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Note: This is adapted from a paper I submitted as part of my education through the Antioch School. The objective of the paper was to demonstrate that I had "developed a basic biblical understanding of Paul’s concept of establishing local churches, while discerning the difference between what Paul understood to be normative for all churches in every culture and generation and what he intended to be merely cultural for his time and situation." Where the book of Acts covers the broad strokes of Paul’s concept of establishing churches, it is in his epistles that the goals and approaches of Paul are more fully fleshed out and understood. Paul in Acts is traveling around the northern Mediterranean, identifying places where the Holy Spirit is drawing him and a place exists where he can proclaim the gospel, bringing converts into community, establishing leaders among them, and then commending the young church to the hands of those leaders as he sets off to do the same elsewhere. We have snapshots of occasional details on how he does these things, but only snapshots of occasional details. In the Pauline epistles, the apostle actively walks churches at different stages of development through his expectations for them, problems they need to address, and next steps in their growth. We can identify the process by which Paul sought to establish churches by grouping his letters into three major categories, and then exploring what general concerns he has in writing to each category of church. These categories align both with the time period in which he wrote them, and the stage of development the target churches were experiencing. The first category would be his early letters, written to the young churches in Galatia, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Rome. The second category are his prison epistles, written to the churches in Ephesus, Philippi, and Colossae; the latter receiving a general letter to the body as well as being the home church of Philemon. Finally, we have the personal letters to Timothy and Titus.
Paul’s early letters focus on preserving the centrality of the gospel in the establishing of the church. He reminds these churches of the core of the gospel and its immediate implications for the Christian, calls them to turn away from worldly behaviors and concerns, and addresses ideologies that are attempting to undermine the gospel in the church. Paul is concerned in these books with the foundation upon which the church is being built, and the worldly systems that attempt to compromise that foundation. Galatians 5:1 summarizes this concern well when Paul writes that “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery” (NASB2020). It is his concern at this stage of the church’s establishment that it stand and build firmly on the truth of the gospel without allowing that truth to be watered down with falsehoods. Toward this end, he reminds these churches about the work of Christ and the righteousness they enjoy through faith. He discusses the limits and purposes of the Law and reminds them of the pervasive nature of sin. He explains the hope of resurrection and assures the Thessalonians that they have not yet missed the end of the age. He introduces the nature of spiritual gifts and the functions they serve in unifying the body and advancing the mission of the church. He explains the way the church as a community should view its members and be seen by the world. He warns about false teachings that would lead the body astray. All of these things are foundational; they describe the essential nature of the church and its members and give them a way forward into maturity, and they help guide the church away from paths that will interfere with their maturity. Reed states that the gospel “transforms our whole lives and beings;” it is in the early letters that Paul details what that gospel, and therefore what that transformation, must look like in the church1. 
Paul’s prison letters focus on the practice of life as a body in the established church and the role of the church in the unfolding plan of God. These letters deal heavily with relationships within the church and the importance of continuing to grow in a manner worthy of the calling they have received. In Colossians, he urges the church, “Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude” while in Philippians he says, “Brothers and sisters, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us” (Colossians 2:6-7, Philippians 3:17, NASB2020). These churches have solid foundations, and his attention with them is drawn to the way they live and grow. Philemon is an excellent example of Paul’s concerns in this body of letters. While dealing with a situation specific to one individual within the church and mostly speaking as though to one individual, Paul nevertheless writes the letter to Philemon, Apphia, Archippus, and “the church in your house” (1:2b, NASB2020). He is concerned not only with Philemon’s handling of the situation with Onesimus, but the church’s understanding of their relationships to one another. He talks to Philemon, and the three churches in this category, as partners in his work; reminding them of their contributions so far and his investment in them, reporting what has been done beyond their locations, and inviting them to act in a mature manner rather than directing their actions like he does in the early letters. The basic family-like structure of the churches is generally assumed, and Paul builds on this by using that structure to explain the church more fully. Take for instance Paul’s household instructions at the end of Ephesians 5 into the beginning of Ephesians 6. While we get a great deal of information from this passage about the roles of individuals within the family, and ought to apply those roles accordingly, Paul reminds us that he is primarily “speaking with reference to Christ and the church” in 5:32 (NASB2020). Here Paul does not need to define the gospel that unifies the church, but to showcase how the church is to operate using imagery they can understand and apply. He is concerned throughout with how the church views itself, how it partners with him and one another in the work of establishing people and churches, and the way the church lives as mature bodies.
