Paul | The Person

Transcript

00:00:00:19 – 00:00:16:46
Michael Gewecke
Hello, friends. Wherever you are and however you’re joining us, we are glad that you would spend some time with us today. Welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast. My name, Michael Gewecke here with Clint Loveall. And we’re going to begin a new series here today. It’s a short series. We’re going to be looking at the life of the Apostle Paul.

00:00:17:06 – 00:00:38:58
Michael Gewecke
The hope here is not to dig incredibly deep. We’re not going to have time in three sessions to really unearth all of the amazing kind of scholarship and thought that has gone into Paul, that if you look at the history of the church, how it has changed as time has gone on, people have seen more in Paul’s life or they’ve emphasized different aspects of his writings.

00:00:38:58 – 00:01:01:33
Michael Gewecke
And so, you know, it’s going to be impossible to do a deep, deep dive. But we realize that it would be easy, actually, or remarkably easy to go to church. You might hear sermons from a book like Romans or First Corinthians, maybe you’ve done the Bible study and so you’ve indirectly, because of those encounters, learned some of Paul, maybe his theology.

00:01:01:46 – 00:01:21:03
Michael Gewecke
But we want to spend a little bit of time looking square in the face of Paul himself. What do we know about him? We’re going to spend today talking about acts a little bit about Paul’s life, about his conversion of what that means, maybe also some of what it doesn’t mean, which might surprise you. And then in future talks, we’re going to talk about Paul’s theology.

00:01:21:18 – 00:01:44:09
Michael Gewecke
I will emphasize definitely Romans and some of his theologically focused works. And then we’ll also be looking at Paul, the pastor, and the ways in which he engaged with real Christians and real churches and things that that might have to teach us about our own faith today. But all that said, Clint, today we’re looking at Paul and we’re trying to see a little bit of if we can peel back some of the layers of scripture.

00:01:44:09 – 00:01:45:57
Michael Gewecke
What do we know about who Paul was?

00:01:46:28 – 00:02:25:28
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think that this person we call Paul also called Saul. Michael is familiar, but maybe not known. It’s fascinating. You know, Paul writes about 80 pages of the New Testament, and those 80 pages have been as impactful for the church and in some ways for human history as far as probably just about anything ever written. The the role that Paul has played in the theology and practice of the church, I think, can’t be overstated.

00:02:25:57 – 00:02:48:10
Clint Loveall
And in some ways we have some advantages because a book like Acts and Paul’s Own Writings, we hear directly from him. And so there’s a sense in which we maybe know more about Paul or as much about Paul, at least as any other character in the New Testament. Having said that, there are lots of question marks. We don’t know when he’s born.

00:02:48:10 – 00:03:15:45
Clint Loveall
For instance, we know that he’s a relatively young man in the early thirties after the crucifixion. We know that he ministers for multiple years. We know some of his travels. We know he’s from Tarsus. We know that he was a Pharisee, which isn’t an office. It’s an affiliation. We know that he was devout. He tells us these things that give us some clues as to his identity.

00:03:15:45 – 00:03:47:22
Clint Loveall
And I think the most interesting thing and you know, this is a hard case to make, Michael, because you certainly don’t want to downplay the idea of providence and of the Holy Spirit. But Paul is uniquely qualified for the role he plays in Christian history. And without Paul’s impact and influence, it is difficult to see the path by which Christianity would have survived the first century.

00:03:48:28 – 00:04:30:59
Clint Loveall
Paul doesn’t single handedly carry it forward by any means, but Paul’s tenacity, Paul’s commitment to expand the Gospel, to include the Gentiles. Paul’s missionary fervor, his his energy in sharing the gospel as far as he can. His ability to have academic arguments and the force of his personality to have church arguments. He he is a remarkable figure, and it is difficult to see how Christianity could have been shaped and survived in the same way without him.

00:04:31:37 – 00:05:00:48
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, he is responsible for the kind of missionary effort that took Christianity out of the synagogue and the Jewish Center and moved it into the world in it evangelistic nation spanning kind of way. And to underestimate that is, quite frankly, to miss the force that Paul has had not only in his own time and in the growth of Christianity, which we see in the Book of Acts.

00:05:00:50 – 00:05:39:01
Michael Gewecke
Luke, who’s the writer act, spends a great deal of time trying to show us that pivotal moment in which Saul becomes Paul, in which the Pharisee, who is a zealot. We’ll talk about in just a little bit here how he transfers not out of his lineage, not out of the even his faith center, but he moves from a perspective in which Jesus Christ is the threat and the enemy to seeing Jesus Christ in an awakening, a spiritual awakening, that Jesus is the culmination of all of the things that Paul had, or Saul at that time in his life had thought Jesus was a threat to that.

00:05:39:01 – 00:06:12:08
Michael Gewecke
Jesus had come as the culmination, the completion of the the, the highest point. And so because of that, everything in Saul’s life changes. He, as Paul enters into this realm in which he writes in, you said, you know, 60 pages, you know, a small number of pages. He writes writings that has transformed societies. I mean, if you look at the Apostle Paul, it’s Paul’s writing who Martin Luther turns to or Saint Augustine turns to or Saint Aquinas turns to.

00:06:12:09 – 00:06:44:15
Michael Gewecke
I mean, the greatest minds along the way of the development of Christian theology, the transformation of the entire Western Christian church hinges in large part not entirely, but in large part to readings of Paul, of his thinking, of his faith, of his deep conviction about who Jesus Christ is and what that means for humanity. So not to overblow the conversation, but it if you’re going to understand someone other than Jesus in the New Testament, then you can make an argument.

