The leaders often came under hardship
All but one of the original disciples who became apostles of Christ after the ascension were executed. John the Apostle was that standout, but he was persecuted. Remember the Island of Patmos (think the Book of Revelation)?
Paul’s experience was not any different: shipwrecked, left for dead, beaten, incarcerated, snake-bit, chased off from one city after another, living in want, rarely living in plenty. Are these things that most leaders gravitate toward?
The leaders exalted someone else
While human hierarchy developed after Christ’s ascension the focus remained upon Jesus. In their areas of influence Peter and Paul each held top positions. These positions, however, were not the sum of their aspirations but the result of God’s involvement in their lives. Throughout the ministry of these men and their associates, the consistent theme was the life of Jesus Christ and what it meant for the world. They promulgated another.
Explaining versus revealing
The content of Paul’s letters was explanatory. “Let me tell you my insight into…the mystery of Christ.” An event happened in Palestine which caught up with Paul on one of his approaches to Damascus. This near zealot in the anti-Jesus movement was poignantly flipped. Paul had to learn what that meant for himself, decide whether or not he would accept it, and then explain it to others.
When he wrote of his insight into things revealed in his generation it was not as if he was learning things in the vacuum of a trance. He was not coming up with new philosophies along some remote wadi along the eastern boundary of the Mediterranean. Paul was not the conduit of new things, but the teacher of how observed things fit.
Paul was explaining a man who came not telling of a new Judaism. No novel doctrines here. His life was going from phenomenon to philosophy. The widespread events which spread anew from John the Baptist’s ministry to the Pentecost and beyond need explanations. Paul was giving them.
Richard Ulrich says
Our aims rise or fall on our claims; and so it is with others. Initially we are told what is “right,” but later on imagination, training, and life’s realities frame our moral and pragmatic foundation of purposeful choices. Emotional and reactive choice may well be more reflexive and less defensible in retrospect.
Charlemagne’s minister of education, Alcuin, in the 800s advocated a basic foundation of the Ten Commandments, The Lord’s Prayer, The Apostle’s Creed. I think he added the Beatitudes, too. Even illiterate individuals could memorize these as enduring, dependable rules of life.
St. Paul’s life changed when Christ became his Foundation. Whether we grow up and into that Foundation (as I did from early childhood) or whether it is dramatic as in John Newton’s life (of Amazing Grace), that is crucial to life now and to eternal life. There are many competing claims and convictions, and it is well we have a reliable core of them.