In the final set of Paul’s letters, the focus turns to the reproduction of established churches through a process of maturing leaders. These letters deal heavily with identifying and preparing leaders, removing false teachings from the body, and ensuring that the mission of the church continues through future generations. His attention is toward leaders and the impact they have on the body, as highlighted when Paul says, “Pay close attention to yourself and to the teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will save both yourself and those who hear you” (1 Timothy 4:16, NASB2020). Much of his text in these letters deals with the administrative areas of the church. He is passing on his knowledge, his model, and ultimately his very work as an establisher of churches to Timothy and Titus. He gives criteria for leaders and discusses how the church should engage with them. He identifies false teachings and gives instruction on how to root it out and cast it aside. He invites them into the same work—and the same sufferings—that he himself walks in. He offers encouragement and reminds them of fellow workers they can lean on. He warns about troubles the churches will face and points them back to the source of their salvation and maturity. His language in these letters goes beyond partnership into inheritance, as a father reminding his sons of the proper care of their estate.
Each category of Pauline epistles, then, addresses specific periods of a church’s establishment. More than that, however, they work together as a whole to show what the process of establishment itself looks like. There are bits specific to the environment in which the letters were written; the concern about the circumcision party exists because of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism at the time, which has changed, and dictates about the behavior of slaves only find direct footing in a culture that has slavery. But the principles Paul is drawing out by these specific circumstances, and by the groups of letters collectively, are universal in scope. Paul applies them across the board to every church with which he interacts, and hands instruction off to Timothy and Titus to continue applying and handing down these principles. These principles show a defined understanding of the establishment of a church. Paul has expectations for each church based on its level of maturity, guiding them to the next phase of establishment. He talks to all of them as though they are on the same road, directing the less mature churches in the direction of the more mature churches and speaking to the more mature as if they have already passed through the same place as the less mature. And this approach is expected to be normative, as Paul hands it off to Timothy and Titus and urges them to continue handing it to later generations. Paul’s approach to the churches, all of the churches, is not unlike my approach to the rabbits we raise. The church is given the immediate support and nourishment and protection it needs in the form of the truth and its implications, just as the kits are kept secure from predators and the environment while maintaining access to their mother’s milk. As they churches begin to grow and take on a life of their own, they are examined for spot or blemish and guided in the way they should live, just as we inspect and care for and train the rabbits as they leave the nest. And as the church grows to maturity, it is left to operate without constant external guidance and encouraged to reproduce, just as those rabbits which prove themselves suitable are given their own space and opportunity to breed. There is a set life path that Paul sees the churches on, and it is by comparing their state to this life path that he sees what involvement they require from him. In learning from Paul how he sees that life path and approaches the churches, we can learn how to gauge the maturity of churches today and know which letters to best apply to their situation. 1 Jeff Reed, “Paul’s Concept of Establishing Churches,” 1991. 12.