00:06:44:22 – 00:06:46:53
Michael Gewecke
You need to spend some time learning and understanding.

00:06:46:54 – 00:07:14:58
Clint Loveall
Paul I think, you know, and this is where we begin to get into the background. Michael When we look at the disciples, you know, we see passionate men, we see faithful men, but by and large we see what we believe to be ordinary men. The common men called by Jesus, sent out then to do uncommon things, probably rough around the edges, probably in most cases, not formally educated.

00:07:15:18 – 00:07:48:18
Clint Loveall
That’s a very different picture when you begin to consider this man we call Saul of Tarsus, or Paul of Tarsus, a man who is educated, who grows up in a cultural center, who is deeply entrenched in the arguments and the philosophy and the the intricacies of Judaism, who is a business person, a tent maker, almost certainly an extension of his family business.

00:07:48:41 – 00:08:31:46
Clint Loveall
So a person who deals with Gentiles, but yet maintains a very devout connection to his own Judaism, a man who, by every indication of his writing, has a very powerful intellect, incredibly intelligent, and in amazing ability to follow threads to their conclusion. I think that maybe on the first instance of thinking about who Paul was, you know, and you want to be careful with this kind of language, but it’s hard to imagine that Paul doesn’t deserve the label of a remarkable person.

00:08:32:43 – 00:09:03:57
Clint Loveall
Look at the courage. He he takes beatings. Look at the risk he takes. Look at his ability to talk to nearly anybody at their level. Look at his ability to process arguments, whether it be Greek philosophy or whether it be Judaism, and to respond from his own growing theology. I mean, in in in no small measure, Michael Paul creates the first evolution of Christian theology.

00:09:03:57 – 00:09:23:33
Clint Loveall
Now, I don’t mean Christian belief about Jesus, but what it means and its impact in the world. I think we can lay a lot of that at the feet of this man and that that’s incredible. I mean, that’s an amazing reality that as we look back on his story.

00:09:23:58 – 00:09:53:09
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, I think so. I think that we really do need to start at the beginning because I think this is a misconception that Christians have had about Paul is we we believe that he was sort of the Jew par excellence, that he was a Pharisee. In fact, there are sections in the Scripture where Paul lauds his own sort of Jewish pedigree, and we might be tempted to look at that and think that Paul was that.

00:09:53:29 – 00:10:18:19
Michael Gewecke
And on the Damascus Road, this moment where he hears the audible voice of Jesus, he’s knocked off of his horse. He’s blinded in that moment. Of course, Paul, before that, Saul believed that he saw everything. He thought that he saw it clearly. And so this spiritual reality that comes out of this physical moment in which for some time he can’t see everything that he thought he knew is no longer clear.

00:10:18:36 – 00:10:51:36
Michael Gewecke
And suddenly out of that moment comes Paul, who becomes this chief missionary. He becomes this remarkable person that you’re just speaking about. And I think it’s striking that we step back and see that it is that intellect, it’s that history, it’s that rootedness in the Jewish tradition that Paul never leaves behind. He takes that for the rest of his ministry, seeking to help even Gentiles, see how deeply Jesus Christ fulfills this story that’s been lived out, this covenant that God has had with the people.

00:10:51:37 – 00:11:14:52
Michael Gewecke
If you are interested in that, certainly make sure to jump into the Genesis and Exodus studies that we have done and are doing in the case of Exodus. And you’ll see how the Old Testament scripture clearly portrays this covenant that God has made. And Paul sees that covenant to be kept in Jesus, that God’s faithfulness is seen supremely in that moment.

00:11:15:10 – 00:11:45:32
Michael Gewecke
And I think a word that jumps out to me, I want to show this to you here. This comes from Philippians chapter three. Paul’s describing himself here. He says in verse four that he has reason to be confident, Right? He’s circumcised. Member of the people of Israel, of the tribe, of Benjamin Hebrew, born of Hebrews as the law Pharisee, which which means that he is not only a person who was born into the faith, but he’s someone who knows and follows the small details of the faith.

00:11:45:32 – 00:12:06:10
Michael Gewecke
So he’s committed in this practical life. And then this word. I just want to pause with your verse six as to zeal. He says, I’m a persecutor of the church, and that may not mean something to us as we’re just reading. But you’ve got to know that as we have in modern times, there are people who will take a cause or an idea and they will take it to its furthest extent.

00:12:06:10 – 00:12:29:33
Michael Gewecke
They will be passionate, they’ll be razor focused on it. To be zealous meant something in Paul’s day, and it meant that you were living at the farthest edge, that you were committed to what it meant to be a Pharisee, to be a Jew in that vein, and that you were seeking to not only pass on the faith, but even to put down those who would have different perspectives.

00:12:29:33 – 00:13:01:01
Michael Gewecke
And that’s why we see that when he talks about being zealous, he immediately turns to this idea that he’s persecuting the church, that his zealousness for his own faith led him to actively seek out and seek to do damage to Christians. And I think that’s worth noting because to whatever extent that we could say Paul was zealous before his conversion, I think we have to admit he’s zealous after his conversion for all of the harm he sought to do to the church in his days.

00:13:01:01 – 00:13:23:45
Michael Gewecke
As Saul consider all of the beatings and sacrifices and pain, physical pain and struggle and spiritual abandonment that he speaks about, you know, all of this that he did was a continued reflection of that zealousness. But on the other side of that conversion experience, I think that that’s a striking thing to keep in mind when you’re considering.

