Interpreting the Cross - Essay Example

Before his conversion, he knew that Jesus had been crucified, and he took it to prove that Jesus has been disowned by God and rightly rejected by Jewish leaders. Once converted, he saw in the Cross a quite different meaning; in the light of the Resurrection, it had a positive and central place in a message that claimed the faith of men ( I Cor. 2:2). But it had that place and meaning only because the Resurrection supplied the interpreting fact that gave the Cross its true place in the Christian message.

The Bible mentions this event as "Saul, who is also called Paul" (Acts 13:9). It is possible to say that a new name means a new life for this person. It means a new destiny and mentality. It is important to note the role of the human mind in the guidance of the Spirit. The Spirit comes into a life, the mind must abdicate. Paul indicates that in the church at Corinth, prophets regularly took part in services of worship and that he himself had and exercised this gift ( I Cor. 12:10). The Spirit gave prophetic guidance to the church in crises and also in more regular services of worship.

The preaching of the church tells a story and interprets it. It uses the mind; it challenges the mind as well as the imagination and the will. Worship, too, involves at least some recognition of the truth of the message; faith includes mental action. Also, it is possible to assume that a new name helps Saul to escape revenge from those people he committed to prison. The new name means a new spirit and soul, a new attitude towards people and the world. The Spirit guides in the choice of leaders; the Spirit gives them competence and power for their work.

Patient endurance of wrong was no doubt an effective witness to bystanders. In view of the great amount of ill-treatment which the early Christians received, we might have expected repeated emphasis on this point, but in fact, it is almost never mentioned. This was what the Spirit prompted men to do. Paul could think of no higher privilege and duty than to preach the gospel, and so he left baptizing to his helpers and concentrated on presenting the gospel to men and pressing them to put their faith in Christ.

The Bible depicts that The apostles began at Jerusalem; they stubbornly stayed there ( Acts 8:1); only the rough hand of persecution scattered the church and taught it that Gentiles too would receive the gospel. It was not the Twelve but the Greek-speaking Jewish Christians who traveled the way to the gentile lands and peoples. Even they had to be scattered by persecution, and even then it was, humanly speaking, almost by accident that they found Gentiles equally open to the gospel message ( Acts 11:19-26).

But they took the step, and they followed it up. The apostle Paul emerged as the master statesman of the gentile mission and became the supreme theological and literary defender of that step. Once he had fought out to a successful conclusion his claim.