It can easily be seen that if the accounts of Paul’s conversion in the epistles be accepted, they lend support and give value to the accounts in the Acts of the Apostles; that the consequences of that conversion as previously indicated are in entire harmony with the teaching of the latter part of the Acts, and so we must come to the conclusion that the contents of that book are trustworthy whether Luke be the author or not. And since the Acts of the Apostles purports to be a continuation of the Gospel of Luke, we are led to conclude that the Gospel must be trustworthy also, and that all the Synoptists set forth real facts. Such a conclusion involves the historicity of Jesus Christ.

Our second argument is concerned with The Apologetic Value of the References in Paul’s Epistles to the Person of Christ.

The conversion of Paul admitted as a fact, we have seen that it leads back by degrees to the fact of Christ. But what sort of a Christ? The reader will be struck with the fact that, in these Epistles,

The Earthly Life of the Christ is Represented as Singularly Free from the Miraculous.

He is born of a woman, born under the law (Gal. 4:4); He springs from Israel, and is, according to the flesh, from the tribe of Judah and the seed of David (Rom. 9:5; 1:3); He is unknown to the princes of this world (1 Cor. 2:8); He is poor, hated, persecuted, crucified (2 Cor. 8:9; Gal. 6:14; 1 Cor. 1:23-25; 2:2); He is betrayed at night just after He has instituted the supper (1 Cor. 15:23); He dies on the cross, to which He had been fastened with nails, and is buried (1 Cor. 15:3, 4). This account it will be seen is at one with that of the Synoptists, with the exception that we do not hear of a supernatural birth, nor is there any emphasis placed upon supernatural works. In its main outlines the portrait of the man Jesus agrees perfectly with that of the Synoptic Gospels, and lends credence to the history of the Galilean Prophet. On the other hand,

Christ is Represented as a Being of Ideal Majesty.

The doctrine of Christ’s person as found in these four great epistles is no mere theological speculation; it is the outgrowth of religious experience. Jesus was, for Paul, the Lord because He was the Saviour. Four leading truths with reference to Christ are brought into prominence in his writings:

A. In Relation to Time.

He is God’s Son who was “born of the seed of David according to the flesh”. On the side of His humanity our Lord “was born.” (Rom. 1:2.) That nature begins only then. He is possessed of another nature that dates back long before the incarnation. He is in a peculiar sense God’s “own Son” (Rom. 8:32), belonging to Him above all others, or as Alford well says, “the only one of God’s Sons who is one with Him in nature and essence, begotten of Him before all worlds.” This Son was delivered up for us all. This idea is hinted at in 2 Cor. 8:9: “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor,” and finds full expression in the Epistle to the Philippians (2:5-9), concerning which there is very little controversy. The straggling hints we have in the four great epistles confirm the teaching of the Letter to the Philippians, and above all the classic statement of the Fourth Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word.”

B. In Relation to Man.

Paul says Christ was “made of a woman” (Gal. 4:4), and that He was sent into the world “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3); that is, He came into the world by birth and bore to the eye the aspect of any ordinary man. But though Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, He was not a sinner. He “knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). The mind that was in Him before He came ruled His life after He came. However, Paul regards the resurrection as constituting an important crisis in the experience of Christ. Thereby He was declared to be the Son of God with power (Rom. 1:4), “the man from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47); and yet to Paul, Jesus is a real man, a Jew with Hebrew blood in His veins, a descendant of David. The portrait thus painted agrees perfectly with that of the Evangelists who depict Him as a real man, but, in some strange fashion, different from other men. “His soul was like a star and dwelt apart.”

The Son of David was, for Paul, moreover, “The second man” (1 Cor. 15:47). This title points out Christ as one who has, for His vocation, to undo the mischief wrought by the transgression of the first man. Hence He is called, in sharp contrast to the first man Adam, “a quickening spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45). As the one brought death into the world, so the other brings life (1 Cor. 15:22); and this teaching agrees with the declaration of the Synoptists: “The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost;” “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.”

