My Goal For This Series

Thank you for joining me for Part 1 of this multi-episodic series on The Apostle Paul.

This being part-one of the series, we’ll lay the ground-work for understanding the man beneath the apostleship.

In succeeding installments, we’ll examine portions of Paul’s writings from a Torah Observant Believer in Yeshua Messiah’s perspective. Of course, we’ll pay particular attention to his hard to understand texts as well as his seeming anti-Torah passages.

There are a couple reasons why I’ve chosen to embark on this rather monumental series on the life and work of Paul.

 

Paul’s Anti-Torah Writings Too Difficult to Understand

1. To examine the many difficult and challenging writings Paul composed during his apostolic tenure. These difficult and challenging passages include those written in hard to understand prose as well as those nagging, seeming anti-Torah, uber-grace passages we’ve all grown to love and hate. 

I have received numerous inquiries from Torah Observant Believer in Yahoshua Messiah about certain Pauline passages that on the surface appear as anti-Torah. Those who have inquired of me as to those passages’ true meaning were either struggling with certain doubts they were having regarding the relevance of Torah in their lives after coming across those passages; or they sought defense against those who they feared would use those passages to discredit them and their Faith.

We will see in this series that these alleged anti-Torah passages, when subjected to a little digging, research and simple contextual analysis, end up not at all being anti-Torah.

Personality Conflicts Related to Paul

2. Paul is often seen as a “persona non grata” by some in our Faith Community in part because of the personality that Paul paints of himself in his very own writings.  I hope to show that Paul was a very complex individual and if one is to gain a full understanding of his teachings and writings, he/she must understand as much about the man beneath the apostleship as possible.

Another silly concern expressed by some is that Paul was a stuffy, intellectual elite who was arrogant and not likable. When I hear or read of such concerns and controversies expressed in and around the Messianic—Hebrew Roots Communities, I can only shake my head. It becomes crystal clear to me that man bible readers have intentionally or unintentionally denied Paul any degree of humanity. We tend to forget that the men who wrote the books of our bible, although true converts of the True Faith once delivered, were still human beings.

Credibility Issues Surrounding Paul and His Ministry

3. Paul is believed by some in our community as not a credible apostle. Such claims include: 

Paul is a false apostle for a number of reasons. We will find in this series that such accusations leveled at the legitimacy of Paul’s apostleship cannot be taken seriously; at least not from a contextually biblical standpoint.

Some accuse Paul of being a liar. This accusation is born out of the seeming contradictions surrounding his Road to Damascus Experience and conversion. In this series we will see that such contradictions and controversies actually come down to how the facts are laid out in the various biblical accounts.

Next is the accusation that Paul was hated by the other apostles. We will find that there is no biblical support for such a claim.

 What Really Matters Concerning Paul and His Writings?

So it behooves us to set aside such petty concerns and accusations and focus on those issues surrounding Paul and his ministry that really matter.

 

 

Personal Reflections of the Apostle Paul

I officially came to this Faith Community back in 2005 . I began my journey in the Faith attending two-Worldwide Church of God splinter congregations—United Church of God and Church of God International.

The Church of God congregations I affiliated with during those early years provided me the foundation of Biblical Truth I needed to make a modicum of sense out of this new Faith Community I had newly entered.

The indoctrination I received from the Southern Baptist Church of my youth was what I sometimes refer to as “Pauline Christianity” (the phrase of which I did not coin).

Pauline Christianity Versus True Christianity

Pauline Christianity as I define the phrase is somewhat of a misnomer. “Pauline Christianity” is NOT the Christianity that the Apostle Paul was associated with. The “Pauline Christianity” I’m referring to is actually a Hellenistic Christianity. Hellenistic Christianity is built upon gross misinterpretations of the doctrine of grace. This form of Christianity for all intents and purposes is a gutted, hollowed out shell of True Christianity. The Apostle Paul helped introduce to the Gentile world the “true Faith once delivered.”