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After all, the Christ Paul is seeking to imitate will color everything about our own attempts to wrestle with his words. I fear we tend to forget this because, so often, Paul is seen primarily as a theologian, a man who wrote treatises that we must dissect and systematically piece back together, a collection of important doctrines written for our education. But this is not the Paul of Acts, or even of his epistles. The Paul we have recorded in the Bible is a missionary and pastor, concerned with the spiritual and physical well-being of those he meets and pointing them to Christ. Even his most detailed doctrinal passages are not written to seminary students but to struggling believers that he is attempting to help and guide. He is feeding sheep, not arguing from an armchair, and that which he feeds those sheep is always Christ. Everything he says goes back to the Christ who has given him the call to ministry, the Christ who appeared to him on the road outside of Damascus, the Christ who showed him all he must suffer while he sat blind in a stranger's home. There is a surprising lack of material on Paul's understanding of Christ, considering this is the very foundation upon which everything else we have of him is built. In seeking resources for this, I found only two books that spilled any ink on Paul's understanding of Christ, and one was citing the other. If there are journal articles that handle this matter in any detail, they were lost in hundreds of pages of results that seemed to exclusively contain more doctrinal arguments than anything. Paul urges strangers to encounter Christ, he tells his readers to look to Christ in all they do, he strives to live a life that can be rightly said to be Christ living through him. If we treat Paul as a theologian writing doctrine in a vacuum, we will get a lot of very good theology, but we will miss the point of what Paul was trying to communicate. In all things, Paul is writing about Christ. “Pauline Christianity forms the heritage of western Christianity to this day, and therefore it is all the more important to understand as fully as possible Paul’s conception of Jesus Christ.”Stanley E. Porter, "Images of Christ in Paul's Letters," in Images of Christ: Ancient and Modern, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), 96. Some notes on content before we begin. This post places Hebrews outside the corpus of Pauline writings. There is no statement about authorship being made by this. The origins of this post come from a New Testament survey class that centered on Acts and the Pauline epistles that did not include Hebrews; the decision was somewhat made for me. That being said, I probably could have included Hebrews if I really wanted, but I don't think attempting to would have had much benefit. While much is said of Christ in Hebrews that may have been useful, the attempts to explain its inclusion when there is no consensus of authorship would surely occupy more space than this topic can really spare for it. This may be influenced by my own opinion that Paul did not write Hebrews, but that seems like a matter for another post entirely. Also, while I identified a host of passages about the work of Christ and His current status in regards to the present age, this post will focus entirely on the actual nature of Christ, whether eternal or incarnational. I am hoping to cover the other passages over the course of summer break, and now that I think about it I'd like to do a similar study as this with other Bible authors. May God grant me time on this Earth to write everything I want to write about this.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.Philemon 1:3 (NASB) The initial limiting factor for my research into this project was that, whatever Paul may be directly talking about in a passage, the passage must say something specific about Christ in the process. As it turns out, calling Jesus Lord or Christ is saying something important about who He is, but I had to trim away any passage where that was the only thing that was being said about Him because it was nearly impossible to sift through everything with that pile mixed in. Except the passage above, which I kept just so Philemon wouldn't go ignored if I'm honest. The fact is, Paul almost never says the name of Jesus without appending a title, either Lord or Christ in our translations. This is the most fundamental truth of who Jesus is as far as Paul is concerned: he is God, and every mention of Him is apparently lacking if it does not in some way acknowledge that fact. This is, in fact, the first thing he learns about Jesus during his conversion; in Acts 9:5, Paul recognizes that whoever is speaking to him is certainly the Lord, but asks for further identification. When he receives the answer that this Lord is none other than Jesus, he immediately obeys Him. This fact will inform everything else Paul ever says or does concerning Jesus. Clarifying what it means for Jesus to be Lord, then, will tell us a great deal about everything else. “What is perhaps even more noteworthy, however, is that there are a number of passages where Paul appears to apply Old Testament passages referring to the Lord to the figure of Jesus Christ.”Stanley E. Porter, "Images of Christ in Paul's Letters," in Images of Christ: Ancient and Modern, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), 101. While this would be best addressed in length elsewhere, Paul also consistently takes the Jewish idea of the Day of the Lord and ties it to the return of Christ; he even goes so far in Philippians to refer to this as the Day of Christ (1:6, 10, 2:16). Not only is Christ to be given the title of Lord, but the ultimate victory of God is understood through the lens of being the ultimate victory of Christ.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.Colossians 1:15 (NASB) The God of Israel was never like the gods of the surrounding lands. There was no image of Him, no statues decorating their landscapes and homes bearing the face of divinity. They were, in fact, forbidden from even attempting to display Him. Nevertheless, this was a God who sought a relationship with His people, maintaining access at His temple and carrying on conversation with and through prophets. Moses, seeking a deeper relationship, asked to see God, only to be informed that to see His face would kill the man; he was allowed to see, at most, the divine back.
It emphasizes, however, how deeply relational this God is. It was not enough to show His people only a temple, or a mercy seat, or a fleeting glimpse of His back. He had to walk with us, dine with us, cry with us. The God that Paul knows in Christ is driven to reveal Himself to us as much as possible, ultimately promising to dwell with us forever.
“In that sense images of Christ are for Paul also in some ways images of God.”
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Son of God | |
In Christ, God is revealed to be not only One who seeks relationship with us, but One who exists in relationship within Himself. God is not a solitary being residing in Heaven alone, but a Father and a Son and a Spirit in one.
