Seven Cheers for St Paul!
1 August 2007 Jeff Gill
At the moment Western church culture features a strong emphasis on Jesus the man and on being one of his followers. That’s great, but somehow in some quarters the Apostle Paul seems to have been forgotten in a dusty corner. (In some quarters it seems that the whole bible has been forgotten in a dusty corner, but that’s a different post.)
I don’t think Paul should be forgotten anywhere, so here are my seven reasons for saying, Hurrah for Saint Paul:
1. He is the reason we have Christianity in the Western world. Yes, Philip sent the Good News of Jesus to Africa and Peter went to the Gentiles, but neither of them went very far to do it. Paul went to Turkey and Europe, and if tradition is true two of his disciples took Jesus to Britain.
2. He knew Jesus in the same way we do. Paul never knew Jesus like Peter, James, John and the rest of the original twelve. Jesus left Earth a long time before Paul believed in him. It’s nice to know that the man who wrote a quarter of the New Testament didn’t meet Jesus in the flesh just like I didn’t.
3. He gets Jesus the Christ. Paul understood the idea of an anointed one (Christ) who existed before time, who created the earth, who had a whole history before being born in Bethlehem. Of course, Peter and John got this too. But Paul develops the concept of the Christ more than Peter. And he was a much less poetic/mystical writer than John, so he provides an important balance with his clear, specific language.
4. He wrote Ephesians and Romans. Try actually living out the instructions of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) without having really internalised the truths of Romans 6-8 and Ephesians 1-3. Go on, try it. You’ll fail.
5. He was real. He lets us see him learning, growing, changing, depressed, elated, frustrated, confused.
Look at the way he flopped in Athens, then completely changed his approach in Corinth, and then refined it in Ephesus.
Want to see Paul on an emotional roller coaster? Read 2 Corinthians.
6. He was a radical feminist (and believer in the equality of everyone). Anyone who thinks Paul had problems with women should read Galatians 3:28: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ Put that in your pipe and smoke it. And if you don’t think he personally practised it, read about his working relationship with Priscilla and Aquila.
7. He was focussed. You may be thinking, ‘But what about all those places when Paul says women ought to shut up and go grow their hair?’ All those passages are about church practice, not Paul’s theology. He was willing to be shackled to culture for the sake of the Good News.
Paul lived in a male-dominated society; women didn’t have a lot in the way of rights. Paul’s mission in life was to connect people to God through Jesus Christ. If Paul had tried to create churches that fully reflected his theology of equality they would have been empty. He believed that a woman without rights in the kingdom of God was in better condition than a woman with rights outside the kingdom of God. (Of course once they were in the church, he taught the true state of things.)
His focus meant that he was willing to put his formidable intellect to one side and ‘to know nothing… except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. ‘ My intellect isn’t formidible, but I am acutely aware of how much I enjoy appearing clever. I imagine it was the same for Paul. I admire the way he subjugated himself to a great cause.
So there you have it.
Go, Paul!
Delicious Digg StumbleUpon TwitThis
tags: leadership,
paul,
women
Things being said about Seven Cheers for St Paul!
On 28 January 2008 ? wrote:
Just out of interest, did you or your Wife first say: “I love you”?
Do you need to know if I am a man or a woman to know what that answer brings to the gender debate?
On 28 January 2008 ? wrote:
Try listening to/reading this lecture series, I found it very moving. You may have to copy and paste the link, or search for ‘Biblical Man and Womanhood’ on the homesite.
http//www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/BySeries/10/
On 28 January 2008 ? wrote:
I’m sorry, I’ll try again. This is the series I was thinking of. Partucularly the lecture entitled:
“Husbands Who Love Like Christ And The Wives Who Submit To Them.”
Although I am sure that any of them might prove helpful.
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TopicIndex/49_Biblical_Manhood_and_Womanhood/
On 28 January 2008 Jeff Gill wrote:
?,
First, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read.
Now a little clarification: In my ode to Paul I was writing specifically about women in leadership and kingdom of God life, not about marriage.
In answer to your first question: It was me. If I’m guessing correctly, my answer fits with thoughts that you have about men being initiators and women being responders.
As for your second question: I don’t know. If we do need to, please tell us.
On John Piper’s ideas: I suppose they are fine if you like your marriage nice and dry with all the rules framed and hung right above the bed (and the kitchen sink).
Check out the sexy dialogue that John makes up for his wife: “Johnny, I know you’ve thought a lot about this, and I love it when you take the initiative to plan for us and take the responsibility like this, but I really don’t have peace about this decision and I think we need to talk about it some more. Could we? Maybe tonight sometime?”