Hebrew Roots–The Missing Element in Orthodox Christianity

Hellenic Christianity/Pauline Christianity/Orthodox Christianity is devoid of the Hebraic elements of the True Faith once delivered. According to Jude, by the end of that century, certain ungodly individuals had sleezed into the Body of Messiah unnoticed. These shysters systematically turned the grace of our Father into “a license for debauchery. These individuals ultimately began disowning even Master Yahoshua Messiah” (Jud.1:4; CJB).

This heinous endeavor and agenda is “syncretism” (ie., the amalgamation or attempted amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought (Google diction)).  Their dubious efforts ultimately led to a complete stripping away of all Hebrew elements of the Faith once delivered. The stripped away Hebraic elements were replaced with a reformulated and repackaged doctrine of grace.

The Grace Perversion Replaced The Hebraic Elements of the True Faith

This reformulated grace was no longer a means to an end, Grace became Christianity’s whole kit and caboodle. Grace ceased being the means by which Torah Observant Believers in Yahoshua Messiah could powerfully walk-out their Faith in the pagan-rich world they lived. This reformulated grace became the pedigree and license by which all believers in Jesus Christ could live as they so willed.

Despite this lawless freedom, Christians could only live within the edicts and oversight of the established corporate Church system. Sprinkle a good amount of paganistic influence and add a double-portion of anti-Jewish sentiment on top of this devolving mess and you end up with a brand new religion.

 Paul the Scapegoat for Hellenistic Christianity

Replacing Hebraic Christianity required a solid scapegoat. That scapegoat would need to be a part of the founding of the Faith. Although that scapegoat should be one of the founding group leaders, he would have to be ideologically separate from the core leadership. Such an ideological separation would justify the start of a split away from the Faith’s Hebrew origins. I contend that the Apostle Paul was fingered to be that scapegoat. He innocently became Christianity’s “Manchurian Candidate.”

Why was Paul such an ideal scapegoat for the Roman Christian Church? I believe for many of the reasons he is so revered by orthodox Christianity and reviled by many Hebrew Rooters and Messianics. We will look at some of those reasons in coming installments of this series.

I’ve Come Full Circle With Paul

As it relates to Paul and his Apostolic work, for me, I’ve come full-circle. Having been raise in the Southern Baptist church, Paul’s writings held as much (and in some cases more) biblical weight and authority than Jesus Christ and God Himself. Paul was THE MAN to me. You simply did not counter or question anything he wrote. Forget that some of his stuff at times seemed to contradict other passages of the Bible. Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles.

When I came into Hebrew Roots in my mid-40’s, and began to see the importance of keeping Torah, I began to have little to no use for Paul and his writings. Sure, many of the teachers and preachers I listened to those early years explained to the best of their ability that Paul really didn’t mean that Torah was done away with. According to these teachers and preachers, what Paul was really talking about was Jewish Laws and traditions (what I later learned was the so-called Oral Law or Oral Tradition). Although I fully understood what these teachers and preachers were saying, I still wasn’t fully convinced that Paul was on the up and up.

Towards the end of my time in the Churches of God, I developed a severe anti-Paul mindset. This anti-Paul mindset was helped along by my reading of certain books and website content. The content I was consuming suggested, through manipulation of certain portions of the New Testament and extra-Biblical literature, that Paul was actually a subversive of the true Faith. I soon became convinced that Paul was somehow planted in the original Faith and that his writings were intentionally inserted into our Bibles for sinister purposes.

I struggled with this distrust of Paul and his writings for about a good year or so. This crazy mindset that I possessed led me to reject just about all the New Testament, with the exception of the Gospels. I soon found myself becoming solely focused on Torah. I was heading down a path to Orthodox Judaism and even Kabbalah.

It was by the grace of Almighty Yah that I came to my spiritual senses. At this point in my spiritual journey I was introduced to the teachings of a small handful of Biblically-grounded, Torah Observant teachers of the True Gospel. I came to understand a lot more about Paul than I ever knew about him in my life of Faith up to that point.

Fortunately, I came to learn how to effectively study Scripture. I learned the importance of taking into account the societal, religious, historical, archaeological, textual, and last but not least, the spiritual in my studies of all scripture. It then became clear to me that my failure to put biblical writings into their proper contextual paradigm was the root cause of my issues with Paul and his writings.

