Lecture

Hi, my name is Joey Dodson. I’m associate professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary. When I was doing my PhD, my son came to me and said, “Dad, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul—all you ever do is talk about Paul. Maybe you need to talk about someone different for a change, maybe Achilles.”

Well, it is true that I like to talk a lot about Paul. And the reason I like to talk about Paul, however, is not because it’s Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, but what Paul teaches us about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. I love Paul’s enthusiasm for our Lord Jesus Christ. And as he would say to us, “I just want them to know how long and how high and how deep is the love of Jesus Christ.” And it’s not that I want to imitate Paul, it’s that I want to imitate Paul who is imitating Christ, and, so, I’m really looking forward to sharing this time with you.

When I lived in Houston, I heard a story of a young man who was looking for a job and he found out that there was an opening at the local zoo. So he went to inquire about the job, but it was really hush hush. They took him through this back room and made him sign a nondisclosure form, and, once he did that, they told him that their gorilla had died, and they needed someone to dress up and pretend to be a gorilla until they could get a new gorilla to replace the old dead gorilla. He thought it was a bit fishy, but the pay was good, and all he had to do was sit in the back of a cage, and, so, he agreed.

They brought in this gorilla suit, and they put it on him, and I’m telling you, it was crazy. He looked just like a gorilla, and they took him to his cage, and he sat in the back of the cage and was making money. After a while, however, he just got bored of just sitting there, so he began to walk around and as he began to walk around, there were some people that came, and they saw the gorilla and they begin to clap at the gorilla, and they begin to throw peanuts. It turned out that this teenage boy was hungry, and he liked peanuts and so he began to play to the crowd and as he began to play to the crowd, the crowd got larger and larger.

He climbed up a tree and the crowd began to yell. And about this time a group of attractive teenage girls came by, and he wanted to impress them, and so he grabbed a hold of a vine and he swung from one end of the cage to the other end of the cage. The crowd went crazy. They went wild and they began to throw more and more peanuts. And so continuing to play to the crowd, he began to swing higher and higher and higher. And as he got higher and higher and higher, the crowds got larger and larger and larger, as did the piles of peanuts, until all of a sudden, when he got to his highest spot, snap! The vine broke and the man in the monkey suit swung up into his cage, into the cage next door, the lion’s cage. All of a sudden standing twenty foot from this teenager in the monkey suit was this hungry and ferocious lion.

The man began to yell, “Help, help get me out of here. I’m not really a monkey, I’m just a man in a gorilla suit!” About that time the lion pounced, and as it held the boy down with his massive claws and looked at it with his hungry eyes, it said, “Man, will you shut up? You’re going to get us both fired.”

It’s funny, when I think of this story, I often think of the apostle Paul. That may seem a bit random, but Paul had many different costumes. He had many different outfits. He had many different suits. By his own admission he says, “I became all things to all people in order to reach some.” And in this course, I want to talk about some of the different costumes, the many moods of Paul, or the various faces that Paul has. Different personas that he wears in order to contextualize the gospel in order to reach some.

And so what we’ll look at, we’ll look at Paul as a rabbi, rabbi Paul, and then after that, we’ll look at philosopher Paul. We’ll look at another mood of Paul, we’ll call it the apocalyptic Paul. Fourthly, we’ll look at the mystic Paul. Fifthly, we’ll look at pastor Paul, Paul as a pastor and then next, we’ll look at Paul as the missionary Paul, that mood of him and the final mood that we’ll focus on is mishpaet Paul. The word mishpaet is a word for justice in the prophets. And so in our next few sessions we’ll look at these different costumes, the different moods and personas that Paul puts on so that we can understand his life better, so that we can understand his teachings better. And also look at the ramifications for us in our ministry, in our life, in our pursuit to love Jesus Christ as Paul did.

