Over the last several days my studies have focused on Paul and his relationship to Judaism and whether that matters to modern Christians (even though Paul himself didn’t use that description of Jesus followers). My thoughts haven’t plummeted the depths of the issue nor do I claim to have exhaustively detailed any fresh perspective on Paul (I’ll leave that for N.T. Wright and John Piper to unravel), but I did experience a few paradigmatic shifts in the process that I’d like to share. With an awareness that I may have ventured beyond my abilities and education, let me still offer some thoughts on Paul and identity.
According to Paul, a core identity in Jesus appears to have had little to do with external manifestations of religious custom and practice. He is quite forceful about this in Galatians. Circumcision or no circumcision, it doesn’t matter. And that matters because the identity of God’s people from Paul’s perspective was signified only through the reception and leading of the Spirit of God through faith in Christ (Galatians 3:26-29; 5:5-6). This reality in the lives of Jesus followers, no matter what tribe or race or religious heritage, underwrote the insurance that declared them the beneficiaries of the promise to Abraham and at the same time the executors.
His letters suggest that Paul is more concerned with reworking the identity of Israel in light of Jesus’ death and resurrection rather than propagating and promoting a new religious movement completely severed from Israel’s history. Though the door to the new age had busted open, religious structure wasn’t the hinge upon which it swung. He refers to those who have expressed faith in Jesus as the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16), the new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) in the likeness of the new Adam (Romans 5:12, 18-19). Jews who rejected Jesus were considered by Paul to have rejected or, at best, resisted the idea that Jesus’ followers, Jew or Greek, were now the heirs of God’s covenant promises and, consequently, cosmic rescue operation in spite of any particular religious system or manifestation. This fundamental intention of God’s stays shrouded in mystery until Jesus steps onto the stage.
The final chapter of the story is written for God’s people through the life and vocation of Jesus, the secrets are told in his chapter. All the shadows solidify into substantive realities by his mission; his life pens the climax of Israel’s drama. If that represents chapter 7 then many of Paul’s contemporaries were still attempting to live out chapter 6. They wouldn’t turn the page and were content to tell their own story. They were no longer Jews in this stubbornness, at least not in the sense of the newly constituted Jews who were to inherit the promises of God to Abraham through faith in Messiah Jesus. Of course, this neglect of his family to see the rest of God’s story through bothered Paul deeply and he wrestled with ways to ease this anxiety (Romans 9-11). He knew that they, like all people, could experience and catalyze new creation as God’s people. If only they’d move on.
So what? What does this construction of Paul’s work have to do with Christians today? How can this framework shape our lives as followers of Jesus, the Israel of God, the new creation, the fruit of the second Adam?
Allow me three observations.
First, it puts the first thing first. Following Paul’s lead, today’s Christians are free to focus on proclaiming the same first thing Paul believed marked the true Israel. That first thing is a guarantee of inherited blessings (Genesis 12:3; Ephesians 3:6) as realized through the gift of the Spirit of God (Ephesians 1:13-14). It is contracted through a faith response (I place baptism’s role here: Galatians 3:26) induced by the historical and liberating message of Jesus’ death and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-3)––the victory proclamation of Israel’s Messiah. All other matters should be relegated to the periphery of religious identity. They were by Paul.
Second, it allows us to genuinely and honestly become all things to all people without threatening the core of our identity (1 Corinthians 9:19-23). We can peel back the religious, cultural and whatever-else identities we wear to create solidarity with others. Paul engaged Jewish temple worship (indicating little regard for modern “Christian” sensibilities) so that he could maintain a credible platform to proclaim Messiah Jesus to his ethnic family (Acts 21:17-26). Like him, we can do this without giving up our real identity because it isn’t dependent upon doctrinal precision or prescribed patterns of worship but on the first thing alone.
Third, it throws us into the tangible history of God reclaiming the world. In this story we tap into a reality greater than denominational differences and transitory traditions. The part we play changes us. God’s Spirit not only seals the deal but provides the resources and power needed to live out the intended influence of Israel. What happens as it takes hold of our lives can be expressed in concrete terms.
We will move away from the wishful wonder of a legal transaction somewhere in heaven where God takes care of sins to the salty tears of weeping with those who weep; to the calloused knees of intercessory prayer; to the rolled-up sleeves of God’s kindness; to the frustration of dealing with domestic turmoil; to the exuberant praise of victory. We will begin to feel alive in a reality where the deeds of love overcome the dead-ends of legalism.
Above all, as Paul weary and tired worked to bring this hope into view, he knew that his access to the inheritance proved the same accessibility for his neighbor. Through religious debate, persecution, punishment, sleepless nights and raging seas he embodied the ultimate purposes of Israel and never let go of the promise he’d claimed through her Messiah: “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Go, Israel, and bless.