Right now I am in the midst of getting ready to go to Mexico. I will be there for most of the next three months, teaching once again at El Seminario Presbiteriano de San Pablo, in Merida, Yucatan. This time I will be helping in a class on Homiletics (Preaching) for the fourth year theology students and offering a class on the Pauline Epistles (Letters of Paul) to the second year theology students. Nancy will be with me much of the time, which will be very nice!

I have had the privilege of participating in the life of this seminary for about a dozen years, and each time am refreshed, challenged and invigorated by it. The dedication of the staff and students is something our seminaries could learn from, and the impact of the school on churches throughout the Yucatan Peninsula is another. The school lacks some resources that we in our setting take for granted, but it goes on without them and does a wonderful work.

This time, as my world is freer than it has been, I will be spending enough time there to be a part of the school, not just a visitor, which will be nice. I am afforded the luxury of living with Dave and Jean Legters, right on the seminary property, which is a wonderful gift and a bonus in reduced travel time and more time with students and the Legters themselves. My Spanish needs some brushing up, I am sure, but by the time I leave I probably will be ready to begin…Just the way it goes.

In preparing for the class on Paul’s letters I have been revisiting, revising and expanding some of the material which I have presented several times before, both at Clarkston and Calvin. The theme The People of God has always seemed to me to be an appropriate theme in presenting the entire sweep of Biblical history, and the material on Paul is part of the last of six semesters I have developed for this sweep. This last semester is called The Triumph of the People of God, and The Faith of the People of God covers the part of the New Testament I will be teaching in Mexico.

Since my days in seminary (long ago) there have been important advances in Biblical studies, some of which have cast new light on the person and work of Paul. One of the most significant is the recognition that Paul’s religious identity, while always recognized as that of a Pharisee, was most likely that of a particular kind of Pharisee, a Shammaite. In the New Testament period there was a moderate branch of Pharisees which followed arguably the greatest rabbi of all time, Rabbi Hillel. Gamiliel, the rabbi under whom Paul studied, was of this branch. But there was another branch, one which followed a much more radical cleric, Rabbi Shammai. The former branch was in power in the ruling body of Judaism, the Sanhedrin, but the latter made its influence felt in the society as a whole. The former stood for cooperation but the latter for confrontation. Shammaites wanted complete separation of Jews from all non-Jewish peoples, absolute freedom from any foreign powers, strict obedience to the Torah among Jews, and they were zealous to the point of violent in their pursuit of those ends. Scholars place Paul within this group.

What this meant was that Paul would stop at nothing to purify his people from foreign threats or internal compromise—including persecuting those who were straying from the truth, such as those who followed Jesus. It was with that intent that he traveled to Damascus, and that intent which was radically altered when he was met by the risen Christ. At that moment Paul was forced to see, not that his Jewish conviction was wrong but that it was completed in Jesus. Jesus was the One the prophets had talked about, the One who was to come at the End of the Age, the Messiah who would usher in a New Age—an age in which the non-Jewish peoples would be brought to the light.
Isaiah 60:1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. 2 See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. 3 Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

And that mission to the Gentiles became Paul’s goal and his mission, a mission to which he gave himself with the same complete zeal and abandonment that he had given to his prior mission. What Israel had been given from the beginning call to Abraham was always meant to be a blessing for the whole world, but Israel had failed to fully grasp or implement that call. But now was the time to get on with it. Now was the time to see to it that the whole world would hear and that all the nations would come to the Light of the World, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the entire universe—the God who appeared, served and returned in Jesus Christ.

As I visit the character and ministry of Paul in this light, I am reminded of the charge of the Risen Lord to his church today. It is just the same—to get the gospel out to all peoples, to those nearby and those far away. It is not a charge that includes an invitation to Shamaaite violence, nor to the violence that accompanies some religious zealots today. But it includes the same Shamaaite commitment, the same Shamaaite intensity, the same Shamaaite zeal… This charge is the primary mission of the church, just as it always has been, and it’s pursuit of this mission is the basis of the judgment which will be made of each church and each believer when the End of the Age reaches its culmination in the return of the Son of Man. It is my prayer that we each may have this commitment, this intensity, and this mission…