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
Galatians 4:4-5 (NASB)
The fact that Paul refers to Jesus as the fullness and image of God, as well as the Son of God, suggests a far more complex relationship than we are fully prepared to understand. This is perfect unity, to the point where Paul and those he teaches can all acknowledge that there is but one God and that the Son and Father are equal (Philippians 2:5-7). But the distinction between persons is such that not only can the Son be sent by the Father, but even that the Son is subject to the Father in all things. 1 Corinthians 11:3 describes God as the head of Christ, while 15:23-28 describes Jesus' subjection to the Father in the same breath as the subjection of all creation to Jesus.
This is no light language, either. A lot of the terminology Paul uses for Jesus play into positions of authority across the full spectrum of time. Whether this is about preeminence or calling Him firstborn or heir of God (Romans 8:16-17, 29; Colossians 1:18; etc.), describing Him as the head/husband of the church and all things (Ephesians 1:19-23, 4:15; Romans 12:4-5; etc.), or the supreme judge and ruler at the end of the age (2 Thessalonians 2:8; 2 Timothy 4:1, 8; etc.), Paul regularly views Christ as bearing the full authority of God.
But the work the Father had for the Son was not to take place entirely on a throne in Heaven.
This is no light language, either. A lot of the terminology Paul uses for Jesus play into positions of authority across the full spectrum of time. Whether this is about preeminence or calling Him firstborn or heir of God (Romans 8:16-17, 29; Colossians 1:18; etc.), describing Him as the head/husband of the church and all things (Ephesians 1:19-23, 4:15; Romans 12:4-5; etc.), or the supreme judge and ruler at the end of the age (2 Thessalonians 2:8; 2 Timothy 4:1, 8; etc.), Paul regularly views Christ as bearing the full authority of God.
But the work the Father had for the Son was not to take place entirely on a throne in Heaven.
Incarnation | |
Paul very clearly believed that Christ had come in the flesh. While a full look at His earthly ministry must be reserved for another time, he focuses largely on two aspects of the Incarnation: the ancestry of Christ, and the death and resurrection of Christ. The former will be the focus here at this time.
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Jesus was the fulfillment of a great number of promises, and two of them relate to His ancestry. The first is that He was to be a descendant of Abraham, which Paul identifies as true of Him (Romans 9:3-5, Galatians 3:16). The other is that He was the son of David that would sit forever on the throne (Acts 13:22-23, Romans 1:3-4, 2 Timothy 2:8). His specific family is noted in Galatians 1:19, where He is stated as the brother of James.
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And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.Galatians 3:29 (NASB) |
Paul clearly believed not only that Jesus had been born of a Jewish woman, lived a human life, died a human death, and experienced a supernatural resurrection, but that this experience allowed Him to be something more important to the human race than a wandering preacher along the coast of the Mediterranean. To Paul, Christ is fundamentally the reverse of Adam.
The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.
Romans 5:16-19 (NASB)
Jesus took on flesh in obedience to the Father, not just to reveal Himself to those He sought to have relationship with, but to close the gap that had severed that relationship in the first place. Jesus became human so that humanity could be saved in Him the same way it had been damned in Adam.
Summary | |
“In summarizing this passage, we can see that several of the Pauline christological images are maintained. He uses the composite name, Christ Jesus, to describe both earthly and exalted status and events, with the figure moving between them. Although he is seen to be in the appearance of God, and equal with him in some way, Jesus Christ also is subordinate to him, being obedient to the point of death and consequently being exalted by him to a position of preeminence in the universe.”
Stanley E. Porter, "Images of Christ in Paul's Letters," in Images of Christ: Ancient and Modern, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), 112. Porter is here discussing Philippians 2:6-11.
So who is Christ to Paul? The Christ that Paul taught in his recorded statements is nothing less than God Himself, the fullness and full revelation of the Godhead that is three in one, who reigns supreme over all things. This Christ showcases who God is on an intimate level, humbling Himself to take on human flesh as the child of Abraham through the line of David and, by doing so, redeeming that flesh and reversing the effects of sin introduced by Adam. This is the Christ that Paul preaches; the gospel of that Christ is how He accomplished that purpose. Everything Paul says in his letters, then, traces back to this understanding. We will not fully understand the church without understanding the teachings of Paul, and we will not understand the teachings of Paul without confronting this Christ.
Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation
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