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3.15 - A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age
The Christianity of Paul
Inclusion of the Gentiles
Before bringing this discussion of Paul's Gospel to a close, attention should be called to the patent fact that the belief in the release of the Christian from bondage to law in general involved, of course, his release from bondage to the Jewish law in particular. But for such release an additional warrant was given in the appearance of the risen Christ.
Doubtless the chief ground of Paul's hostility to Jesus had been, not that he turned the thoughts of the people upon himself, and thus hindered their preparation for the coming of the true Messiah, though that was bad enough, but that he inculcated principles which seemed calculated to lead them away from the law and to discourage its observance. Such conduct was alone enough to prove him an impostor in Paul's eyes. That he should have been executed by a mode of death pronounced accursed in the law was a fitting sign of the divine judgement upon him.
But the relation of Jesus' Messiahship could mean nothing less than that his teaching was true; and a revision of Paul's conception of the law was consequently inevitable. [That the Messiah had died by a mode of death pronounced accursed in the law must also have affected to some extent Paul's estimate of the law and must have tended to weaken its hold upon him. Cf. Gal. 3:13 and see Everett's Gospel of Paul, p. 144 sq.] Thus even had his religious experience not been what it was, and even had it not led him to believe in the Christian's freedom from all law, understanding Christ as he did Paul could hardly have done otherwise after his conversion than assume a freer attitude toward the Jewish law than the original disciples.
But the release of the Christian from the obligation to observe the Jewish law, whether based solely upon his liberty from all law or in part also upon the teaching of Jesus, meant logically the abolition of the wall of partition that separated the gentile form the Jew. If Paul, therefore, was to be true to his principles, he could recognize no essential religious difference between circumcision and uncircumcision. Bot Jewish and Gentile Christians must stand religiously upon the same place.
This fact Paul saw clearly at an early day, and he did not shrink form the consequences involved in it. On the contrary, he asserted distinctly and unequivocally the equal rights of Gentiles in the Gospel. That assertion constituted the Magna Charta of Gentile Christianity, and Paul stood by it unflinchingly in spite of the bitterest criticism and the most relentless opposition.
That he did his life work among the Gentiles, was due, it is true, not solely to his adoption of this principle, -- for he might have believed as he did and still have labored chiefly among his own countrymen, as he seems to have done for some time, -- but the principle was ultimately responsible for his career as the great apostle to the heathen, and alone made that career possible.
Used by permission of the publisher.
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