Paul: Grace, Peace, Preeminence

Spirituality Column #183
May 11, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Paul: Grace, Peace, Preeminence
By Bob Walters

St. Paul – who we meet in St. Luke’s Book of Acts as “Saul of Tarsus” – wrote 13 of the New Testament’s 27 books.

Really they were letters, or in church language, “Epistles,” that Paul wrote to various towns and people describing the proper doctrine of Jesus Christ: how to worship, how to obey, how to identify heresy, how to defend the faith, and how to interact and function with fellow Christians and non-Christians.

Paul (c. 5 – 67 A.D.) had been a Pharisee, a high-ranking Jew, who disdained Christians and routinely, harshly persecuted them. Within a couple of years after the Crucifixion, Christ appeared to Christian-hating Paul on the Road to Damascus (Acts 9, 22, 26) and converted him from an enemy to an Apostle.

Just this bit of preceding information could start enough arguments among modern theologians to make Paul shake his head in bewilderment. Such as:

          - Paul really wrote 14 of the 27 New Testament books, because “Hebrews” was the unsigned work of Paul;

          - Paul really only wrote six epistles, the rest were either co-written or forgeries;

          - Paul’s writings inspired great legalism (codified, enforced obedience) among some Christians;

          - Paul’s writings – especially Romans and Galatians – are Christendom’s greatest arguments against legalism.

Authorship, in my view, is secondary to message. Scripture is scripture. If you want to argue tangent issues, then Paul’s important central point is being missed.

And that point is the preeminence of Christ.

You can’t add to Christ, and you can’t take away from Christ. He’s already the complete, main attraction in our salvation saga. If we add rules, we will worship the rules instead of Christ. If we make Christ – the fully human, fully divine Son of God – less than His promise, we won’t truly know Him and unleash in our lives the awesome spiritual power of faith, hope and love – the core of the Gospel.

Paul’s greeting in each Epistle contains the phrase, “grace and peace.” That’s grace, as in forgiveness of our sins and eternal communion in heaven with God; and peace, as in “Christ is our peace.” God’s grace. God’s peace. Only through Christ.

It was an entirely new way to see and relate to God. We make a huge mistake worshipping anything other than Christ, and waste our time arguing what to add to or take away from His completeness. That was Paul’s message.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) paraphrases Vince Lombardi: “Christ isn’t everything, He is the only thing.”