I am up against a very busy weekend, and so, as much as I long to accumulate a vast number of Takes in the usual way, I have only one today—a wonderful and terrible Tweet by Kevin M Young (not to be confused, of course, with Kevin DeYoung) followed by a much overdue Read The Comments Episode at the bottom. So, here’s the Tweet—ready?
Reading and understanding Jesus through the lens of Paul is blasphemy.
As you might imagine, there are a lot of comments under this interesting take on the Bible. A surprising number of people agree with Dr. Kevin and have gone out of their way to congratulate him on his brilliance. But then there are a heartening number of people who turn up to point out that this is pretty dumb, if not outright wicked.
For, truly, the Scriptures are not divided. They cannot be wrenched apart. You cannot pick one book or author over another. That’s not how any of this works. Though there were many human writers, the Spirit of God hovered over them all, much like at the very beginning, when he hovered over the face of the deep, bringing order and ultimately light. If you think that Paul was somehow doing his own thing—a different thing than Jesus—you must not be able to know your right hand from your left hand, however many followers you have on Twitter.
What I like best about my life right now is that, as a church, we are going through Acts on Sunday mornings during the sermon time. As in, whoever is preaching has to preach on Acts. This Sunday we will get to the part where Paul stands on the steps, propped up by Roman soldiers because he’s been beaten so badly down in the Temple courts. A mob happened upon him and assumed that he’d brought a Gentile into the place where no Gentile could go, even though he hadn’t done that, and took it upon themselves to remedy the situation by attempting to beat him to death. The Roman Tribune intervened and his life was spared and so then he has this short moment to say how it was that he came to know Jesus. He addresses the crowd as “Brothers and Fathers” and relates his own conversion, how Jesus himself appeared in all his resurrection glory and told him to stop persecuting Him. Paul is confused, thinking he is simply enacting proper vengeance upon those blaspheming God. He, in all his Bible reading to that point, had missed the part about how God had always been the Bridegroom, how he was always going to come and rescue the Bride. When Jesus came Paul didn’t know he was the Promised One, God himself who had come to redeem and save.
I feel sorry for Dr. Kevin not being able to read and understand the Bible, not being able to glean the immense riches of God’s grace through the writings of Paul. Imagine reading the whole New Testament and thinking it somehow doesn’t tell us who Jesus is and the great love with which he loves us. Imagine not understanding the majesty of Romans or Galatians or Ephesians or Colossians. Imagine being so blind, so deaf to the words of life and all the time zealously lecturing actual Christians all day long on Twitter about what a hater and misogynist Paul was. One of the precious jewels you would miss is this bit:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Which is to say, to read Jesus through the lens of Paul—which is such a stupid expression—is to discover all the fullness of God. So anyway, have a nice day! Below is a bit of a podcast for all of you wonderful paid subscribers to whom I am so so grateful.
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