00:13:23:45 – 00:14:00:00
Clint Loveall
Paul Yeah, and maybe it’s helpful, Michael, to sketch how he may have gotten there. So we know about Paul that he is a Pharisee. And, you know, I think again, unfortunately for a lot of people that conjures the idea that that’s his job first. He’s not a job. It’s a position. It’s a it’s a school of thought, and it’s a school of thought that is particularly passionate about righteousness, about holiness, about the application of the law of God in the believer’s life.

00:14:00:34 – 00:14:32:02
Clint Loveall
The other thing I think that gets missed, Michael, is that Christianity is at its heart, at its inception, Jewish. And so when Paul begins to interact with these these Jewish people who are claiming that Jesus is the Messiah, that the expected Messiah within Judaism has come, that Israel has has been given the Messiah and killed him, and that that Messiah rose again.

00:14:32:43 – 00:14:59:38
Clint Loveall
You know, Paul sees that as a threat. He sees that as something that must be eliminated because he sees it as unrighteous, just as wrong as a danger to the teachings of Judaism. But this is all within the Jewish circle. This is all within that Jewish family. And so he sort of seems to have given a self-proclaimed mission to stamp this out.

00:14:59:40 – 00:15:36:09
Clint Loveall
Now, he gets the support of some others at some point, But but we’re never told why. I think it’s just Paul’s passion, Paul’s commitment, his insistence on truth, that he kind of takes it upon himself to try and eradicate this new offshoot that he believes is blasphemous and dangerous to his own family of faith. And that’s when we first are introduced to Paul when he shows up at Stephen’s stoning later, Then he tells us he was even sent to other places to persecute the church.

00:15:36:27 – 00:16:08:58
Clint Loveall
And it’s in that context that I think we begin to see some of Paul’s personality. Paul is dogged. Paul is at times rigid. Not always as we know him, but there are when Paul is on to something, it’s very hard to dissuade from that. He is committed, he is forceful. He he is fierce. He he is he’s all go at it as we meet him in these pages.

00:16:08:58 – 00:16:20:54
Clint Loveall
And I think to your point, those traits will serve him well once God brings him into the fold and points him in a different direction.

00:16:21:09 – 00:16:56:54
Michael Gewecke
Right. Because Paul is always the person who God made him to be and a person of his context and time and the gifts that came with that and also the struggles that came with that. Right. And I think that one thing we remember here as we look at Paul’s story and we’re going to flesh this out in future conversations, especially when we look at Pastor Paul, when we think about the ways that he’s engaging with people, the fair to say iCal aspect of his life will be relevant because he brings some of that into those conversations in these Gentile churches, which makes it a really fascinating conversation.

00:16:57:10 – 00:17:18:48
Michael Gewecke
But we don’t get there. We don’t get to Pastor Paul without starting with Paul the Pharisee. And I think it’s worth noting that as with many things in the Bible, absolute 100% clarity about someone like Paul’s place of birth is impossible. No one was there to see Paul born and can say, you know, we know this for 100% that.

00:17:18:48 – 00:17:42:39
Michael Gewecke
But there’s good reason to believe in. Lots of scholars will say that Paul was born in Tarsus. And so if you follow that and it makes a lot of sense of his life and writings, then you might know that that’s a city who lives on this border between east and west. And it’s likely that while Paul was deeply embedded in the Jewish community, he was reading the scriptures, likely not in Hebrew, but likely in Greek.

00:17:42:39 – 00:18:10:31
Michael Gewecke
That may seem like a small detail to us, but it represents the fact that he, from his very beginning in the faith, was reading the texts in a way that he would ultimately come to interpret them to people living in that Western context. Right. So as Paul’s later going to be interfacing with people who he legitimately believes have been called to be part of the people of God, this is a change that happens in his conception of the gospel.

00:18:10:51 – 00:18:40:17
Michael Gewecke
He’s somewhat uniquely positioned to do that because even his writings reflect some more Western and even secular, what we might call secular argumentative strategies. Like Paul’s clearly been educated in how to argue, not just in a Hebrew, biblical, interpretive context. He’s been taught how to argue in the context of his secular world. Those who are outside those gifts have been brought in.

00:18:40:31 – 00:19:02:54
Michael Gewecke
And so he possesses this ability. And so when you think of Paul as the one who first starts applying these various ethical understandings of the world from his own people, from his own faith, and you see that leading him to zealous persecution of the church, it becomes this amazing turning point in a person’s life, this how everything transforms on the road to Damascus.

00:19:02:54 – 00:19:29:58
Michael Gewecke
Because suddenly Saul becomes Paul. And that name change that we see happening in the Book of Acts becomes the linchpin of everything being transformed. And now those things used against the church become tools and unique us, a unique situation in history and in capacity for him to begin to be a relentless advocate on behalf, on behalf of Gentiles.

00:19:29:58 – 00:19:59:25
Michael Gewecke
I mean, we see certainly through Luke’s writing in Acts that there was this conception in the early church that Paul was the one pushing the largely Jewish church to see God’s work happening in the Gentile world. And then he becomes this this interlocutor, this voice, this conversationalist, seeking to help understand how this what were thought to be Jewish scriptures were relevant to the Gentile Christians.

00:19:59:25 – 00:20:04:37
Michael Gewecke
And that was an amazing task, which in some ways only Paul was qualified to do.

00:20:05:49 – 00:20:27:43
Clint Loveall
I think, you know, when we think of Paul’s experience on the Damascus Road, we and we even call it the conversion experience and the the struggle in that is that for those of us that don’t live in that world or don’t have an awareness of that world, it’s sort of insinuates that Paul was one thing and then he became a different thing.