I don’t want to impugn Mr Piper’s relationship with his wife. I’m sure it is fantastic. I also don’t want to denigrate his scholarship. But he’s missing the whole point of marriage being like Christ and the church. It’s about love and romance and magic and sparks flying and fireworks going off and sex and holding hands and building a life and a family together – I say this as man who has been married for nearly 12 years, not a wild-eyed honeymooner.
There are only two times in a marriage when a couple actually needs to think about headship and submission. The first is just before, so that they both know that they are signing up for a life of giving themselves away to another. The second is when things start to go off track a bit and the husband needs to remind himself that he is supposed to be laying down his life and the wife needs to remind herself that she needs to be treating him like he actually matters in this world. Otherwise, it just isn’t important because love reigns in their relationship.
Please write more if you feel my response missed what you were aiming at.
On 28 January 2008 ? wrote:
The article was very good. I happen to be a divorcee and I have come across much condemnation in the Church. I found John’s views to be very healing in my circumstances, although I think that he would probably disagree with my re-marriage, which is due to commence next September.
Our mutual courtship in the run up to my forthcoming marriage was in fact much as you say so. It sounds as if you have a wonderful, loving relationship with your Wife. You obviously adore her and she is a very lucky woman.
My new husband and I (I am a woman. You may have already guessed) are taking our Godly partnership very seriously, perhaps in the light of my previous failed union. I happen to believe that marriage is the very imaging of God himself (Mr. Piper, I believe, does not go this far). Although it stings me spiritually that my first marriage collapsed, I believe that it was spiritually dead and that God will therefore forgive me for abandoning my Hope in him in this instance. There is no scriptural basis for this. It is, as you say a gut feeling.
I have taken time to asses where myself and my previous partner had gone wrong and to repent where necessary but I do relish my new role in supporting my soon-to-be husband and helping him to become everything that I know him to be. We are about to embark on a life of shared goals and purposes under God’s stewardship that is very exiting to me.
We have been dating for about 11 months, but were cordial during the last two years of my first marraige. You can understand why some members of the Church have seen fit to judge; although I can say with complete authority that the break-down of my first marraige was traumatic enough to command 100% of my attention.
I do believe that leadership or headship can become a trial and a burden to men in marriage if they are not properly supported, and my first husband and I were unequally yoked in this area.
In my new relationship feel supported and released in a way that I have never felt before, and I can only hope (as you seem to suggest) that this will lead to fireworks in every area and that all hurt and injured parties will be let to heal and put their hurt behind them.
I am glad to hear of someone so young who is so secure in their faith. I miss-read the principle point of your article upon first reading, but it has been a blessing to me.
On 28 January 2008 Jeff Gill wrote:
?,
Thanks for writing more.
1. Who am I to judge how a person will be impacted by a message? One man’s dry is another person’s juicy (or something like that). I’m very glad that God used Mr Piper’s series to bring healing to you.
2. I didn’t guess that you were a woman, but Christine did.
3. You wrote, I believe that it was spiritually dead and that God will therefore forgive me for abandoning my Hope in him in this instance.
If I’m understanding this wrongly, forgive me, but I want to encourage you to remember that God forgives you because he is amazing and wonderful and loves you. No matter how bad or not our actions look to us His forgiveness and love and grace to stand up and keep going forward are ridiculously overwhelming.
4. You wrote: I am glad to hear of someone so young who is so secure in their faith.
A lot of the time it feels more like it has a hold of me than me having a hold of it. So I think God gets the credit here.
5. This is a brilliant teaching on marriage as a picture of Christ and the church: Scroll down nearly to the bottom for this: 11/25/2007 – Revolting Purity, Greg Boyd
6. My God bless you and your future husband with phenomenal fireworks!
On 30 January 2008 ? wrote:
I have bookmarked the page you suggested. David and myself dissected the talk over a glass of wine and it was very good.
To begin with I thought you were being rude but David spotted the thing near the bottom of the page and we were quite amazed! I hope to see you around Tia Lynn’s site in future, she is a wonderful Christian polemicist.
Every blessing,
Marcia
On 30 January 2008 Jeff Gill wrote:
Marcia, I shall have to work on sounding NOT rude. Rude is not a tone I want my writing to have. Thanks for sticking with it to the end.
Tia Lynn is very good. I’ve been reading her blog since October.
Happiness
Jeff