Paul, in the first 10 verses of
this letter, has said that his commission is from God. He now wants to be sure
that his readers understand that far more importantly, the gospel or good news
that he preaches has its origin in a revelation from God. He makes it clear
that the gospel he preaches “is not of human origin,” nor did he receive it
“from a human source.” No one taught it to him. Rather, he “received it through
a revelation of Jesus Christ.” What we see here is that even if people are
challenging whether he is an apostle, the issue for Paul is the gospel he
preaches. He wants the focus there.
He reminds his readers of his
testimony. It includes the fact that as a young adult he had a life in Judaism.
He “was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.”
The reason he advanced beyond his peers in Judaism was that he “was for more
zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.” One of the important arts of
persuasion is to let people know who you are. In this case, Paul is emphasizing
that it must have taken something dramatic to get him to shift the focus of his
life so much and in such a sudden way. As he sees it, this testimony should enhance
the authority of what he says about the origin of the gospel. His point is that
the gospel is of divine origin. In his time, Martin Hengel says in The Zealots, the word “zealot” referred
to religious and ethnic purity. Paul may be linking himself with such “zeal”
against those whom he considered enemies of the Law. It would include deep
distrust of Gentiles and devotion to the Law as a whole, and in particular to
circumcision. Of course, in the history of religion, such zeal is not
distinctive of any one religion, witness what has occurred within the Christian
tradition, Islam, Hinduism, and even Buddhism. An Old Testament example is
Phineas in Numbers 25:6-18, a story celebrated in Sirach 45:23-24, I Maccabees
2:54, and 4 Maccabees 18:12. In this gruesome story, an Israelite brings a
Midianite woman into his family while Moses and the rest of the congregation
watched him do this. When Phineas saw it, he left the congregation, got a
spear, entered the tent, and pierced the two of them through the belly. At that
point, the plague, that had already killed 24,000 people, ceased. The Lord says
that the “zeal” he exhibited on behalf of the Lord averted the wrath of the
Lord.
Yes, Paul was zealous.
Yet, Paul makes clear the
interruption that occurred in his life. He was zealous in one direction. “But …
God” set him apart in the womb of his mother, a thought we find in Jeremiah 1:5
and Isaiah 49:1-6. He is identifying himself with the prophetic tradition. God
setting him and calling him is the result of grace. God graciously revealed
“his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.” The
revelation constituted the gospel he preaches. Now, after this revelation, he
went to Arabia and Damascus. Paul is turning his “zeal” in another direction.
He has turned his zeal toward proclaiming the grace of God he had experienced.
He had zeal for the good news of what God has done in Christ in opening up the
offer of salvation to all persons. John Chrysostom and F. F. Bruce both think
that reason for this journey was to share the gospel with Gentiles. Given the
context, this is quite likely. Paul was now “zealous” for Christ. We learn this
in other statements from Paul as well. Ministry was not easy for Paul. He takes
shots from the enemy as he stands up to the forces of evil. He gets beat up and
bloodied, flogged and imprisoned. Yet, he never gives up. Here is the way he
put it:
“Three times I was beaten with rods.
Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked. ... [I faced] danger
from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from
Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger
from false brothers and sisters.” (II Corinthians 11:25-26)
Paul stresses that after three
years of ministry, he went to Jerusalem and paid what seems like a courtesy
call to Cephas and James, the brother of Jesus and the head of the church in
Jerusalem. He stresses that he is not lying. For him to have to stress this, we
can imagine that some people would not believe this part of his testimony. What
is clear is that Peter and James accept him into their company. Pannenberg, in
his Systematic Theology, Vol 2,
354-5, says that this appearance of the risen Lord to Paul receives
confirmation by the disciples of Jesus. His experience was similar to their
own. This means that they experienced something like the revelation from heaven
that Paul received.
After this, he went to what we know
as Syria and southern Turkey. The churches already established in the region
had not yet seen him. All they knew was that the “one who formerly was
persecuting us is not proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” Of
course, “they glorified God because of me.”
The point in this letter, however,
is that the readers should do what Peter, James, and the Christians of that
time had done, accepting the gospel he preaches and praise God because of him.
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