00:20:27:43 – 00:20:59:58
Clint Loveall
Like, like he he consciously converted. He changed teams the way we might say someone was Presbyterian, but then they became Methodists. That really undermines, I think, the experience that Paul had. Paul on that road is a person deeply entrenched in Judaism, educated in Judaism. It’s Hellenistic, it’s Greek, but it it is deeply, deeply faithful to that Jewish Israel tradition.

00:21:00:23 – 00:21:31:22
Clint Loveall
And when he has this moment of clarity in which it’s revealed to him that this one he’s been working against Jesus is in fact the Messiah, is the gift of God, is the coming of the Christ. It changes everything for Paul, but he doesn’t see it as like switching religion. He sees it as the fulfillment of his faith.

00:21:31:22 – 00:22:18:05
Clint Loveall
He sees it as the culmination of what God is doing for Judaism. And then as He begins to think through what it means that Christ offers grace, that Christ offers forgiveness, that Christ fulfills the promise, God’s covenant has offered the world. He begins to suspect that the division between Jew and Gentile has now really ceased to function in the way that he understood it, that what God has done is not simply hemmed in or fenced in within the Jewish people, that this is something God has done on behalf of the world.

00:22:18:23 – 00:22:49:42
Clint Loveall
This is something that God has done that has global or worldwide implications. It is, in fact for everyone. And it is this thought that doesn’t come all at once. This comes over years of Paul struggling with the law and understanding grace and moving and thinking in this direction. But when he gets there, he in some ways finds his life’s calling.

00:22:50:09 – 00:23:13:36
Clint Loveall
But but it’s not as though he just says, you know, the Gentiles need we need to go get that. He it’s it’s something bigger than that. It is the fulfillment of who he understands Jesus to be and what he understands the cross of Christ to have accomplished. And in some ways, Michael, it’s is most at least initially it’s his most controversial Yeah.

00:23:14:06 – 00:23:42:18
Clint Loveall
Direction. But I think in terms of the Christian story, it it becomes I think one could argue his most essential contribution. I don’t want to I don’t want to downplay the theology, but it’s very hard to it’s very hard to separate his theology from his practice. And so this idea of a bigger covenant is, I think at some ways very near the heart of what Paul has done for the church.

00:23:42:27 – 00:24:08:51
Michael Gewecke
Right. And I want to emphasize the point that you’re making here, because it would be easy to rush past this or maybe even easy for those of you joining the conversation to miss the distinction I think that you’re making there. Because one way of thinking of Paul is he was this thing. He saw the error of his ways and he turned from it and he became another thing that that would be an easy thing to think.

00:24:08:51 – 00:24:31:28
Michael Gewecke
And you said this. I want to emphasize what you said is that fundamentally, that is not the picture of Paul that we see. And to make that case, I would point you to Romans chapter one, verse one. I’d point you to first Corinthians chapter one, verse one. It may seem small to you, but when Paul opens his letter, these letters, he says that he is called to be an apostle.

00:24:31:28 – 00:24:59:11
Michael Gewecke
And you even use that word call. We’ve got to recognize that Paul did not see himself as turning away from a thing. He saw himself being called further into another thing. And that distinction absolutely matters. That Paul was called is his language. To say that he’s been given a unique particular task, a vocation which he has been called to live out.

00:24:59:31 – 00:25:20:52
Michael Gewecke
That is an essential distinction when coming to understand who Paul is. Because if Paul had thought of himself as being called out of his Jewish faith, his Jewish lineage, if he had thought that it would be very hard, I would even argue impossible to understand what he does as a theologian. When we get to that conversation, we look at Romans.

00:25:21:07 – 00:25:54:39
Michael Gewecke
There’s this whole section in the middle of Romans where what Paul has to say there doesn’t make sense if he thought of himself on now being on a completely different team now. I think the right way to begin thinking about Paul is there’s an individual who has been carried on this unique life story in which the stuff that was once, you know, very passionately held in a different direction, gets reshaped, reformed, we might use that word converted into a calling, which is uniquely able to be carried into a different position.

00:25:54:39 – 00:26:26:25
Michael Gewecke
And not only is, I think, that a more faithful representation of Paul. This is a small aside, Clint, I think that you could make a case that that’s what all conversion is. I mean that arguably that’s what our conversion, whatever that story might be for you, that you have been something you’ve had your life experiences, you’ve had the things and aspects of God that’s been taught to you by people, by Scripture, by by teachers, whatever that might be, and that when you encounter Jesus, that that transforms all of those things.

00:26:26:38 – 00:26:47:24
Michael Gewecke
It doesn’t make you a a person who’s fundamentally not that experience. It means that now you carry that in a new calling, in a new way, and God’s able to transform and use it. So I think this isn’t just, you know, old Paul theology history stuff. I mean, I think that in some ways this is a reflection of an understanding of a real person of faith today as well.

00:26:47:51 – 00:27:17:54
Clint Loveall
I think it’s possible that never, but certainly not initially. Does Paul ever think of himself as somehow less Jewish or not Jewish? Paul instead understands this is what it means to be among God’s people. This is the fulfillment to to follow Christ is what it actually means to seek, to be faithful, to to be Jewish or to be any other thing.

00:27:18:10 – 00:27:40:49
Clint Loveall
Now, I think he’s doing it quickly because of his work with the Gentiles. I think he’s going to quickly fold that into the broader conversation of Christian, and he’s going to lose the terminology of Jewish because it’s problems today, especially with some of the people he ends up arguing with. But but Paul doesn’t understand that he’s given that up or that that’s somehow behind him.

