There is apparently, an anti-Paulism movement afoot according to articles like this one or this one, which we discussed recently on a podcast.
This is a school of thought that’s apparently gaining some traction on social media, I guess. Sometimes called anti-Pauline Christianity, sometimes called anti-Paulism. Another term is Jesusism, particularly when someone insists that the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels should replace the teachings of Paul. I think this has always existed to one degree or another even when Paul was alive.
Yet, crazy enough, I love some of the arguments these anti-Paul people are making such as:
Paul contradicted Jesus about the Law
Paul teaches a different Christianity
Paul taught a catching away of the church that doesn’t exist anywhere else
Yes! Amen! At least they recognize truths we’ve been proclaiming for years!
The solution isn’t to reject and ignore Paul.
The solution is to recognize that Paul is your apostle.
I know what all the haters out there would say. “No, brother Joel. All of the Bible is written to us. It’s all about us, and there is only one gospel.” Oh really? Paul highlights two gospels in Gal. 2:7. He writes, “the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter.”
How do you reconcile those two gospels?
“Well,” some might say, “it’s the same gospel but a different audience.” So how do you explain Matt. 10:7 in which Christ said, “And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.” Is that what we preach in our churches today? That the kingdom of heaven is “at hand”? Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead? When was the last time you saw someone raised from the dead in your church?
Paul said, “I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved… how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day” (1 Cor. 15:1-4).
Christ told the disciples, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Is that how we disseminate the gospel today? By avoiding the Gentiles, avoiding the Samaritans, and speaking only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? Is that God’s plan for us today?
Paul said God “would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus” (Col. 1:27-28). Christ told a Gentile woman in Matt.15:24 “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Paul said in Rom. 10:12 that there is no difference between Jew and Greek.
Many would ask, “What about the thief on the cross? Wasn’t he a Gentile?” Let me ask you, what was it that he believed that got him saved? When he was hanging on that cross, did he think that Christ was in the process of paying for the sins of the whole world? How could he know that Christ was paying for the sins of the world when even the demonic realm couldn’t comprehend that (1 Cor. 2:8)? The thief simply believed that Christ was the Messiah, which was the gospel during the Lord’s earthly ministry (John 3:15-16).
This is not the gospel that Paul preached, which was faith in the Lord’s death, burial, and resurrection as a payment for all sins (1 Cor. 15:1-4).
In the so-called “Great Commission,” Peter and the 12 were told, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost…”
Paul said in 1 Cor. 1:17 that “Christ sent me not to baptize.”
Do you think Peter and the 12 could say that? They were specifically told to baptize. Matt. 3:11 showcases three baptisms: baptism by water, Spirit, and fire. Yet, Paul says in Eph. 4:4-5 that “there is” only “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.”
Does not one mean one?
How can this one baptism not be the baptism of the Spirit that takes place the moment we believe (1 Cor. 12:13)? And why was it that the Lord didn’t send Paul to baptize? Paul answers that for us. He said, “lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect” (1 Cor. 1:17). Any work that is added to your salvation is an affront to the power and to the glory and to the victory and to the all-sufficiency of Christ’s redemptive work on the cross at Calvary!
In the Israeli program, their blessings were conditional under the “If/Then Principle” found in Deut. 28. Under Paul, all our blessings are unconditional after we
believe. God the Father has “blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3) and made us joint-heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17).
In the Gospels, forgiving others was a requirement to receive forgiveness from God the Father. The Lord said in Matt. 6:14-15, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Paul says that we’ve already been forgiven! Eph. 4:32 tells us, “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” Plus, Col. 2:13 tells us, “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses.”
Israel was promised an earthly inheritance. They were told again and again that they shall inherit the Earth. As David wrote in Psa. 2:8, “I shall give Thee... the uttermost parts of the Earth for Thy possession”. In Psa. 22:27, he’d write, “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.” In Psa. 72:8, he’d also write, “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”
Paul tells us we’ve inherited heavenly positions. Eph. 2:6 tells us that God has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
The Lord obeyed the laws of Moses and told His followers to obey the law. He said in Matt. 23:2-3, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.”
Paul tells us repeatedly we’re “not under the law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14-15).
In the Ten Commandments, the Jews were told to “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exo. 20:8; Deut. 5:12).
Paul tells us in Col. 2:16, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days”. Do you think the scribes and Pharisees sitting in Moses’ seat would have all their people observe the Sabbath? Do you think they’d judge someone who didn’t observe the Sabbath? You know they would! And yet Paul tells us, let no man judge you about observing Sabbath days.
