicted, convinced and converted.

It was the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of Paul that gave him enormous reserves of strength and energy to accomplish his mission. Time again in all of his writing and speeches he acknowledges the Spirit of God who controls him, directs him and empowers him. Paul even came to the point of declaring with strength that ‘whoever rejects this teaching is not rejecting man, but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.’ 26

Paul developed four particular themes about the Holy Spirit that have enabled Christians ever since to grow in their concepts and understanding of the significance of the Spirit of God.

(a) The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of what God has for us. The use of this word was associated usually with money being given in part payment to bind a bargain or to secure an option on a later sale. From that usage Paul developed the concept that God has given us now the Holy Spirit who is the down payment on all the spiritual treasures that God has in store for us. ‘It is God himself who has given us the Holy Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee of all that he has in store for us.’ 27

(b) The Holy Spirit is the seal that we belong to God. In the early days a seal or a signet was cut from semi-precious stones or gold, with smaller ones being set in rings and larger ones worn on a chain around the neck. This seal, which was unique to the owner, was to authenticate documents and contracts when it was impressed onto the wax which had to be broken to open the document. It conferred ownership and authenticity and in this sense Paul spoke of the Holy Spirit as being God’s mark on our lives, the sign that we belonged to him. 28

(c) The Holy Spirit is a helper in our life. Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as being the one who came alongside of us to help us as a comforter and strengthener. Paul develops that theme and says, ‘in the same way the Spirit also comes to help us, weak as we are. For we do not know how we ought to pray the Spirit also comes to help us, weak as we are. For we do not know how we ought to pray; the Spirit himself pleads with God for us in groans that words cannot express.’ 19

(d) It can all be summed up in the emphasis that Paul made that the Holy Spirit is the source of all life. It is through the Spirit that we have life in all of the abundance that Jesus has promised. ‘If Christ lives in you, the Spirit is life for you because you have been put right with God, even though our bodies are going to die because of sin.’ 30

The early Christians were equipped and enabled to take the message through the world because of the certainty of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

5. The Church

Paul had a grand concept of the kingdom of God and that kingdom had to be brought on earth through the church as the means by which God worked and witnessed in the world in this present era. A close examination of all the uses of the world ‘church’ in Paul’s epistles show that he had a growing concept of the church. To Paul the church was never a building; it was never a place where people gathered, but it was the relationship of Christians one to the other. That relationship of Christians could exist in a particular place and at such times Paul would refer to it as ‘the church of God which is in Corinth.’ 31

(a) The church is the body of Christ. Paul used this analogy frequently to describe the relationship of Christians with each other and with their Lord. He used the various parts of the body as analogous to the gifts that different Christians possess. The key thought with Paul is that as the body functions as a unity consisting of many individual parts so the church consisting of many parts with different gifts still has a fundamental unity and purpose. There must be co-operation through the different parts of the body and each part must realise it has a significant place within the whole, even though there is a difference in capacity and performance. His key point is ‘all of you are in Christ’s body, and each one is a part of it.’ 32

(b) The church is the bride of Christ. In one of the most beautiful pictures ever mentioned in scripture, Paul uses the analogy of a bride being prepared, cleansed and beautiful for her groom as in a marriage service. So the church is to prepare herself for the coming of Christ. He goes on to say, ‘Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it. He did this to dedicate the church to God by his word, after making it clean by washing it in water, in order to present the church to himself in all its beauty – pure and faultless, without spot or wrinkle or any other imperfection.’ 33

(c) The church is the household of God. In this final analogy Paul pictures the people of God belonging to the family of God enjoying his hospitality here on earth and also in heaven. ‘So then, you Gentiles are not foreigners or strangers any longer; you are now fellow citizens with God’s people and members of the family of God. [Jesus] is the one who holds the whole building together and makes it grow into a sacred temple dedicated to the Lord.’ 34 The glory of this is that both Jew and Gentile by faith are incorporated into the family of God, being his household and growing up to a temple of praise to the Lord.

These, then, are the central themes of Paul’s apologia. In his debates with philosophers, his arguments with traditional orthodox Jews and his teaching to young Christians, he reiterated again and again the love and grace of God, the uniqueness of Jesus, the fact that we are justified by the grace of God through our faith, that we live in the Spirit and that we belong to the church of Jesus Christ. What great themes!

