Paul: A Biography

by N.T. Wright

“He stripped the rulers and authorities of their armor,” he writes to the Colossians, “and displayed them contemptuously to public view, celebrating his triumph over them in him.”7

His main point ought now to be clear: “What I am saying to you may sound ‘new,’ but it is in fact hidden within your own culture. It is well hidden; in fact, you have covered it up with foolish and unnecessary superstructures. But though the specific news about Jesus and the resurrection may be a shock to your system”—it was, and they laughed at him for it—“the underlying truth that it unveils is a truth about the world and its One Creator God to which, at its best, your culture dimly and distantly bears witness.”

Paul is echoing, of course, the normal critique of idolatry, again as found in the Psalms or Isaiah and closer to Paul’s day in a book like the Wisdom of Solomon;

this One God made all peoples and allotted them their times and places.

“He is actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and exist.”9

“For we are his offspring.”

Full and proper justice. I slightly overtranslate here, but it makes the point I think Paul was making, which is that this will be true justice,

As he says in 1 Corinthians, he regards it as a matter of minimal concern to be judged by any human court, since what matters is God’s ultimate judgment, which will be based on the secrets and intentions of the heart.11

THANKS TO PAUL, we know more about life in Corinth than we do about life in any other first-century city in Greece.

Aquila and Priscilla (in Paul’s letters he abbreviates her name as Prisca) were a Jewish couple who came from Pontus, on the Black Sea shore of ancient Turkey. They had, however, been living in Rome until Claudius banished the Jews for rioting.

the gospel of Messiah Jesus (“Christus,” with the middle vowel pronounced long) arrived in town.

By the time Paul wrote Romans, they were back in Rome again. The way Luke tells the story of their first meeting and going into business together makes the moment seem full of hope and fresh possibility.

The Messiah died for our sins in accordance with the Bible; he was buried; he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Bible; he was seen . . .2

God’s folly is wiser than humans, you see, and God’s weakness is stronger than humans.4

the new “Lord” over all other Lords was bad enough, but a crucified man? Everybody knew that was the most shameful and horrible death imaginable.

1 Thessalonians. The letter is famous for many reasons, and those who date Galatians much later than I do see it as the first of Paul’s letters, or at least the first to survive.

But the reason this ancient Jewish message now had power to change pagan hearts and lives is because of what had happened through Jesus: the power of the idols had been broken.

Through this victory, Jesus had established the new world order, and he would return to complete the work.

Sexual purity and financial generosity were to be built into the Christian DNA from the start.

Clearly it was always part of Paul’s message that the kingdom, on earth as in heaven, had already been launched through the events of Jesus’s death and resurrection, but it needed to be completed, and that would happen at Jesus’s return. But

teaching both non-Jews and Jews to think in the Jewish way as radically modified by Jesus.

they do not have the hopeless kind of grief, the bleak, dark horror of loss with no mitigating circumstances or beliefs, but rather a hopeful grief, which, although there is still the tearing, wrenching sense of loss, has within it the strong and clear hope of reunion.

The point is that all will in the end be together “with the Lord.”

Heaven (we might say) is a different dimension of reality, not a location within our dimension.

he says, those who belong to the Lord will be exalted like that, vindicated, sharing the Lord’s throne.

Paul’s view. The point is that heaven and earth will come together14 and those who belong to the Messiah will be part of it.

in this text is the central and important one—the Messiah’s people who have already died will rise first.15 Those who have died while believing in Jesus are safe in his presence, and they will be raised when he appears.

despite fears and rumors, God was in charge.

the more foundational reality, that those who belonged to the Messiah were “brothers and sisters.”

the official Roman governor of southern Greece (“Achaea”) had declared that being a Jesus-follower was to be seen as a variation of the Jewish way of life.

the covenant love of the One God.

This may have been one of the occasions when, submitting to synagogue discipline, Paul received the official Jewish beating of forty lashes.

He says he had received this five times;

Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one”) by making “Lord” refer to Jesus and “God” refer to “the father.”

The resurrection is the ultimate answer to the nagging question of whether one’s life and work have been “in vain.”

Victory has already been won over the dark powers of sin and death that have crippled the world and, with it, the humans who were supposed to be God’s image-bearers in the world. This victory will at last be completed when death itself is destroyed.

Anyone who ever supposed that Paul sailed through his apostolic work carrying all before him in a blaze of glory can never have studied 2 Corinthians.

From the depth of that dark soil, way below previous consciousness, he drew hope and new possibilities. The fruit of that labor remains to this day near the heart of Christian belief.

“We have this treasure in earthenware pots, so that the extraordinary quality of the power may belong to God, not to us.”

Paul finally learned the humility that had previously eluded him.

Christology and therapy go well together, even if, like Jacob, an apostle may limp, in style and perhaps also in body, after the dark night spent wrestling with the angel.

Who, though in God’s form, did not Regard his equality with God As something he ought to exploit. Instead, he emptied himself, And received the form of a slave, Being born in the likeness of humans. And then, having human appearance, He humbled himself, and became Obedient even to death, Yes, even the death of the cross. And so God has greatly exalted him, And to him in his favor has given The name which is over all names: That now at the name of Jesus Every knee within heaven shall bow— On earth, too, and under the earth; And every tongue shall confess That Jesus, Messiah, is Lord, To the glory of God, the father.

This is the story of Adam (everyone), of Israel, of the One God—all in the form of a perfectly balanced poem about Jesus.

the power of the gospel belonged utterly to God and not at all to himself. Learning how to think as the Messiah had thought, Paul insisted, was the only way to radical unity in the church, and it was also the secret of how to live as “pure and spotless children of God in the middle of a twisted and depraved generation.”6

“We are the ‘circumcision’ ” is a breathtaking claim, but utterly consistent with Paul’s whole stance, ever since the road to Damascus. Once again, this is not about comparative religion. He is not saying, “We Jesus-followers have found a better sort of religion than the old Jewish one.” It is about messianic eschatology. This was the ultimate fulfillment of Israel’s hope: Messiah and resurrection! He is not saying, “I’ve decided to move from my old house to a nicer one down the road.” He is saying that his own home has been taken over by the architect who built it in the first place and that it is now being rebuilt around him. He intends to stay and see the business through. If others are saying they prefer the old house the way it was, they are missing the point: if Israel’s Messiah has come and has been raised from the dead, then those who follow him are the true people of God. This is blunt, but consistent. The followers of other first-century Jewish leaders would have said the same. This is not disloyalty to Israel’s God. It is the contested messianic loyalty that has characterized Paul throughout.

Galatians 2:19–20: Through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with the Messiah. I am, however, alive—but it isn’t me any longer; it’s the Messiah who lives in me.

All power is vested by God in Jesus. Any power Jesus’s followers may have comes only through his work. He thanks the Philippians once more for the gift. He sends Epaphroditus on his way.

The frightened slave, hearing the news of one who died the slave’s death out of sheer love—the same love that had made the world—was captivated by it.

Cicero’s slave Tiro was his right-hand man. He even invented shorthand. Slavery was complex but omnipresent.

Paul knew that the God of Israel had defined himself in action as the slave-freeing God. That is what the story of the Exodus was all about.