In the Israeli program, many meats were forbidden such as we might find in Lev. 11:7-8. “The swine is unclean to you… of their flesh ye shall not eat and… not touch.”
Paul tells us that “every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:4). I praise the Lord every time I can have some fried swine with my eggs for breakfast!
In the Israeli program, if you lived with an unbelieving mate, Ezra 10 told you to put that mate away according to the law.
Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 7 that if you have an unbelieving mate, live with them so they might be led to Christ.
The Lord told the rich man to give away all his possessions and follow Him. Paul tells us in 1 Tim. 5:8 that “if any provide not for his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” Tithing was part of the old Mosaic law given to Israel (Lev. 27:30-33).
Paul tells us that God took that old Mosaic law “that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross” (Col 2:14). What Paul teaches about tithing can be found in 2 Cor. 9:7, “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.” That’s grace!
I ask you – how do you reconcile all these contradictions?
There’s only one answer.
Paul is our apostle for today.
I beg you. Please prayerfully consider that what the Lord revealed to us through Paul was entirely different than what had been taught before him, which is why Paul three times talks about “my gospel” (Rom. 2:16; 16:25; 2 Tim. 2:8), because his good news was different than the good news of the kingdom being “at hand.” This is why Paul three times under inspiration of the Holy Spirit tells us to “be ye followers of me” (1 Cor. 4:16; 1 Cor. 11:1; Phil. 3:17), because he is our apostle for today and because Paul’s conversion by grace through faith was to be a “pattern” to all who “should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting” (1 Tim. 1:16).
He’s a pattern because we are in a new “dispensation of the grace of God” (Eph. 3:2), an interruption in the prophetic program in which God is now dispensing His grace to all, Jew and Gentile alike, who come to Him by faith trusting in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ as a payment for all our sins. God revealed this to Paul in a “mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:25-27). We are, therefore, careful to rightly divide the Word of Truth (2 Tim. 2:15). In the Majority Text manuscripts, which is the written Word of God, rightly dividing was accurately translated in the King James Bible from the Greek word, orthotomeo, which means to dissect correctly, or to make a straight cut, or to rightly divide. We must make a straight cut in the Bible between what is spoken to us and what isn’t, between God’s kingdom program for Israel and God’s grace program for us, between prophecy and mystery, between Israel and the church today, the Body of Christ.
And for all of you anti-Paulites out there – consider what the Word of God tells you about the Lord guiding and directing Paul every step of his ministry:
Paul said that the words he wrote were the commandments of the Lord (1 Cor. 14:37). Paul testified that his apostleship was not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ Himself (Gal. 1:1). Paul declared that the gospel he preached was not received from man, neither was he taught it, but he received it by the revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:11-12). The Lord personally appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, appointed him to be a minister and a witness, and promised to appear to him again to reveal further truths (Acts 26:16). Paul said that the Lord specifically sent him to the Gentiles to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light (Acts 26:17-18). The Lord personally commanded Paul to depart from Jerusalem because He would send him far hence unto the Gentiles (Acts 22:17-21). The Holy Ghost expressly directed Paul and Barnabas to be separated unto the work to which He had called them (Acts 13:2-4). The Lord directed Paul through a vision to go into Macedonia to preach the gospel (Acts 16:9-10). The Lord also appeared to Paul in Corinth and commanded him not to be afraid but to speak and hold not his peace (Acts 18:9-10). The Lord also stood by Paul in Jerusalem and assured him that just as he had testified of Him there, he must also bear witness at Rome (Acts 23:11). In addition, Paul testified that he had received of the Lord the very instructions he delivered to the Corinthians concerning the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:23). Paul also declared that he had received a dispensation of the gospel committed unto him (1 Cor. 9:17). Paul testified that the dispensation of the grace of God had been given to him for the Gentiles and that the mystery had been made known unto him by revelation (Eph. 3:1-3). Paul said that the preaching committed unto him was according to the commandment of God our Saviour (Titus 1:3). And Paul explicitly identified himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 1:1).
Paul was not inventing his own theology, establishing his own religious movement, or acting independently of Jesus Christ. He was faithfully carrying out the commission, revelations, and commandments he had received directly from the risen, glorified Lord.
The problem isn’t that Paul invented some new religion that should be rejected. The problem is your need to recognize that Paul is your apostle today.
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