But before we do that, however, let’s just give a quick dash through the life of Paul as a review for you. I live here in Colorado, and I love hiking mountains, especially the fourteeners, those that are the highest in Colorado, the 14,000 feet. And so what I want to do in our time remaining in this session is let’s climb and look at the life of Paul from 14,000 feet high, if you will. Just see the beautiful scope of what happens in his life. And as you remember, Paul was a guy who grew up in Tarsus, which was a Roman citizen, kind of an Ivy League town of the day. We’ll come back and talk about the ramifications of that later. We’re not quite sure when he moved from Tarsus, maybe when he was about in junior high or young teenager, he moved from Tarsus to Jerusalem, and then he began to study under one of the top rabbis of the day, a guy named Gamaliel.

Well, we see Gamaliel in Acts before we do Paul. If you remember, Gamaliel was part of the Sanhedrin and he stands up and says, “You know what? We’ve got to be careful. Because if this Christian movement is from the Lord, then there’ll be nothing that we can do to stop it. In fact, we’ll find ourselves fighting against the Lord himself.” Well, ironically, his top student, Paul—at this point we know him as Saul—is one who doesn’t take his rabbi’s advice, and he begins to go and persecute the church. He tells us in Galatians, he was trying to destroy the church. He gets these letters to go and arrest the Christians, and as you remember on his way to Damascus, all of a sudden there’s a bright light, bright light. Then God knocks him off his donkey, and all of a sudden, the Lord begins to say, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And Saul asks this question, “Who are you . . .”—and then he answers it, “Lord?” And he says, “I am Jesus Christ.” And at this point, Saul has a “oh snap” moment that he realizes that Jesus Christ not only was crucified, but that He was risen.

Remember, at this point the Lord instructs him to go to Damascus and wait for a man who will commission him. And at the same time, meanwhile, back in Damascus, Ananias was praying. The Lord comes to him and says, “Hey, I want you to go, and I want you to pray. I want you to commission my man Saul/Paul because he is going to be my chosen instrument. And I’m going to make him an apostle to the gentiles. He’s going to go before kings and rulers and the people of Israel. And I will show him how much he must suffer for his people.”

And one thing that we see with Acts, Luke, who is the author of Acts, he gives us often these divine, murky oracles that are supposed to be the lens through which we look at the story. The first part of Acts, we have Acts 1:8, where he gives us this murky lens that the Spirit of God’s going to come on the disciples and they’re going to be his witnesses to Jerusalem and beyond. And so we see from Acts 1–8, the fulfillment of how that oracle is coming to fruition. Same thing here, the oracle that’s given to Ananias for the sake of Paul, that helps us understand what’s going to happen throughout. Paul is going to be the apostle to the gentiles. He’s going to come, as he will say later in Ephesians, chapter 2, “To tear down the walls of racism that separate the Jews from the Gentiles that they may be one man in Jesus Christ.” And so this is going to be something that marks his life.

Secondly, he’s going to go before kings and rulers and the people of Israel. And so we see that as he goes to the gentiles, he’s going to stand before guys like Festus and Felix, and eventually, the emperor himself. And also, the people of Israel will see that as Paul goes and does his missionary journeys over and over and over again, he starts, first of all, with the people of Israel to let them know that the son of David, the Messiah, is Jesus Christ.

And then last of all, that God is going to show him how much he has to suffer for the sake of the gospel. And as we see through Paul’s letters again, and again, and again, he’s going to talk about the important place of suffering in the Christian life. We are heirs with God, co-heirs with Jesus Christ, right, right? So we’re going to share in that inheritance, but then Paul says, “But before we share in the inheritance, we also share in the sufferings of Jesus Christ.” And it’s in that suffering of Jesus Christ that we become conformed to his image. And so these three things are things that mark Paul’s life: (1) the apostle to the Gentiles, (2) his relationship with kings and the people of Israel, and (3) suffering.

If you remember in Acts, as soon as Paul has this conversion experience, he begins to preach the gospel in Damascus to the point that people want to take his life. And so they lead him out of bucket and at this point, he goes to Jerusalem. The disciples, at this point there’s twelve of them, they replaced Judas with Matthias, and they’re afraid of Paul. But a guy named Barnabas, the son of encouragement, he comes, and he vouches for Paul. And at this point, Paul spends time with Peter, spends time with James and gets some of the story of Jesus Christ back when he was on this earth.

