10. Paul the Prophet

The film, ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’ is a delightful story of a liberal, outgoing, well-meaning family whose daughter is returning from overseas. They are overjoyed with the news that she is bringing her fiancé home and are very impressed that she has chosen a doctor, a socially acceptable occupation among their liberal set. They open the door and see him: there is one thing she has forgotten to tell them – he is black! All of a sudden their liberal and open-minded attitudes come under challenge. How will they copy with their daughter in a racially mixed marriage? Because his parents have also been invited to the home that night a similar scene is enacted, for they do not now their son is marrying into a white family. The story revolves around how each of them resolves the situation…

Guess who is coming to dinner? At the end of time the Bible declares there will be a bridal feast of the Lamb of God when everyone who loves God is invited. 1 And guess who’s coming? There will be some people there that we do not expect, and there will be some people that who do not expect us. The whole story of what is going to happen at the end of time and how that knowledge is revealed to us is part of what we call prophecy.

Paul fulfilled the role of a prophet as well as the other roles we have studied. Prophets were of profound significance right through the Bible. The role of the prophets began with Moses. The best-known prophets of the Old Testament were Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Elijah. The arrangement of some of the Old Testament books is according to the prophets, with the former prophets being grouped together in the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings; the latter prophets grouped together in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel; and the minor prophets grouped at the close of the Old Testament, some twelve of them from Hosea to Malachi.

In the New Testament John the Baptist was regarded as a true prophet of God and Jesus was called a prophet. The church at Antioch had prophets and teachers among its leaders. The office and work of a prophet died out some time after the close of the third century of the Christian church.

The primary task of a prophet, judging from the original meaning of the word, was to announce news from God. The prophet announced God’s word to his generation, reminded the people of Israel’s election and covenant promise, rebuked them for sin and rebellion, and proclaimed the coming judgment and redemption of the people. There was, therefore, always an element of telling what was going to happen in the future, as well as proclaiming what the Lord wanted done then and there.

Consequently the prophet had a role both as a foreteller of things to come and a forthteller of God’s word to his own generation.

Forthteller

Although the prophets of the Old Testament covered more than a thousand years of history, lived under the domination of a number of different conquerors and related in different ways to judges, kings and the priestly cult, there were some common themes found in their proclamation. Paul in his teaching fulfilled the most common elements found in the great Old Testament prophets.

Like many of them, Paul was an itinerant person, proclaiming from place to place the word of the Lord, and warning people to change and to seek the redemption that God offered. Like each of the great prophets Paul had experienced a call from God and was sent by him to proclaim his word. 2 Like Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Paul had been called and commissioned by God to proclaim his word. He felt obliged to do this, even though he might suffer persecution and difficulty, be ridiculed and scorned. Like these famous Old Testament prophets, he believed that he was bound up in the destiny of his people and that his personal suffering, rejection and even death were only part of his participation in the community’s response and rejection of God’s word.

Four of the Old Testament prophets’ great themes, also shared by John the Baptist and Jesus, were consistently found in the teaching of Paul:

1. Israel’s place in history

The prophets were always proclaiming that God had chosen his people and that he would fulfil the promises of the covenant made with Abraham that they would become a great nation, and be a universal blessing. Paul proclaimed these truths in his addresses in the Jewish synagogues and his teaching to Jews when he addressed the synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia, and when he defended himself in Jerusalem. It seems that this was a pattern of Paul’s preaching in Jewish circles.

2. The warning to turn from sin and rebellion against God

Paul, like the prophet of old, would call people to repentance, to turn from sin and rebellion against God, and to live a life in conformity with the moral precepts of the law. It seemed that this was a natural conclusion to his preaching, for he would proclaim even among the Greek philosophers in Athens, that ‘God has overlooked the times when people did not know him, but now he commands all of them everywhere to turn away from their evil ways.’ 3

Like them, Paul believed that those outside the chosen race had also rebelled against God and needed to return to him. Israel’s rebellion in sinfulness was shared by the whole of mankind. Paul made it clear when he wrote to the Romans that this rebellion could not go unpunished by God and that mankind’s guilt would be dealt with by God’s judgment. 4

3. The compassion and redemption of God

Yet the prophet not only told of God’s judgment against his people, but promised the compassion and redemption of God. He showed mercy, kindness and grace in dealing with his wayward people. Paul likewise expressed God’s forgiveness. His call was for people to return to him and to receive the mercy of God. Words like grace, mercy and love became the great theme words in his preaching.

4. The call to repentance and acceptance of redemption

The prophets always completed their major addresses with God’s call to the people to turn back to him in repentance and to receive from him the promise of a new future, of being at one with God. His word would accomplish that, and through them all the nations of the world would be blessed. It would be through the suffering Messiah that this blessing would come.