The Plague of Biblical Illiteracy

I will go out on a limb and suggest that this failure to contextualize passages of Scripture is a root cause of the biblical illiteracy problem plaguing both Orthodox Christianity and Hebrew Roots today. True lovers of Abba’s Word must always keep the adage of “context-context-context” in the forefront of their minds whenever delving into the riches of Scriptures. It’s the only way, in conjunction with the revelatory assistance of the Holy Spirit, to accurately understand what any writer was trying to get across to his readers. [I discuss this the problem of Biblical Illiteracy in my podcast installment entitled “Biblical Illiteracy is Behind the Anti-Hebrew Roots Agenda” and my blog post entitled “Understanding the Bible.”]

Context-Context-Context

Orthodox Christianity has for centuries taken the writings of the Apostle Paul grossly out of context. Christianity has overlooked or ignored timely critical factors prompting his writings. Thus, the Church Triumphant has formulated countless doctrines and traditions using individual, single scriptural verses (ie., scriptural soundbites). This has divided and confused the Body of Messiah.

 

Paul Falsely Accused and Disgracefully Imprisoned by Both Faith Communities

Sadly, Paul has been falsely accused, by all sides, of spiritual crimes that he did not commit. Indeed, Paul is the ultimate scapegoat of Christianity and Hebrew Roots. He stands erroneously accused of spiritual crimes from both the defense and prosecution.

Is it not time that Paul be released from religiosity prison? Has not his imprisonment been based on centuries of phony, trumped up charges of spiritual improprieties and manipulation?

Let Us Reason Together Regarding Paul’s Teachings and Writings

Instead of ignoring or rejecting Paul and his writings because we don’t have a firm understanding of him and his work; or elevating Paul above Father and Yeshua and adopting Pauline Christianity because it feels good and works best for our personal situation, why don’t we follow Father’s eternal wisdom and reason together? As people of Faith, we are compelled to employ the Hebraic mindset of reasoning together to settle our disagreements and answer any nagging questions.

Paul himself employed reason in his spreading of the Gospel message. Luke records at least three occasions in which Paul reasoned with those he engaged in discourse about the Gospel of the Kingdom:

“And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures” (Act. 17:2; KJV).

 

“And he (Paul) reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks” (Act. 18:4; KJV).

 

“And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come, Felix trembled and answer, ‘Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee” (Act. 24:25; KJV).

Even our heavenly Father stepped back for just a bit and enjoined the Judeans of Isaiah’s day to reason with Him regarding their sinful-state of being:

“Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it” (Isa. 1:14-20; KJV).

This is the mindset that we must possess when we look at Paul’s body of work. We cannot blindly accept what Paul’s writings appear to be plainly saying to our Western, Greek-mindsets. It is critically important that we take into account what the whole of Scripture says in context with the passage in question and what we know about the situation on the ground at the time Paul was delivering his message.

A Drought of Spiritual Discernment Regarding the Teachings and Writings of Paul

Most of the apostolic writings—in particular the writings of Paul–are often difficult to understand by God’s people because we often lack spiritual discernment. Sadly, and this may come across as mean or insulting, but it is truthful none-the-same. Many of us are unlearned when it comes to the Scriptures. The “unlearned” state that many of us find ourselves in puts us at risk of perishing for that lack of understanding. This is exactly what Peter was talking about when he wrote:

“And think of our Lord’s patience as deliverance, just as our dear brother Sha’ul also wrote you, following the wisdom God gave him. Indeed, he speaks about these things in all his letters. They contain some things that are hard to understand, things which the uninstructed and unstable distort, to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2Pe 3:15, 16 CJB).

It is obvious from Peter’s writing here that there were members of the Body of Messiah who were having a difficult time understanding some of Paul’s writings, even in his day. I submit that this is one of the main reasons behind some of the controversies surrounding Paul and his writings.

Would-be Believers who don’t get their issues with Paul properly sorted out in due time will find themselves in spiritual harm’s way because they end up turning away from the true commandments of Yah and the teachings of Yeshua Messiah.

We will stop and pick-up here next installment.

Until then, I bid you warm blessings and best shalom. Take care.