Well, at this point, Paul begins to preach the gospel in Jerusalem, and guess what? The Jews try to kill Paul again. And so they send him off back to Tarsus, back to his hometown, where eventually he goes into Arabia. Later on, Paul comes back and he’s at a church in Antioch, and as they’re getting their worship on in Antioch, all of a sudden the Spirit of God comes and says, “Hey, I want you to anoint Barnabas and Paul. I want you to send them out on a missionary journey.” And so at this point, after they have their worship time, Barnabas and Paul start out on their first missionary journey.

They go to Galatia, which we get our letter to Galatians from this. Paul’s going to go to the island of Cyprus, which is where Barnabas is from, and this is his first missionary journey that he goes on. It’s possible that in Galatia he gets malaria, which leads to ophthalmia, some eye problems that he has when he goes to the Galatians. He says, “You know, when it came to you, you guys were willing to pluck out your own eyes and give them to me.” This may be Paul, not just using a metaphor, but some similar issues of how the suffering of even malaria and sickness of the road has happened.

But so Paul does his first missionary journey, they began to establish churches and Paul comes back to Antioch. And then we have his second missionary journey, and at this point he says, “You know what? Let’s go back and check on the churches that we have there.”

Barnabas and him have a little bit of a dispute, a little bit of “powwow,” because on the first missionary journey, John Mark, the author of the gospel of Mark, he kind of leaves them in a lurch. And so Barnabas is like, “Hey, let’s bring John Mark again.” And Paul’s like, “Nope, Nope, Nope.” And so at this point they part ways. And so Paul does his second missionary journey, where he’s going to go to places like Athens and Ephesus and Corinth, and Philippi, some of these really great ones. Barnabas and John Mark go and do their ministry, and Paul links up with Timothy and Silas. He has some other guys that began to travel with him.

And then Paul has a third missionary journey where he’s going back and checking on these churches. And part of this is him going to Jerusalem during this time. And something that really marks Paul’s burden for his people is that there’s a famine in Jerusalem and so he goes, and he takes from these gentile churches that he has established, money, so they can take it to Jerusalem. He goes to Jerusalem but rather than them accepting him with arms wide open, they try to kill him again, and so Paul is rescued by the Roman soldiers.

And at this point, Paul is on his way to Rome, which is kind of the last part of Acts. And we’ll come back, and we’ll talk about this a little bit more in a further session. But Paul, he’s in prison for a bit and he gets passed on from ruler to ruler to ruler. Finally, there’s a “three-hour tour.” ’He’s on this, a long boat ride where there’s a great storm that happens, and Paul ends up on the island of Malta. If the storm wasn’t enough, Paul gets bit by a snake, and we think he’s going to die, but instead he just kind of throws it into the fire, like, “Get off me, man.” And at this point, people are amazed that he didn’t die, and they’re open to the gospel.

And then finally, Paul ends up in Rome in order to share the gospel with the people of Rome. And that’s where Acts leaves us, Luke leaves us in Acts. But we know from church tradition that Paul actually probably escapes. He gets free in Acts 28, and he wants to go to Spain. We see this in Romans, chapter 15, Paul wants to go to the end of the world as he knows it, and that’s Spain. And so according to church tradition, he goes to Spain. He preaches the gospel there and he comes back. But when he comes back, he gets arrested again. There’s this new ruler in town named Nero, who is against the Christians, and Paul dies in a prison in Rome, his second time there, along with Peter and some of the other disciples.

And so that’s the 14,000-feet view of Paul. And again, as we look at his letters and his teachings in our next sessions, we’ll continue to come back and tap some of these stories in his life that help us manifest. But one thing that we have to understand about Paul is just his passion for the Lord to make Jesus Christ known everywhere. And we’re going to see the different moods, the different personas, the different outfits that he puts on in order to make that clear.

And I hope that after you go through this session, that you’ll be like this: So not just Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, all you want to do is talk about Paul. But you want to talk about Paul’s Jesus, Paul’s Christ, and the same Lord that makes an impact in his life wants to make the same impact in your life and in your church. Thanks.