The contemporary protagonist

Today in every continent there are fearless witness to the faith. Unlike Paul they are not being called to fight against the servants of Diana of Ephesus, but against the philosophies, politics and economics of a new world.

There are many faithful believers in gaol who have stood out for their faith, many who have had their rights taken from them because of their Christian witness, and many in right-wing dictatorships and in left-wing communist regimes who have, in our generation, suffered because they have been willing to take the offensive in proclaiming their faith.

In our world, the contemporary ideologies have been influenced by Darwin’s evolutionary philosophies, by Freud’s psychosexual motivation and by Marx’s concept of a classless society. These may be the current ‘faiths’ against which we must defend the truth. But in the affluent West the carnivorous materialism which eats the hearts of people, the empty hedonism that sends people spinning from one pleasure to another, he secular humanist philosophies that create a barren life and syncretistic philosophies that pick and choose parts of Eastern cults and Western religions to satisfy the taste for something new, all need to have the gospel of Jesus Christ expounded clearly.

And the same themes as Paul’s apologia are to be the themes we must proclaim! Christians are called upon to witness to their faith, not by the power of their intellect or reason, but by the power of the Holy Spirit who is active whenever we are faithfully witnessing to Jesus. God does not need our ability to defend it, but our availability. God does expect us to witness. As Martin Luther said, ‘Let us not be anxious; the gospel needs not our help, it is sufficiently strong itself. Our breath need not range against the sophists; what would this bat accomplish by its flappings?’

God does not call us to be pugnacious, litigious or argumentative, but he does expect us to say a good word for Jesus. He expects us to say, like the man at Siloam, ‘I was blind, and now I can see.’ 35

Endnotes:

1. Acts 22:1
2. James 1:27
3. Philippians 1:15-17
4. Galatians 3:6
5. Romans 6:14
6. Luke 22:20
7. Acts 15:7-11
8. Acts 15:20
9. 1 Corinthians 8:6
10. Romans 5:8-9
11. Colossians 1:15-17
12. Philippians 2:6-11
13. 1 Corinthians 2:2
14. 2 Corinthians 5:18-19
15. Romans 6:4
16. Ephesians 1:19-20
17. J.I Paker, in J. Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification, Banner of Truth Trust, 1984 reprint, Introduction p.vii
18. Romans 1:16-17
19. Ephesians 1:5
20. Romans 8:14-21
21. 1 Timothy 2:5-6
22. Romans 3:25
23. Romans 8:22-23
24. Romans 5:1
25. 1 Corinthians 6:11
26. 1 Thessalonians 4:8
27. 2 Corinthians 1:21-22
28. 2 Corinthians 1:22
29. Romans 8:26
30. Romans 8:10
31. 1 Corinthians 1:21-22
32. 1 Corinthians 12:27
33. Ephesians 5:22-27
34. Ephesians 2:19-21
35. John 9:25

For personal reading

Theme: Champion for a cause

Monday : Striving for the prize (Philippians 3:7-21)
Tuesday : Salvation through faith not tradition (Romans 4:13-25)
Wednesday : Spiritual circumcision (Romans 2:17-29)
Thursday : Beware of false teachers (2 Corinthians 11:4-16)
Friday : Defection from the truth (Galatians 2:17-21)
Saturday : Crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:17-21)
Sunday : We are heirs of the Father (Romans 8:5-17)

For group study

Topic: When opposition assails you

1. Paul was a champion for Jesus Christ. Who were some of those who vehemently opposed him and why?

2. Show two examples of how Paul clearly defended his faith in Jesus Christ.

3. What were some of the points of contention between Paul and his opponents? Would there be some parallel arguments by those who oppose Christ’s church today?

4. How would you convince another of God’s love and of the centrality of Jesus in your faith?

5. The author says that man cannot save himself. We can only be made right with God through his grace. Look again in Romans 3:22-25 and share what this means to you.

6. What can we learn from Paul about being a fearless witness to the faith?

Monday, 13th July, 2009, 3:11 pm | Bible Studies