Episode 80 Show Notes
Jesus Was Born to Save His People
From the Show
Michael Horton: One of the things that strikes me about Paul’s letters worth saying generally is that he can't say hello without immediately doing the gospel. He could turn the weather report into an avenue of talking about the gospel. It was just always at the forefront of his mind. So, a lot of these load stars we're looking at are actually in the salutation of the letter. Hi, my name is Paul. I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ who is God in the flesh, who came to save us from our sins and so forth. The very first verse of 1 Corinthians 15, which most New Testament scholars believe is one of the earliest writings of the New Testament, Paul says that I am passing on to you what I received, which is of first importance that Jesus Christ was crucified, buried, rose again, appeared to the disciples, first Peter, then the other disciples, and then as to one untimely born to me on the Damascus Road.
And there were 500 people who witnessed him in his post resurrection appearances and so forth. This is of first importance he says. Why does Paul start with the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and move from there, to him being the incarnate son of God and he kind of starts from below and works towards the conclusion that Jesus is God?
Adriel Sanchez: It sort of seems to suggest that the message of the gospel is the foundation of everything in the church, doesn’t it? And I think that the Apostle Paul actually says as much in other places like Ephesians 2 where he talks about the church being built on the apostles and prophets with a message of the apostles and prophet which was the message of the Lord, Jesus Christ and his kingdom, his death, burial and resurrection, the gospel that you brought up there in 1 Corinthians 15.
Caleb Bassett: I like how you mentioned that Paul maybe never made small talk. You get the impression that he didn’t want people to meet him. He wanted people to meet Christ and he knew that you meet Christ by the message of Christ in his dying and his resurrection and he's going to start with that. Once that’s been established and you understand the good news of what this means, he can start to talk to you in the greater detail, the theological detail that Paul loves to go into about just who is this person who saved you and why does this matter.
Justin Holcomb: This language of being born of a woman is also harkening back to Genesis when you have the promise of the seed of woman will crush the head of the serpent. He's making this point of really human, born of a woman and the implications for that, connecting it to the fulfillment of the promise… What's noteworthy about bringing up the law here also is the way the Galatians were dealing with the law. They're doing some type of legalistic superstition and the way Paul describes it as these people are in slate. So, you know, he's talking to some of the people who are misusing Mosaic Law as some type of legalistic superstition or pagan religions with some of their demonic domination.
There's the idea of slavery and the one born under the law is the one who redeems, but also frees. The effect of that is the adoption, that we might receive the adoption as sons, which is both an Old Testament idea, the concept of God calling Israel his son, is also being combined with the Roman notion of adopting a son, usually a grown man, in order to designate him as an heir to all of the family wealth. So, all over this work of redeeming us from slavery, those who are enslaved by legalistic superstitions or demonic religion, we are brought in this idea of adoption is the effect of all of his work.
Resources
5 Ways God Is a Father to the Fatherless
3 Ways Jesus' Death Matters for Your Life
7 Ways Jesus Fulfilled Prophecy At His Advent
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