This message of the prophet was the heart of Paul’s gospel of redemption. In continuing these major themes, Paul was standing in the traditions of the great men of God who spoke out his message with both warning and compassion.

Foreteller

The future was central to Paul’s message. The end of time and the great climax of God’s purposes gave point and purpose to life for the Christian. We are to live with God making us ‘holy in every way’ 5 and keeping our whole being – spirit, soul and body – free from every fault at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. His apocalyptic message gave to the believers hope, comfort, encouragement and purpose in their suffering. Paul stressed that the believers not only dwelt here in the present but were already part of that future life:

Actually everything belongs to you: this world, life and death, the present and the future – all these are yours, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. 6

While the believer lives in the flesh, the believer also lives in the spirit. Heaven is here and now, not only in the age to come.

Paul’s teaching about the future, like many other aspects of his teaching, grew out of a pastoral problem. Paul had founded the church in Thessalonica and taught them about the coming of Jesus. He had to leave the Christians there to go on with his missionary journey throughout Greece. After he had left, some of the members of the church had died and consequently this raised a number of questions in their minds. They contacted Paul about these questions: What about the people who died believing in Jesus but who did not see his return? What about others of them who were still alive – would they see the Lord’s return in their lifetime? When would the Lord return?

Paul’s answer was one of the reasons for writing his first letter to the Christians at Thessalonica:

What we are teaching you now is the Lord’s teaching: we who are alive on the day the Lord comes will not go ahead of those who have died. There will be a shout of command, the archangel’s voice, the sound of God’s trumpet and the Lord himself will come down from heaven. Those who have died believing in Christ will rise to life first; then we who are living at that time will be gathered up along with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. 7

1. The age to come

The church is vital to the age to come, not as a vehicle of proclaiming the truth, or as a means of propaganda about the faith only, but as the already existing first-fruits of that age. Paul said ‘We have the Spirit as the first of God’s gifts… as we wait for God to make us his sons and set our whole being free.’ 8 The gift of the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of more yet to come. The whole of creation will be transformed and in fact that future age has already broken into this era of historical time. This age has about it the death throes and is already rattling into extinction. The believer not only knows that the Lord will come in the future but can sense his presence now.

2. The second coming of the Lord

In almost every letter in the New Testament there is reference to the second coming of Jesus. There are eighteen major references to the second coming and seven out of each ten chapters of the New Testament have a reference to the return of Christ.

Jesus himself promised that he would come again. 9 The early apostles proclaimed Jesus’ return as central to their gospel, and Peter and John held to the truth as providing meaning for the way Christians must live in difficult times. Paul likewise stressed the great significance of the second coming of Jesus. The early Christians greeted each other with ‘Maranatha – Our Lord, come!’ 10

Paul taught that Jesus will come in power and glory from heaven surrounded by his angels, and with the Christians who had died before his coming. When the Lord returns he will judge both the living and the dead, and receive to himself those who are faithful. Paul told the Christians at Corinth that the dead will rise with a new eternal body and those who have survived will be transformed:

We shall all be changed in an instant, as quickly as the blinking of an eye. For when the trumpet sounds, the dead will be raised, never to die again, and we shall all be changed. For what is mortal must be changed into what is immoral; what will die must be changed into what cannot die. So when this takes place, and the mortal has been changed into the immortal, then the scripture will come true: ‘Death is destroyed; Victory is complete!’ 11

The believers will be gathered together with him from all the known world. At this time ‘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

Then the judgment will occur: ‘Final judgment must wait until the Lord comes; he will bring to light the dark secrets and expose the hidden purposes of people’s minds. And everyone will receive from God the praise he deserves.’ 13 Those who have believed in Jesus need fear no condemnation for they have been put right with God through faith and consequently do not come under condemnation. But those who have refused the gospel will be destroyed and their judgment is to be excluded from God eternally. The believers will enter into God’s presence.

Paul thus preached the second coming of the Lord with great vigour, encouraging the believers to look forward to their future with him.

3. The omega point

But Christ was to do more than just take the believers to himself and separate the non-believers from God’s presence. Christ is a cosmic Christ who was the agent of God in creation, and he will be the omega point to which all history is moving. ‘Through the Son, then, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself. God made peace through his Son’s sacrificial death on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven.’ 14 The whole of creation is looking forward to a time of renewal and at the second coming Jesus will usher in the new age that will see the renewal of heaven and earth. Until that time creation is in travail.

Because we believe in him, we now have a promise that we will become as he is. There is a spiritual perfection that is promised to us. This can be appropriated now and Christians can keep growing to be more like him. Every believer now becomes a new person in Christ and we are being changed into his glory.

Paul taught that when the Son hands over the kingdom to the Father there will be a re-creation of the whole universe, a new heaven and a new earth. God will rule over all. This world will be free from all corruption.