00:27:41:04 – 00:28:05:02
Clint Loveall
He understands this is actually what it means, that I didn’t know I missed this. And now it’s been revealed to me. And now that I know it, I need to share this truth with everyone. And, you know, there are a couple of things that get maybe in the book of Acts, they get shuffled. The Book of Acts is wonderful telling us what happened, but it doesn’t fill in the gaps of time sometimes.

00:28:05:02 – 00:28:36:28
Clint Loveall
So the fact that Paul takes nearly a decade makes an initial appearance in Jerusalem and then is sent back to Tarsus for the better part of ten years, where he thinks where he preaches, where he works, where he talks to his family, where he goes to the synagogue, where he begins to hone what it means to believe in Christ, and where he begins to integrate this newfound faith into his life.

00:28:36:28 – 00:29:05:56
Clint Loveall
And he begins ever more powerfully to hear his calling and to firm up his mission that he now embraces this idea that the Gospel is for everyone. It’s not just for the Jew, it is for the Jew, but it’s for the Gentile as well. And that really becomes the clarion call that becomes the signal bell, I think, of his life now.

00:29:06:07 – 00:29:31:30
Clint Loveall
Paul is passionate. Paul will preach to anybody, Paul will argue with anybody. Paul will present Jesus to anybody. But I do think it is that that realm in which he is drawn to the Gentiles or realizes that the circle has now been opened to non-Jews, that that in some ways I think is the unique contribution as it’s written to us.

00:29:31:30 – 00:29:38:42
Clint Loveall
At least there weren’t many others. There were a few. But but it is, Paul, that advances that argument the furthest.

00:29:38:49 – 00:30:01:15
Michael Gewecke
I think that there is some deep sort of spiritual insight. If you understand the book of Acts, if you see the way that Luke presents the story of Paul, I think it’s really helpful because what you have is you have this idea that he is knocked off his horse, he has this experience in the road that he goes to just Damascus, where he has this transformative experience like we have right here.

00:30:01:39 – 00:30:26:43
Michael Gewecke
And you know, verse 22, he becomes increasingly more powerful, confounds the Jews who lives in Damascus right? He has an intellectual theological capability, which is even at the very like right after this experience, he’s rapidly growing in his strength and wisdom. And notice that after some controversy of him being sought out, because of that, we see him go to Jerusalem.

00:30:26:44 – 00:30:53:18
Michael Gewecke
Quite you just mentioned this in broad terms. It’s striking at the end here, verse 31, meanwhile, which is in the Book of Acts, a massive sort of connecting word, How long is meanwhile, how long after this time in Jerusalem is it going to be? It’s going to be quite a while because the text shifts away from Saul Paul and it moves over the Peter that moves over to the work happening in Jerusalem in the Jewish church.

00:30:53:18 – 00:31:19:30
Michael Gewecke
So the idea being indirectly stated, Luke, doesn’t the spill ink to tell us about this, the middling period for Paul, we’re left to imagine what he’s doing and all those conversations, all that relationship, all that prefiguring and reading scripture that’s all happening. But Paul’s not in the front of you. He’s not center stage at this period in the development of the church.

00:31:19:30 – 00:31:46:10
Michael Gewecke
Instead, we’re told that the church throughout Judea, Galilee, Samaria, they have peace was built up and it’s increasing in number. So it’s a good season for the church and that is the season in which Paul’s story goes dark. And yet it is this this period of conversion is not just about the fact he gets knocked off his horse, it’s the fact that he goes through this season in which he builds relationships, he learns the gospel.

00:31:46:10 – 00:32:09:55
Michael Gewecke
It is an extension of that confounding of the Jews that he’s able to later come and be this chief advocate of what God’s doing amongst the Gentiles. And I think often times, Clint, maybe this isn’t true, but I think oftentimes when people think of Paul, they think of the guy who wrote Romans or they think of the guy who wrote the Corinthians, maybe the big books that are in the New Testament.

00:32:09:55 – 00:32:30:39
Michael Gewecke
And you think of him as being the problem solver. You think of him as being the guy who’s writing something very smart and he’s trying to address a problem, or he’s trying to get people on his side to get everybody on the same page. And I think maybe what we miss is that Paul is a contrast in sort of fixture in the Book of Acts.

00:32:30:39 – 00:32:51:19
Michael Gewecke
We see his story as one in which he’s going from one experience to the other, trusting God for what he needs along the way. And the text makes it clear that he’s not some kind of spiritual lightning rod who gets everything right or who everyone defers to, or that suddenly day one has it all figured out. That’s not the case.

00:32:51:30 – 00:33:22:33
Michael Gewecke
Paul grows, Paul transforms Paul Mentor’s Paul struggles. All of that happens in the midst of the story. And as we encounter these letters that he writes in future conversations in the series, you know, it may be a snapshot of a moment of time, but Paul, the person, it’s a very complex, very, very rooted, nuanced individual, and that often helps us, Clint, especially when we get to texts that are attributed to Paul that are maybe difficult to interpret.

00:33:22:58 – 00:33:33:46
Michael Gewecke
Maybe understanding the nuance of Paul helps us get into some of those things and see that even Paul was on the path of salvation that God was working on Paul the whole way.

00:33:34:04 – 00:34:01:22
Clint Loveall
One of the very interesting realities of the Scripture, Michael, is that we have stories about Paul and then we have words from Paul, and in some cases those cover the same ground, you know, so AX tells us something of Paul’s conversion story, but then we hear a version of it from him as well. And so we get on, you know, we get an opportunity to look at different vantage points of Paul.

