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The Instrument of Suffering

By on in Theology

Today I completed the book entitled “Illustrated Life of Paul.” It was required reading for a course about the early Church and the book of Acts. The book is a walkthrough of the life of Paul the Apostle. Specifically, around his background, early experiences, conversion, missionary journeys, and last years. The book was well-written, historical, and factual without much speculation about what occurred in Paul’s life. The text does not often equivocate or take license to elaborate with terms used such as “possible,” “maybe,” “might,” “may,” and so forth. Fanciful explanatory imagery around life events, trials, hardships, victories, and so on were not presented within this text, along with tidbit facts sprinkled in among other comparative texts that speculate about Paul’s life.

This book provides numerous reliable citations, and Scripture references are of modern translations without the author recasting their verbiage to fit how the book was written. The book is heavily researched to present a composite story about Paul’s life with Scripture (Acts, Romans, Prison Letters) as the underlying guide to support the confidence of its reader.

Highlights of the book are everywhere throughout the text. With intertextual references of biblical sources, considerable detail is covered from the era’s cultural influences. More specifically, Judaism, Hellenism, Roman, and Greek paganism were together the social environment that Paul operated within. With the cultural conditions and pressures upon society, the Roman empire and its laws intertwined with Jewish traditions and requirements of the Mosaic law that situated Paul within an environment by which the message of the gospel could get traction and thrive among many Jews and “God-fearers.”

But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake.” – Jesus, Acts 9:15-16

With substantial background about Paul’s upbringing, family, training, and accomplishments, the book goes much farther to trace the developments of Paul. Sequentially indexed town by town, and city by city, the reader gets an in-depth look at what occurred along a timeline. From his dramatic conversion on the Damascus road to his time in Arabia, Jerusalem, Tarsus, and then Antioch, he gained his footing under the Holy Spirit’s power. To undertake his three successive missionary journeys, he would travel out and back to bring up churches from scratch and develop leaders to sustain them. From the first to the last, each trip grew progressively longer and more involved with new converts and a growing population that served as a network of sorts under the power of the Holy Spirit and authority of Christ.

The book is an excellent resource concerning what occurred in each town. With geographical maps with routes, archaeological descriptions, and illustrations, the reader is also exposed to ordinary everyday life artifacts. Implements, currencies, writing materials, navigation aids, art, living quarters, forms of entertainment, legal systems, and so forth are presented as well to piece together what life was like while the growth of the Church was underway.

The book’s geographical scope extends across the Mediterranean from the South, such as Alexandria, to the East, including Jerusalem and Antioch, to the further North such as Cicilia, Cappadocia, Galatia, and the rest of Asia-Minor. Moreover, in-depth coverage narrows in on European areas, including Macedonia, Thrace, Achaia, and Italy (Rome). Islands that were traversed, such as Sicily, Cypress, Crete, and Malta, were also important points of interest in the text.

This is an academic book and well worth the money spent and the time invested in reading through it. It is not for cursory or topical study, but it serves as a reference to stimulate added research and ground anyone’s thinking around what the life of Paul was about.

The Path of Treasured Burden

By on in Theology

When considering how God prepared Paul for his work among both Jews and Gentiles during his life, there were very specific outcomes both favorable and unfavorable to many people. Especially concerning those who were in Jerusalem and well beyond that into Asia Minor and Macedonia.

After Jesus confronted Paul on the road to Damascus, the Holy Spirit entered Paul through Ananias’s appointed visit. Jesus had informed Ananias that Paul must carry His name before the Gentiles and that he would suffer for the sake of His name. So as Ananias prayed and placed his hands upon Paul, his sight was restored, and the Holy Spirit took up residence within Paul to begin the work that Jesus had set up for Paul to accomplish. As Paul was a fierce adversary of the Church, Jesus selected Paul and transformed that energy and drive into work for the Kingdom. Along the way, Paul’s hardened character would withstand numerous trials and abuses as a cost of proclaiming the gospel to people both receptive and hostile.  

Jesus chose an aggressive iron workhorse, so to speak, for the work of His Kingdom. His hardened constitution, intelligence, background, and grit oriented him to take the gospel to many Gentile peoples through the Holy Spirit’s guidance, care, protection, and inspiration. Moreover, his strong spirit was integral to the Holy Spirit’s work in the early church to resolve issues surrounding the integrity of the gospel among Judaizers and Jewish Church leaders who insisted on keeping Hebrew traditions and requirements. Peter, James, John, and others at the Jerusalem council rejected undue attachments to the gospel and supported both Paul and Barnabas in their missionary efforts and teaching. To the relief of God-fearers outside Judea and Samaria, Gentiles who attended synagogues to worship and honor Yahweh were overjoyed at the news of the gospel. Yet also of their acceptance and freedom to love and serve Him in truth.

