PAUL'S THEOLOGY

How does God communicate? God is a God of revelation. God chooses to make Himself known. A primary tool of communication is the Bible, “the word of God” which reveals to us Jesus, the “Word” of God.

God did not create us to be robotic, but to be relational. In speaking through Paul, God did not bypass Paul’s personality and experiences. Of all the New Testament authors, Paul is the one who has stamped his own personality most unmistakably on his writings.

Join us as we discover God’s desire to make himself known to us through the writings of Paul in our first lesson on Paul’s views on God.

The Bible often speaks about God in terms of humanized traits and ideas so that we can better understand certain aspects of his character and nature. What does the Bible really mean when it calls God our “Father”? For us to understand Paul’s usage of “Father” more fully we need to put ourselves into Paul’s time and culture as best as we can to understand what Paul’s concept of a Father was.

So we start looking at “Father” in its context. We will then consider Paul’s verses that reference God as Father and try to make theological sense of them. This is our second lesson on Paul’s views of God.

Have you ever seen a time when justice was denied? Disregarded? Ignored? That is NOT the kind of judge that Paul understands God to be. It is not the kind of justice that God practices. His justice is not for sale; he is not swayed by the powerful; he does not need to be re-elected.

This week, we turn to consider Paul’s theology on God as Judge as we examine Paul on God – Part 3.

Where is God? Have you ever asked that question? You can’t see him. You can’t touch him. But he is there. In fact, he is more than just ‘there’. God exists not only within the universe, but he also exists independently outside of the universe and outside of space and time. Two terms describe this for us: the immanence of God and the transcendence of God.

Today, in our fourth lesson on Paul’s teaching on God we consider Paul’s theology of God as Creator, as a being both transcendent to the universe and yet also immanent. These are words and concepts worth knowing, so let’s get started!

Prepositions. Do they really matter? How might their use change the meaning of a sentence or phrase?

Seven times in six verses Paul writes about the “faith of Christ.” Does Paul mean our faith in Christ or does he mean the faith that Christ has? Scholars around the globe are debating this issue. We join that debate today in our fourth installment of Paul’s theology on Christ.

Time breeds familiarity, and with familiarity we begin to take for granted those things that were once fresh and new. You're probably doing that right now as you read this on a computer whose technology didn't even exist a generation ago!

For many of us, that has occurred with the label “Christ.” “Christ” is used so often in the Bible, the uninitiated might think it the last name of Jesus!

As we study Paul, we properly stop and ask what it is about the term that was so important to Paul. Why does Paul repeatedly call Jesus the Christ? Why does the label “Christ” flow so effortlessly from Paul’s lips as he dictated his letters? Join us as we consider this in our fifth lesson on Paul’s theology of Christ.