00:34:01:22 – 00:34:23:27
Clint Loveall
We see Paul the missionary. We’re going to talk about Paul, the theologian. We see Paul the preacher. We’re going to talk about Paul is sort of the pastor or the leader. And Paul wears all of these various hats in in this timeframe in the early church. We know, Paul, the advocate of the Gentiles. Now that’s happening in other places.

00:34:23:27 – 00:34:56:41
Clint Loveall
There’s a great story of, you know, Peter and the dream and Cornelius. But but it’s Paul that really picks those things up and runs with them. And it is because of the the material, the amount of material we have. It’s really our best window into. Paul So there are times Paul is incredibly gracious there. You think of a, you know, a favorite like first Corinthians 12 or 13, Romans eight, Romans 12.

00:34:56:41 – 00:35:23:36
Clint Loveall
There are times that Paul just gives us these beautiful, incredibly deep, well-written, profound passages. There’s other times where Paul tells people, go castrate themselves. I mean, we just we write with such a we have such an interesting window of seeing Paul when he’s fighting with people, when he’s encouraging people, when he’s frustrated with people. And I think that gives Paul on on the upside.

00:35:24:41 – 00:35:49:19
Clint Loveall
I think that gives Paul humanity. Yeah, we we see and hear Paul in a variety of ways and places and, and it personalizes him. It makes him seem like, oh yeah, Paul was worn out. Paul you know, he talks about in, in first Corinthians six Christians 11 all of the struggles, the beatings he’s taken, all of those things that have happened to him.

00:35:49:19 – 00:36:12:34
Clint Loveall
And we see a resume of a man who just won’t be stopped. And yet there are other times where Paul seems tired, he seems worn, and he he kind of confesses, you know, he talks about the thorn in his side and his struggles and his suffering. And I suppose the downside of that is if you’re inclined to look for places to kind of pick out.

00:36:12:34 – 00:36:15:30
Clint Loveall
Paul, there’s a pretty big table.

00:36:15:30 – 00:36:15:51
Michael Gewecke
Yeah.

00:36:15:52 – 00:36:52:06
Clint Loveall
So you can find some things that Paul says that you won’t like. And it that’s not that hard to do. I mean, there’s enough material out there that you’ll be able to. And so the overall question of who really is Paul at the core is interesting and I think the only way to fairly answer that is that at his core, he is a man obsessed with the idea that God has defeated evil and has claimed people in the name and through the work of Jesus Christ.

00:36:52:35 – 00:37:09:09
Clint Loveall
And Paul is the one who wants to share that information. If he has to argue to do it, if he has to take a beating to do it, if he has to preach to do it, if he has to fight with being a Jew or Gentile Pete or whoever he he will, he just that is his heart. That is passion.

00:37:09:28 – 00:37:27:23
Clint Loveall
And maybe then in the book of Acts, we see that most clearly because it is the encapsulation of his missionary work. You know, we see him getting on ships, we see him going to places, we see him preaching, we see him trouble, but acts maybe gives us the best snapshot of some of that.

00:37:27:45 – 00:37:50:34
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. And Clint, maybe this is just restating in my own words, push back on me certainly if you disagree with us. But I think one of the core things that I think never changes for Paul is his deep internal belief that God is faithful to God’s covenant. I think the covenant language for Paul is essential to understand what the faith means.

00:37:50:54 – 00:38:32:33
Michael Gewecke
That said, I think what happens is he comes to understand that that covenant is bigger than what he originally had conceived of because it’s reformed or three fashioned in light of who Jesus Christ is, and his mission of what happens on the cross makes God’s covenant even bigger than what Paul had conceived of before Jesus. And I think that if you’re willing to see that, then you’re also able to see that there’s a kind of continuity between early Paul and late Paul, that he’s always working out, that his fights with people are not fights that are principally over legal stuff, which may have been the temptation of a Pharisee, but our rather fights over Who

00:38:32:33 – 00:38:55:42
Michael Gewecke
are you giving allegiance to? Is it the God of covenant or is it your own sort of thing? And Paul is the word vitriolic is maybe not the right word, but I mean, when it comes to going toe to toe with another, he will not back down if it’s a fight between the God of the covenant, the God of Israel, who is Jesus Christ and and another God.

00:38:55:42 – 00:39:28:15
Michael Gewecke
And Paul has no interest in that, whether that’s the God of your stomach or the got a comfort or the God of Rome, he will attack that. You will attack that idea head on, and he’ll do it in whatever language he needs to. The only other time I want to sort of emphasize here late in this conversation is the fact that sometimes because we know of all of Paul’s journeys, because we know these letters he wrote individually, I think that sometimes we forget the cast of characters who Paul is surrounded by throughout his life in ministry.

00:39:28:15 – 00:39:50:07
Michael Gewecke
I think we forget that Paul may be an apostle, but he’s not alone. And you know, to point that out, I’d look at Chapter 13 here where we find that Barnabas are Simeon, Lucius, my name, right. And Saul, they are all commissioned together. They are all called to their late hands are laid on all of them by the church.

00:39:50:07 – 00:40:11:27
Michael Gewecke
When Paul is sent out to do this work. But he’s not doing it as some sort of like lone actor. He’s he’s not out on the fringes doing this because, you know, he’s a prophet. Nobody else will listen. I mean, he’s sent by the church, He’s called by the church. He’s in many ways commissioned by and represents the church in the world.