C. In Relation to the Universe.

He is represented in the Epistle to the Colossians as the Firstborn of all creation, as the Originator of creation as well as its final cause, all things in heaven and on earth visible and invisible, angels included, being made by Him and for Him (Col. 1:15-16). This goes beyond anything found in the four great epistles, yet we may find rudiments of a cosmic doctrine even in these letters. For Paul it was an axiom that the universe has its final aim in Christ its King. (See 1 Cor. 8:6.)

D. In Relation to God.

Paul applies two titles to Christ, “the Son of God” and “the Lord.” Both of these titles are combined in the introduction of the Epistle to the Romans, “His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.” He is “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by a resurrection of the dead” (Rom. 1:4). The most convincing proof of the divinity of Christ Paul found in the resurrection. Writing to the Corinthians he says: “If Christ hath not been raised then is our preaching vain - your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:14-17). He submits to them the proof of his Apostleship in the fact that he has seen “Jesus our Lord” (1 Cor. 9:1). He tells the Galatians that his gospel came “through revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:12), and that Gospel, according to 1 Cor. 15:3-8, contains five elementary facts:

Christ died for our sins;

He was buried;

He rose on the third day;

He appeared to many disciples, and

Last of all, He appeared to Paul himself.

These are the things that are vital in Paul’s preaching. When we remember that, as a Pharisee, his prejudices were all against the Gospel, we must come to the conclusion that Paul’s testimony argues most strongly for the historicity of the resurrection and the truths involved therein.

It may not be out of place to re-iterate what has already been stated regarding Paul’s use of the expression, “His own Son,” in Rom. 8:3. This passage deals with the brotherhood of sons. Jesus, amid the multitudes having the right to call themselves sons of God, is an unique figure, towering above them all. In 2 Cor. 4:4 it is stated that Christ is the image of God, and in Rom. 8:29 it is said that the destiny of believers is to be conformed to the image of God’s Son. The ideal for Christians is to bear the image of Christ. For Christ Himself is reserved the distinction of being the image of God. This throws a side light upon Paul’s idea of Christ’s sonship.

He is represented as the one Lord by whom or on account of whom are all things (1 Cor. 8:6). According as accepted as the reading, Jesus is the Creator of all things or furnishes the Divine reason for creation. The groaning of the creation in labor for the bringing forth of a new redeemed world is a graphic picture of the relation of Christ’s redemptive work to the physical universe. (Rom. 8:22.) It is true that this teaching goes beyond that of the Gospels in some particulars, but it agrees with John’s Gospel when it teaches the creatorship of the Logos. (John 1:3.)

In 1 Cor. 8:5, 6, the term “Lord” gains equal significance to that of “Son”. In view of pagan polytheism, the Apostle sets one over against the many of paganism, and one real Lord over against all. It would seem by this inscription that the Apostle desired to introduce Christ into the sphere of the truly Divine.

The famous benediction at the close of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians implies a very high conception of Christ’s person and position. One could scarcely believe that Paul would use such a collocation of phrases as the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, unless Christ had been for him a Divine Being, even God. Now all this simply adds force to John’s prologue: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

The four great Pauline epistles agree, in the most important details, with the portraiture given us of Jesus in the Gospels. The conception of the person of Christ, as we have already shown, was not natural to Paul. He was a bitter opponent of Christianity. It was not the result of gradually changing convictions regarding the claims of Jesus Christ - all the testimony which bears upon the subject implies the contrary. It was not due to extreme mysticism, for Paul’s writings impress us as being remarkably sane and logical. No endeavor to account for it upon merely natural grounds is satisfactory, and so we must accept his own statement of the case. The truth of the Messiahship of Jesus was a matter of revelation in the experience of his conversion, and if we accept that, we must necessarily accept all that it involves. The Gospels and Epistles do not contradict, but only supplement this protraiture. They add lines of beauty to the rugged outline painted by Paul, and are inextricably connected with the four great epistles. Accepting these letters as genuine and Paul’s explanation of his doctrine as true, we must accept the whole of the New Testament documents as credible, and the portraiture of the Christ as that of a real person - Son of man and Son of God, the God-Man.

THE FUNDAMENTALS: A TESTIMONY TO THE TRUTH

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