Before Paul’s transformation, he witnessed the killing of Stephen. In fact, he indirectly and passively participated through his approval. Among the mob, he heard Stephen’s message to include the testimonies and pleadings of others he persecuted. Through violence, trauma, and social upheaval, Paul caused immense harm to the early Church. Thinking he was serving the interests of Judaism, its traditions, and the leadership in Jerusalem, the magnitude of his error was stratospheric. Yet while he was in full-speed motion in the wrong direction while carrying about in evil conduct against the Church, he pressed upon individuals one-by-one until he would bring them all to “justice.” Offended by betrayal against tradition and who the Messiah was to be, he became an outspoken critic and violent persecutor of people who were actually followers of Christ he would come to know. 

Jesus selected Paul as a qualified higher caliber Israelite with an impressive background to promptly and permanently refute attempts to dismiss his credibility, zeal, ethnicity, and righteousness. His experience, academics, hardships, dangers, persecutions, and sufferings were a testimony to the truth of his proclamations, teachings, and claims. His pedigree was potent enough to render accusations and criticisms against him as nonsense. There would be no room for indifference or dismissal of his messages from false perceptions surrounding an inferior background people might have assumed. As a Jewish and Roman citizen, he was a well-developed and resourceful individual, multilingual, and highly educated. He was highly qualified and well-formed to speak with influence and authority before his Hebrew contemporaries, the indigent, and distant Gentiles, about historical covenants, the law, and prophetic promises concerning their Messiah. Yet who prevailed upon Paul was Christ as witnessed by many. As everything else he achieved was counted as loss for the sake of his treasured possession in Jesus as Lord. 

References:

Acts Chapters 7-9; Acts 21:39-22:21; 2 Corinthians 11:22-28; Galatians 1:14-2:2; Philippians 3:4-6.

The Seeds of Antioch

By on in Theology

To further understand the birth of the early Church, it is necessary to recognize what occurred at Antioch in ancient Syria.

After Stephen’s life was taken by people hostile to his testimony and faith in Christ, Jewish believers who were also at risk of mob violence and persecution fled to other regions beyond Judea and Samaria. As they traveled far off and sought refuge, it was by God’s sovereign intent that His church would form in Antioch at a nearby seaport where it could extend outward to new territories across the Gentile world. So, as a matter of course, Antioch became the fertile ground of Christianity after Stephen’s martyrdom. The city became the Holy Spirit’s center of emergent churches among Gentiles, where incursions into Asia Minor, Israel, and around the Mediterranean Sea took place. Said another way, Antioch’s early churches became the center of Gentile Christianity with a strong focus on missions, ministry, and discipleship. 

The leadership at Antioch included Barnabas, Simeon, Lucius, Manaen, and Paul. They all together in unison, stature, and notoriety was a mix of people with various backgrounds. They were people of multiple cultures, languages, and lifestyles who understood the geography, social makeup, cultural conditions, and false religious impediments before them. They, among other Jewish disciples in the area, were situated in pagan territory. They were deeply seated in a Hellenistic area with Greco-Roman conditions and pressures present at the time. Nevertheless, their positioning and the Holy Spirit’s work situated them for growth in Antioch and well beyond that to fulfill God’s instructions to take the gospel to the Gentiles.

From prayer and by the Holy Spirit’s instructions, Barnabas and Paul were set aside and dedicated in their missionary efforts concentrated toward Gentiles. They were to become pioneers of the gospel to Gentile territories as they charted their routes toward a network of churches between Antioch and Asia Minor, including Cyprus, Cyrene, Jerusalem, and well beyond that to Macedonia. Into the surrounding areas around the Mediterranean Sea, churches became further developed in time as they organically grew in population. Along with additional local outreach, there were several missionary journeys from Antioch to advance the gospel (Acts 12:25-13:1, 14:26, 15:36-40, 18:22-23). These were journeys that involved the harvesting of people hungry for valid spiritual meaning. Yet with personal hardships and uncertainties, they pressed ahead even with disputes and divisions that ran counter to what their missions required. With persistence, informed truth, and the power of the Holy Spirit, their overall pursuits cast a wide net to yield a significant return on their efforts chartered by the Antioch Church. 

Scriptural and historical records identify various missionaries including Silas, Judas, Paul, Barnabas, John Mark, and others. All of them to fulfill Christ’s instructions to reach the world beyond Jerusalem and Samaria. With successes, trials, and hardships, the Antiochene church commissioned its people to travel abroad to spread the gospel and cultivate the ongoing Christian movement among new churches throughout more Mediterranean territories.

On Fertile Ground

By on in Theology

From a cursory understanding of Middle-Eastern history, it is apparent that the empires that formed were superseded to bring about the arrival of Christ on Earth. Conditions were sovereignly orchestrated as each empire rose to power and fell to usher in the fulfillment of Messianic prophecies that culminated at the beginning of Christendom. Both Scripture and early historical records give us the specifics about what occurred during the apostolic age to include the epic backdrop that preceded it.