00:40:11:27 – 00:40:36:09
Michael Gewecke
And it’s in that practice that Paul comes across the story of of the Gentiles and the Holy Spirit working, and then he becomes this relentless traveler. But even amidst the stories of acts, even amidst the references in his letters, Clint, I mean, he’s mentioning the people who he’s mentoring, he’s mentioning the people who are traveling with him. We find out in some cases that that, you know, relationship doesn’t go well.

00:40:36:16 – 00:41:00:41
Michael Gewecke
And people actually part from him in the midst of the travel. So Paul is doing this remarkable work, but he’s not doing it in isolation. I mean, he’s clearly conversing with other Christians. He’s clearly training Christian leaders and he’s clearly seeking counsel from Peter and others in the church. So that’s another correction maybe to our image of Paul, is that he’s like the guy doing his own thing and nobody else is in the circle.

00:41:00:50 – 00:41:02:45
Michael Gewecke
I don’t think that’s accurate. But biblically.

00:41:02:47 – 00:41:31:12
Clint Loveall
No, Paul’s not a lone Ranger, though. There are times he does Minister work alone, But one of his great leadership skills seems to be networking. You know, you look at the books, Titus, Timothy, find Lehman. I mean, Paul reaches out Paul in every letter. If not if not every nearly every letter that he writes. In fact, I believe it to be every letter he names people.

00:41:31:12 – 00:41:31:34
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, right.

00:41:31:39 – 00:42:09:39
Clint Loveall
He knows people. He he has interacted with people. And so, no, there’s no sense of Paul just out on his own, though. He is the primary name that we know. Paul stands as part of a much bigger picture. And now we will get into some of this. Michael, I think particularly maybe when we talk about Paul is a theologian, but to your point, I think the consistent see of Paul and you you may not always agree with where he ends up on things, but he clearly always seeks to get there by the path of Jesus.

00:42:09:39 – 00:42:31:13
Clint Loveall
And so it’s fascinating that Paul will tell a group of Christians, look, if you want to eat this food, fine, if you want to eat that, especially given Paul’s background, if you want to do things on this day, great. That day you don’t need to be circumcised. And if you are circumcised, don’t worry about it. If you’re not, also don’t worry about it.

00:42:31:37 – 00:42:54:09
Clint Loveall
But then there will be times where he just absolutely plants his feet and and if he understands something has to do with the core of the gospel. For instance, when there are people who argue that there’s no resurrection, you’re not going to move. Paul Right. There’s no there is no wiggle room. There is no openness to whatever works for you.

00:42:54:36 – 00:43:21:28
Clint Loveall
And and I think, you know, maybe when we move into that conversation as Paul as pastor, that shows a tremendous amount of wisdom from leadership. Where do we build a fence and a gate and where do we build a wall? What convictions are non-negotiable? What ideas have to be upheld, and where is there looseness for people to explore and be guided by their own conscience?

00:43:21:46 – 00:43:45:55
Clint Loveall
And I think we see a tremendous amount of that in Paul now, arguably or admittedly not as much as some people would like, that there would be people who wish Paul would have opened other doors that he didn’t. And I and I understand that it’s different time, different place. His issues are not our issues. And we yes, it would be wonderful to hear Paul say some other things than the things he said.

00:43:45:55 – 00:44:05:13
Clint Loveall
But when he says them, he always believes that they are instrumental in helping people have the opportunity to follow Jesus Christ faithfully. And I think, you know, whatever you do or don’t give Paul, I think you have to give him that.

00:44:05:13 – 00:44:23:02
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. Clinton I think that’s well said, and I think I would maybe reference for people our conversation about being a thinking Christian that we just had a couple of weeks ago, because there is a kind of thoughtful engagement, I think, that Paul demands from us. I don’t even think it’s coming back to Paul and sort of putting something on him.

00:44:23:02 – 00:44:51:54
Michael Gewecke
I think if Paul was with us in the room today, I think he would stand up straight and he would expect for you to make the best argument that you could and you could trust that he would bat it down when you were wrong or that he thought that you didn’t make that argument through the path of Jesus and that it didn’t live in the central city of his revelation and I also would only add, nearing the end of our conversation here today, just because it’s relevant and, you know, you won’t have this if you’re with us on the audio podcast.

00:44:51:54 – 00:45:18:54
Michael Gewecke
But I’m just going to throw up here really briefly, Clint. This is a map of Paul’s missionary journeys. And I only throw this up here to say, if you could see this, you’re going to see that there are multicolored lines stretching all the way from Jerusalem, all the way to Italy. And that is a striking fixture because what it represents is that Paul is an individual in the midst of this networking.

00:45:18:54 – 00:45:44:49
Michael Gewecke
You speak of Clint. He’s an individual who is traveling for the ancient world, a vast distance enabled by Roman roads and by the peace that’s happening in this time in history. Paul is able to connect with churches and to be an instrumental voice through through mail and through discourse of all kinds, through the collection of resources and the distribution of those resources.

00:45:45:07 – 00:46:06:27
Michael Gewecke
That’s happening in a unique historical way. So it’s not just Paul’s thought, it’s not just the people he’s surrounded with. It’s in some ways a unique moment in history, Clint, in which this kind of missionary tasks, this kind of travel, this kind of ability to pick up and move on, make new connections, make an argument, leave town, go to another place.

00:46:06:39 – 00:46:31:40
Michael Gewecke
This this moment is uniquely generating a kind of conversation which we later looking back on now, thousands of years later, we see was the making of a world changing movement. In just a couple hundred years, this church is going to go from the minority persecuted to the majority sanctioned state church. And that is not just intellect, not just charisma.

