What I Like About Paul

March 2010

by Robert O. Wyatt

My old church in Nashville was once housed in a quaint Victorian building. The organ was donated by Andrew Carnegie. The gorgeous stained glass was imported from England. There were two windows depicting sweeter-than-sweet Virgin Marys beaming down at lilies, and as if to balance the Virgins’ saccharine smiles, a ponderous door to the right of the altar held a large Tiffany glass depiction of the sternest St. Paul one can imagine—glaring out accusingly at the congregation, sword in hand, ready to dispatch us sinners directly to hell with fire and brimstone.

That image of Paul must have haunted the dreams of generations of parishioners.

Worse yet, that forbidding image of St. Paul scowled from the very door that led to the social hall. Whoever welcomed visitors at announcement time had to point toward that door and assure newcomers that the welcome awaiting them behind the St. Paul door would be far warmer than the apostle’s fierce image might suggest.

I suspect that that image of the great apostle matches the image most of us carry around about him: the stern, accusing Paul; the Paul of predestination and election; antisex Paul; anti-feminist Paul; Paul the puritan; Paul the bane of revelers and fornicators and homosexuals; Paul the great Christian killjoy.

The tornado of 1998 wiped out the historic parts of old St. Ann’s Church, and though most of the stained glass was salvageable, the St. Paul door has not been restored. But in my mind I have reassembled and transformed St. Paul’s image over the last decade. In my mind, no longer does Paul carry the sword of justice. Rather, he welcomes me warmly with open arms. And no longer does he project the scowl of judgment. Instead, his face is filled with love. In fact, I have come to regard Paul as my best New Testament friend.

Ask most people who their favorite apostle is and they’ll probably say Peter. Good old Peter, who leaps feet first onto the waters to get to his Lord, then loses faith and begins to sink (Matthew 14:22–23). Peter is so fallible, so good-hearted, so like us. But, may I ask, whom would you rather have guarding your back, Peter or Paul? I’d take Paul in a flash, though he’d doubtless give me a stern lecture after he had saved my life.

New Testament Best Friend Forever (BFF)

But why would I want to claim that the apostle Paul is my best New Testament friend?

Well, like some of my beloved real-life friends, Paul is very, very smart. Paul is brilliant. And, like so many of my real-life friends, Paul is inconsistent from time to time (though sometimes his inconsistency stems from the fact that he is addressing different situations). And like all of my real-life friends, Paul loses his temper occasionally, and sometimes he says some absurd things. And like many of my real-life friends, Paul is a know-it-all. And like some of my real-life friends, Paul is a bit of a braggart. And like my best real-life friends, Paul is not afraid to call a spade a spade.

And like so many of my real-life friends, Paul works hard and produces great results—and he loves the Lord and he loves the church.

Paul has such high standards for belief and behavior that he often seems judgmental. But because Paul loves the Lord and the church, I feel that Paul loves me and tells me the truth about myself and chides me when I err—and finally he hopes that Christ will welcome the whole of humanity into the eternal kingdom on the last day.

And because I know these things about Paul, I regard him as a friend. And as a friend, I return

Paul’s love, and I appreciate his guidance and forgive his faults. And I just plain ignore Paul when I think he is wrong.

I confess it: I pick and choose. So do most readers of Scripture. (I’ve known men who claim to be biblical fundamentalists yet wear long hair despite Paul’s censure, and I have known women who claim to be biblical literalists who have their short hair [1 Corinthians 11: 14]). And, although I regard Scripture as divinely inspired, I do not pretend to be bound by every literal word. So, let me tell you about the Paul I do love, the Paul who inspires my soul and moves my heart and turns me more and more toward God and neighbor through the love of Christ. The Paul who weaves such a rich tapestry of theology and ethics, all centered upon his overwhelming sense of the love of Christ.

I love Paul, the great theologian of the pre-existent or the eternal Christ: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5–9).

I love Paul, the great theologian of faith, a faith that depends more on trust in God than in intellectual assent to doctrine. Paul wrote “Hoping against hope, he [Abraham] believed that he would become ‘the father of many nations,’ according to what was said, ‘So numerous shall your descendants be.’ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith ‘was reckoned to him as righteousness’” (Romans 4:18–22).

I love Paul, the great prophet of equality in the faith: “. . . for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:26–29).

I love Paul, the great apostle of hope in resurrection: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. . . . This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12–14).

I love Paul, the great judge of all flesh: Living in a society where sexual license has greatly expanded over the last few decades, I still love Paul, for by flesh he does not mean sex alone (or alcohol or chocolate) but all that is humanly sinful, painted with a broad stroke: “Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. . .” (Galatians 3:19–21; see also Romans 1:26–32, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10.)

Too bad that the sexual sins often seem to get all the emphasis from our sterner Christian brothers and sisters. And even if many Christians today may dismiss Paul’s condemnation of various sexual acts as culturally bound and irrelevant for our time, he follows his strictures against the flesh with a catalog of the glories of the Spirit: “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 3:22).

Most of all, I love Paul the apostle of love, the great apostle overcome by the love of Christ, which leads not to condemnation of others but toward forgiveness and forbearance toward them: “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. . . . Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 12:1, 4–8).

Paul’s Tapestry of Ideas

The entire body of Paul’s work is daunting in its breadth, complexity, tension, inconsistency, and insight. Understanding what the “real” Paul wrote is further complicated by the topical nature of most of his writing, by the fact that we must construct the context from Paul’s epistles alone and not from independent sources, and by the ambiguity of many of the Greek words and phrases he uses.

That said, most evidence indicates that Paul

was no great fan of marriage though he recognized it was necessary for some,
considered women and men equal in the faith but not socially equal,
condemned sex outside of marriage between male and female,
possessed a balanced sense of sinfulness,
possessed a mixed attitude toward Jews who rejected Christ,
was sometimes quick to condemn but often quick to forgive,
grieved the shortcomings of each Christian community,
believed that salvation was a gift of grace through faith,
and was overwhelmed with his love of Christ and the Christian community.

A favorite metaphor for Paul (Romans 12:4; 1 Corinthians 12:12–27) and his followers (Ephesians 5:23, 3:6; Colossians 1:18–24) is that the church is the body of Christ. Perhaps such a metaphor conjures up a spotless, harmonious, healthy, and sinless church corresponding to the radiant body of the resurrected Christ. But that idealized image simply doesn’t match the church on earth as we know it— wracked by dissension and self-preoccupation, continually falling short of its mission to usher in the Kingdom of God.

While I was pondering the meaning of the church as the body of Christ, however, a new image leapt to mind. I began to imagine just what Paul’s own body might have looked like. He was probably short, thin, brown, sinewy, and wrinkled. His body had been chained and whipped, bearing the marks of violence and suffering.

Could Paul’s body be an adequate, a realistic image of the church as the body of Christ—a mirror image of Christ’s own bruised and beaten earthly body?

Let us pray then—that despite the scars on the body of our Christ—the whole church will be knit together, not into some idealized body beautiful, but into a real body much like St. Paul’s.

Let the church have an imperfect body, but let it be a body reaching, straining, growing toward health and wholeness and blessedness. And, with Paul, let the body of Christ be transformed at last into the image of Christ’s own glorious resurrected body.

The Rev. Robert O. Wyatt is an Episcopal priest serving St. Helena’s Church near Chicago.