Throughout the recorded biblical and apocryphal world before the arrival of Christ, the sequence of macro-historical events included the capture of the Northern Kingdom by Assyria in 722 BC., the capture of Jerusalem and Judea by Babylon in 586 BC, the fall of the Babylon empire to Persia in 539 BC, the fall of the Persian empire to Alexander the Great beginning in 480 BC, then finally the fall of the Greek empire to the Roman empire at about 146 BC. This historical sequence of upheaval was recorded by the prophet Daniel (chapters 2 and 7) to fulfill prophecies about kingdoms that would come and go to shape the forthcoming conditions for the arrival of Yahweh as incarnated through Jesus our Messiah.

During the rise and fall of empires across time, the development of the biblical world was underway. The direct and inferred meta-narrative of the preparation of Christ’s arrival and the spread of the gospel involved the infrastructure and social systems set in place to facilitate the dissemination of Yahweh’s good news. The great commission of Christ was not given to His apostles absent the conditions able to help propagate the good news.

Specifically, infrastructure and social systems included language, written communication, trade, local and distributed governments, merchant sea routes, roads, social classes, economies/currencies, transportation, agriculture, fisheries, and so forth. When the time was right, and just before the world’s population began its geometric growth, Christ arrived on the world stage to complete His work with the gospel He charged His followers to spread. Under the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’s teachings, Scripture, growing Church tradition, and apostolic instructions, the fertile ground was tilled to sow the seeds of the gospel for the growth of the Kingdom of God, for His glory, and the redemption of His people throughout humanity.

What is Authentic Faith?

By on in Theology

I just finished the book “The Gospel According to Jesus: What Is Authentic Faith?” The book was written by John MacArthur of Grace to You and Chancellor Emeritus of Master’s University and Seminary. With his decades in ministry and service of his church and the Kingdom, he has written numerous books ranging across many topics. As is conventional within his teaching and written work, his views are thoroughly based upon the Word and what is intended by the biblical authors of Scripture. Often he also references the root meaning of historical terms from early biblical languages to lend support to principles he writes about.

This book was written to counter an emerging form of antinomianism in the Church. Today sometimes also referred to as “easy-believism.” That for salvation, it is enough to acknowledge, agree, or accept Christ Jesus as Messiah, Savior, and Lord without fruit or work that follows from that form of recognition and acceptance. To affirm and live out Jesus as the Lord of one’s life. While MacArthur recognizes that salvation is accomplished by grace through faith alone, as clearly written in Scripture (Eph 2:8-9), he writes that where there is no evidence of saving faith by repentance, complete surrender of one’s life to Christ, and inevitable fruits of the Spirit, a person’s faith does not save and is not or was not authentic.

While there are at times seasons of withdrawal from God, periods of rebellious living, or spiritual dryness, MacArthur reaffirms in this book, once-saved, always saved (OSAS). The probing questions, observations, and answers in the book that get controversial attention concern whether or not those who bear no fruit, or fall-away, have or had authentic faith in the first place.

To carry on in a continuous practice of rebellion and a longstanding lifestyle of indifferent conduct after acceptance of Christ with a profession of faith means the person’s assent of confession and acknowledgment was not an experience of true conversion or true saving faith and there is no reason to conclude there is an indwelling of the Holy Spirit in a professing believer’s life. Where, conversely, there is a spiritual and meaningful substance to the event of becoming born-again that has a lasting effect.

The book clearly articulates what Jesus did when He heralded His gospel. Not only what He did, but also how He did it during His time with us. Through various discourses in Scripture, we are given numerous stories, parables, and explanations to illustrate His gospel. Moreover, he explains His gospel through the call to repentance, the nature of true faith, the promise of justification, the way of salvation, the certainty of judgment, the cost of discipleship, and His Lordship.

Finally, to conclude the book, MacArthur provides appendices including actual questions & answers to support the Scriptural assertions he makes to bring a full awareness about the total commitment to Christ’s Lordship and His work in the lives of believers. Namely, what it was that the apostles and prior Church leaders down through the centuries believed and wrote about concerning Lordship as a secondary, but necessary artifact of faith to substantiate salvation. Not “faith plus works” for a salvific outcome, but faith alone with inevitable fruit that grows from a tree of workmanship newly planted in a believer’s life.

Anyone who wishes to get a Scriptural, coherent, and doctrinally sound view that calls out the error of the “hyper-grace” movement, this book is a must-read.

In Search of Knowing

By on in Theology

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” – Lk 9:23

I’ve been looking high and low for extra reading on the person of Christ. There are this sense and urgency within that I just have to know Him. Through and through and not just about Him, His attributes, His character, or about His doing, but about Him and His perfect will.

The Christ of Heaven and the Son of God, and to God Himself I just have to know Him. I’m not explaining it well, but it’s just to see, hear, and understand him. How he was, what he said, and what that means as one who seeks after Him. I want to make absolutely certain that when I stand before Him, it is never reasoned, ‘I never knew you’.

So the search is on and that is my prayer and mission for this week. To see what might happen and where that would go. An exercise in faith because I just know He’s the only way.

The Narrow Gate

By on in Theology

Terms of surrender to those who wish to enter through the narrow gate.