00:46:31:40 – 00:46:54:54
Michael Gewecke
It’s not just it’s all of these things combined is what results in God being able to use this. Calling on Paul to do magnificent things. And that’s what makes this conversation so interesting is Paul, is that nuance, his story is that deep. And so whenever you see a microplane, maybe it’s one of those texts that Paul wrote that really does challenge us and makes us uncomfortable.

00:46:54:54 – 00:47:10:57
Michael Gewecke
We we as modern interpreters, seek to find what’s faithful in that reading that maybe we miss all the rest of this and hopefully this conversation, at least if it if it doesn’t bring you there, maybe it opens your eyes to how much nuance there is.

00:47:11:15 – 00:47:51:28
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think you can read the Book of Acts and it becomes fairly clear Michael Paul’s passion is planting seeds and he trusts that God will nurture those seeds. He trusts that he will maintain relationship, you know, through his letters. But Paul doesn’t seem particularly interested in staying in a place indefinitely. His his calling, as he understands it, is to move the gospel, to go find places where people don’t yet know the good news of Christ and to share it with them to to go out and take that into new places and then let it grow.

00:47:51:28 – 00:48:35:31
Clint Loveall
He seems to have a deep trust that God will oversee and and nurture where those seeds have been put. But he he seems particularly interested in being one of the ones who goes to take them to those different places. And I just want to end maybe one word, and we’ll revisit this when we talk theology, because this is a it’s not controversial, but because of our situation, when we hear something like evangelists, we tend to think of a person going out and and challenging people with whether they know the truth of Jesus or whether they’ll go to heaven.

00:48:35:31 – 00:48:59:00
Clint Loveall
And I just want I just want to insert here and we can flush this out later if we need to, that that’s not the best way to understand what Paul is doing. But Paul is less interested in the idea of quote unquote saving people from hell than he is of letting people that God has already acted on their behalf.

00:48:59:20 – 00:49:28:46
Clint Loveall
God has already done a thing that for Paul has changed the world. And there are people who don’t yet know it. There are people who aren’t aware of it. There are Jews who don’t know that Jesus Christ has come, that the Messiah has arrived. And it is Paul’s passion to help them understand that and to learn. So it is a it is perhaps a little differently nuanced than we might think of it.

00:49:29:09 – 00:49:56:56
Clint Loveall
But but for Paul, it is less the idea of saving people and more the idea of of opening their eyes to this incredible, amazing thing that God has already done and the power of Jesus Christ already at work and in the world and available to them in their life and at the if that if that doesn’t make sense now, give us some time.

00:49:56:56 – 00:50:04:19
Clint Loveall
But I think it’s important that we at least understand that it’s not always what first comes to mind when we think of.

00:50:04:19 – 00:50:30:50
Michael Gewecke
Evangelism right in this section, as best as we’ve we’ve tried to lay out Paul as a nuanced historical person who really lived and did so in the midst of community and with life experiences that God used in unique ways. I think what is striking is in the conversations to come, we’re both going to look at how Paul is unbelievably practical in his ability to apply that into people’s lives.

00:50:30:50 – 00:51:04:37
Michael Gewecke
And to be very clear as best as he can in those contexts as what it means to be faithful. And yet also, remarkably, he’s able to think added on believer Billy deep level. He is an incredibly intelligent person. His thought is generative and continues to inspire some of greatest intellects. And so I would just say that’s part of the remarkable nature of this man that we consider in this short series is he is everything in in all of these aspects.

00:51:04:37 – 00:51:22:49
Michael Gewecke
He brings nuance and he brings both the grounded practicality and the deep thought and all that lies ahead. So if any of this has been interesting, we hope that you will join us for those conversations, because there’s a lot more to come as we look deeper into the life of Paul. Glad that you would have made it this far in, this conversation.

00:51:22:49 – 00:51:41:58
Michael Gewecke
Hope it’s been a blessing to you. It is a blessing to us that we have so many who join us for these conversations. Thank you for that. Let us know that you’re here. Put questions, comments in the section here on YouTube, Put them on the form that we have linked in the description of the other podcast. However you joining us, we’re glad to spend this time together and look forward to seeing you next time.

00:51:41:58 – 00:52:04:37
Clint Loveall
Thanks for listening. Hey, we want to thank you for listening to this broadcast. We’re grateful for the support and the connections, the relationships we get to make through some of these offerings. We hope that they’ve been helpful. We know that there are lots of choices that you have, lots of things you can listen to. We want to make you aware of some of what we’re doing, and we greatly appreciate you being a part of it.

00:52:04:51 – 00:52:23:43
Michael Gewecke
Absolutely. We want to just thank you for being one of our audio podcast listeners. It’s amazing to have you with us in the midst of our conversations. Of course, I hope you know that you can find the whole archive of all of these conversations at Pastor Taco. We would love for you to join us there. You can find options for subscribing by email.

00:52:23:58 – 00:52:57:21
Michael Gewecke
You can easily share things there with other people who you think might appreciate recordings like this. And of course, we just want to welcome you. If you’re ever interested in joining us for the video podcast, you can do that on YouTube. It is YouTube.com slash PC Spirit Lake. There you can comment and engage with us or if you would prefer to do that without going to YouTube, you can actually just click the link, the description of this podcast where you will be able to send us form and information and reach out to us.

00:52:57:34 – 00:53:14:33
Michael Gewecke
We’d love to hear from you and engage in conversation with you. Thanks again for taking time to be with us. We look forward to our next conversation and can’t wait to see you then.