Paul had always believed that the One God would at the last put the whole world right. The Psalms had said it; the prophets had predicted it; Jesus had announced that it was happening (though in a way nobody had seen coming). Paul declared that it had happened in Jesus—and that it would happen at his return. In between those two, the accomplishment of the putting-right project first in cross and resurrection and then in the final fulfillment at Jesus’s return, God had given his own spirit in the powerful and life-transforming word of the gospel.
