Christians have often found the apostle Paul dense, unpleasant, and occasionally, plain bewildering. But he has written half our New Testament. We need to own that fact.
Folks More Spiritual than You Have Struggled with Paul
In the four gospels, we salute the winsome Son of God, His colorful, picturesque parables, and His gentle, winning way. But the shift to Pauline epistles is jarring. In Romans, for instance, we encounter difficult concepts wrapped in polysyllabic terms like justification, sanctification, conformation, and transformation. Gone are the pleasant stories, and in their place, theology we’re tempted to read right over, dismissing it as “Bible-speak.”
Some fairly spiritual people have had difficulty reading Paul.
Like the Apostle Peter.
You’d think this senior follower of Jesus and fellow writer of the New Testament would decipher Paul’s writing with the same ease as you would solve a third-grade crossword puzzle.
Not so.
Peter observed that in Paul’s epistles there were “some things…hard to understand” (2 Pet. 3:16a). He added that there was a danger in being careless with Paul’s writings “which the unlearned and unstable twist to their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:16b). Nor was Paul’s complex thinking a legitimate reason to ignore his writings, either. Peter placed Paul’s letters on a par with “the other Scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:16c).
We should seek to understand Paul and read him because his writings are as much the word of God as John 3:16.
Jesus said to Stand By, There’s More to Come!
During the days of Jesus’ earthly ministry, He prepped the apostles by telling them, “I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:12-13).
Indeed, beyond the four gospels, He spoke in the apostles through the Spirit. This revealed truth would not be a product of human academic understanding or religious opinion, nor even an invention of the Holy Spirit Himself. As Jesus had said, “Whatever He hears He will speak.” And so, the Spirit took what was His and delivered it to them (v. 14). Beyond the gospels, the New Testament was not, therefore, a collection of diluted spiritual messages, let alone mere religious commentaries.
The implications for us are exciting. By reading the epistles, we’re being exposed to and invited into the further reality of Christ’s speaking.
Why Paul is Different
With little exception, the New Testament is not the result of divine dictation. We don’t see the apostles furiously scribbling while a voice booms its message from heaven. (1) Nor do we see the Spirit seizing control of their hands and moving a stylus on paper, or planting tape-recorded messages in their minds to transcribe.
Rather, the Spirit interfaced with and disciplined the personalities of the writers. Then they poured out on paper their respective spiritual understandings and experiences, their thoughts, backgrounds, feelings, characteristics, and particular verbiage. In the midst of this diversity, the Spirit preserved the undiluted, singular truth into which He was guiding them.
“In carefully perusing the New Testament, we discover that certain words are constantly employed by Paul which were never employed by Peter or John or Matthew. Likewise, Luke has his favorite words, and so does Mark. In their writings, each maintains his peculiarity. The gospel of Matthew is different from that of Mark, Mark from Luke, and Luke from John. Paul’s writings have their own definite tone; Peter’s are in another strain…Pursuing this matter further, we find that each writer of the Bible possesses their own idiosyncrasies. As a physician, Luke invokes certain medical terms with which to describe various sicknesses, while the other three evangelists employ common words. Again, because the book of Acts is also written by Luke, medical words once more appear. Each gospel possesses its special phraseology and its particular topics. In Mark, ‘immediately’ is frequently found; in Matthew, ‘the kingdom of heaven’; in Luke, ‘the kingdom of God.’ On each book, the writer leaves his indelible mark; yet all are the word of God.”(2)
This is why Paul emerges as somewhat more difficult than the other apostles. Where James is eminently practical, Peter is immediately applicable, and John is relationally profound, Paul is scholarly. His style is complex, with parenthetical asides, and frequently modified words–writing we would expect from a trained teacher of law. And yet at no point does Paul require the Spirit of Truth to yield in favor of human education, or even mortal intellectual energies. Instead, his skilled stream of thought travels in harmony with the Spirit. While the verses he has penned defy easy reading, following them assures us we will enter the further words of Christ.
This will be a far more rigorous school than what we attended in the beginning of our faith, and not only because of the lingo used.
For instance, when we read and reflect on salvation in Romans (some call this book “The Fifth Gospel”), we’ll be taken into depths we’ve never been before. Next, Paul addresses the subjects of true spirituality in First Corinthians, authentic ministry in Second Corinthians, religious legalism in Galatians, the church in Ephesians, the experience of Christ in Philippians, holy living in First Thessalonians, the Lord’s Return in Second Thessalonians, the arrangement of the church in First Timothy, the decline of the church in Second Timothy, the proper order in the church in Titus, social issues in the church in Philemon, and the superiority of the New Covenant over the old in Hebrews. (3)
All of these fit the description of spiritual meat, solid food for those who wish to grow. Yes, the texture is thick, chewy, even crunchy at times, but perfect description of how “He [the Spirit of Truth] will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:12).
No better person could have written such things than one trained in the sequential and logical finesse of a teacher, yet at the same time, one who was dominated by the maxim, “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
As with all writers of Scripture, Paul’s usefulness came at a painful price. From the beginning, the resurrected Jesus had said of this impetuous, opinionated, stubborn future apostle, “I will show him how much he must suffer on behalf of my name” (Acts 9:16).
Twenty-seven epistles were an outcome of that work.
1-With the exception of certain passages in the book of Revelation
2-Watchman Nee, The Ministry of God’s Word. (New York: Christian Fellowship Publishers, 1971), 16.
3-I subscribe to Pauline authorship in Hebrews because of the author’s closeness to Timothy (13:23; c.f. Phil. 2:19, 22-24), his apparent imprisonment (13:19), and his great understanding of Mosaic law with its corresponding Old Testament fulfillment.
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This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer
Featured Image by Brett Jordan on Unsplassh