4. The resurrection factor

The key to all of this lies in the resurrection of Jesus. Because of his resurrection from the dead we too will share in his resurrection with life and immortality. As a Pharisee Paul had believed in the resurrection of the body which was one of the distinguishing features between Pharisees and Sadducees.

But it was Paul’s actual meeting with the resurrected Jesus that changed a belief into a passion. Paul now understood the resurrection of the body in a new way. He replied to those who did not believe in the resurrection of the body with a new concept of resurrection: not a Greek philosophical concept of the immorality of the soul, nor a bodily assumption of people into heaven; instead, a transformation of a mortal body into an immortal one: Just as the seed dies upon being buried in the ground to give birth to new life, so our faith enables us to be changed from a mortal to an immortal body:

‘for we know that when this tent we live in – our body here on earth – is torn down, God will have a house in heaven for us to live in, a home he himself has made, which will last for ever. While we live in this earthly tent, we groan oppression; it is not that we want to get rid of our earthly body, but that we want to have the heavenly one put on over us, so that what is mortal will be transformed by life.’ 15

As Christ was raised from the dead, so the believers who died believing in him will be raised with a new spiritual body and we will be made like his glorious body, able to abide with him and the Father for ever. Because God raised Christ from the dead, our resurrection is not just a hope but an assurance of what will happen.

5. The sacraments

It is in this forward-looking, prophetic vein that Paul speaks about the sacraments. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are not just rituals of the church for initiation and remembrance, but they are in themselves prophetic, pointing to our new life and presence with the Lord. Paul was the first to write about both.

The key to our understanding of baptism lies in our identification with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. He taught that when we were baptised, we were baptised into this death, into his resurrection, into his body, and into new life. The very form of baptism by immersion symbolises our old life being buried beneath the water and being raised to a new life. Paul would not equate baptism as a new form of circumcision to initiate babies into the kingdom. Neither would he declare that Christians were to be saved from immorality, sin and moral imperfection baptism.

Paul left the administration of baptism to other ministers who travelled with him, to avoid people becoming proud of the fact that they had been baptised by him personally and therefore setting up a party under his own name. He anticipated that every believer would be baptised. There is no direct evidence in the New Testament for the baptism of infants. Through our baptism we appropriate what Christ has done for us and our baptism is a pledge of God’s blessings both now and in the future.

The Lord’s Supper is referred to by Paul only in his first letter to the Corinthians. His instructions about what happened on the night Jesus was betrayed were conveyed to him personally by the Lord. While Paul speaks of the communion of the Lord’s Supper as a memorial, as fellowship and communion of Christians and as a participation in his blessing, it is also a prophetic sacrament in that ‘every time you eat this bread and drink from this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’ 16 Paul also mentions that the Lord’s Supper, if partaken of unworthily, is a judgment upon the participant and he indicated that some had become ill and even died, bringing judgment on themselves, because of the careless way in which they had treated the Lord’s Supper.

While these paragraphs are not detailed teaching on the significance of both baptism and the Lord’s Supper, they are an aspect of Paul’s prophetic ministry, for both baptism and the Lord’s Supper point to our life not only here in fellowship with Christ, but in the age to come.

Paul stood within the traditions of the great prophets of the Old and New Testaments in his proclamation, not only of how Christians should believe and behave, but how we should look to the future with hope and expectation.

Endnotes:

1. Matthew 25:1-13; Revelation 21
2. Acts 9:1-16
3. Acts 17:30
4. Romans 1-2
5. 1 Thessalonians 5:23
6. 1 Corinthians 3:21-23
7. 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17
8. Romans 8:23
9. John 14:3; Matthew 25:31
10. 1 Corinthians 16:22
11. 1 Corinthians 15:51-54
12. Philippians 2:10-11
13. 1 Corinthians 4:5
14. Colossians 1:20
15. 2 Corinthians 5:1-4
16. 1 Corinthians 11:26

For personal reading

Theme: Jesus is coming again

Monday : Caught up with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)
Tuesday : Raised in glory (1 Corinthians 15:42-58)
Wednesday : Conquerors through Christ (Romans 8:28-39)
Thursday : The Lord comes to judge (1 Corinthians 4:1-5)
Friday : Chosen for salvation (2 Thessalonians 2:1-16)
Saturday : In remembrance of me (1 Corinthians 11:19-33)
Sunday : Baptised in Christ (Romans 6:1-11)

For group study

Topic: Our Lord comes!

1. What do you understand by the word ‘prophet’?

2. What is the role and function of a propet?

3. How do we know that Jesus will come again?

4. In what ways is the resurrection of Jesus important? Where does it fit with the second coming of Jesus?

5. What does the Bible say about the prophetic character of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper?

Wednesday, 22nd July, 2009, 3:34 pm | Bible Studies