Paul & social work & life

28 reasons I want to be like Paul in my social work & life: 

(Derived from a blog post written by John piper on October 17 2016.) 

1. Paul’s soul was marked by the beautiful interweaving of enormous powers of reason and profound capacities for emotion, both of which he put in the service of others.

2. Paul combined a passion for God’s pervasive, providential rule over the whole world (Ephesians 1:11; Romans 8:28; 11:36), with a deep commitment to personal, human action and responsibility (1 Corinthians 15:10; Philippians 2:12–13).

3. Paul could manifest the most tender affection in dealing with his churches (1 Corinthians 1:4–9), without losing the ability to be utterly blunt and forceful when necessary (1 Corinthians 11:17).

4. Paul only rarely referred to the extraordinary divine revelations that he had (2 Corinthians 12:2–5), and never used them to boast, but wanted people to hear and believe only what he taught them and showed them with his letters and his life (2 Corinthians 1:12; 12:9-10; Philippians 3:17; 4:9).

5. Paul’s personal connectedness to individuals was remarkable, given how seldom he saw some of his friends, and how lofty his thoughts and position in the church were. In Romans 16:1–16 alone, he names 29 friends.

6. He treasured his fellow believers with an extraordinary esteem, calling them his joy and crown (Philippians 4:1), but did not flatter (1 Thessalonians 2:5), and was unafraid to rebuke his closest partners (Galatians 2:11–14).

7. Paul’s understanding of human nature was profound, not only in its libertine (Romans 1:24–32) and legalistic (Romans 2:1–5, 17–24) and original (Romans 5:12–21; Ephesians 2:1–3) forms of sinfulness, but also in its capacities for redeemed beauty and love and destiny (Philippians 2:15; 1 Thessalonians 1:2–10; 1 Corinthians 3:21–23).

8. Paul says that he personally saw the risen Lord Jesus (1 Corinthians 9:1; 15:8). Yet he rarely brings this up, and does not make it the usual means by which he commends the truth and beauty of what he teaches. He does not pull rank, so to speak, by preempting people’s serious assessment of the self-authenticating truth and beauty of what he writes about (2 Corinthians 4:4–6). 

9. Paul did not minimize or make light of his sufferings (2 Corinthians 1:8–10), but he was not embittered by them. Instead, he found a contentment in God’s merciful purposes in them (Romans 5:3–4; 2 Corinthians 12:10).

10. In all the authority and esteem that Paul held in the early church (1 Corinthians 14:37–38), and with all the expectations that he would meet the spiritual needs of others (Philippians 3:1), nevertheless he practiced what he preached when he said that no Christian can say to others, “I have not need of you” (1 Corinthians 12:21). He yearned for the encouragement and strengthening he received from others (Romans 1:12; 1 Thessalonians 2:17–20; 3:8).

11. Though Paul knew that he was inspired by the Holy Spirit as a teacher in the church with Christ’s authority (1 Corinthians 2:12–13; 1 Corinthians 14:37–38), nevertheless he was utterly submitted to the Old Testament Scriptures as God’s authority in his life. He did not let unparalleled spiritual experience nullify the authority of Scripture (Romans 3:2; 2 Timothy 3:16).

12. Even though Paul could have boasted in his superiority over most in his generation (Philippians 3:3–6), and even though his rank in the church was as high as it gets, next to Christ (1 Corinthians 9:1), nevertheless he looked on earthly privileges as worthless compared to the preciousness of personally knowing Jesus (Philippians 3:7–8).

13. Paul was not naïve about the vastness of human misery and suffering in the world, and the explanation that he taught was both personal in its application to individual Christians (Romans 8:18, 23) and universal in its cosmic scope of redemption (Romans 8:19–22).

14. Though Paul confessed that the ways of God are inscrutable and his judgments are unsearchable (Romans 11:33), nevertheless he does not stay in the lowlands of divine revelation, but leads us up into the heights of God’s ways and judgments (Romans 9–11), so that when we put our hands over our mouths, it is not because we are amazed at the Appalachians but at the Alps — not at his arithmetic, but his calculus. 

15. Though Paul could deal in the deepest and highest “unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8), nevertheless his burden was to awaken and sustain in all Christians “a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3); and so he “behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God” (2 Corinthians 1:12).

16. Paul did not oversimplify the complexities of Christian freedom and submission. He practiced his own call to all Christians to be subject to proper human authorities (Romans 13:1–4; Ephesians 5:22–6:9), and yet he lived and preached the truth that only in Christ is there true freedom (Galatians 5:1; 1 Corinthians 7:22) —“free from all” and “servant to all” (1 Corinthians 9:19).

17. Not only could Paul think and write at the most demanding intellectual level (Romans), but he also could write poetically, beautifully, and with such universal appeal that, for example, 1 Corinthians 13 is one of the most widely quoted paeans to love in the world.

18. Though Paul was driven by an extraordinary ambition — “to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named” (Romans 15:20) — nevertheless he was not a lone-wolf kind of leader who needed no friends. He never travelled alone, and when forced to be left alone at Athens, he gave “command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible” (Acts 17:15; see also 2 Corinthians 7:6).

19. Paul was probably one of the most effective and fruitful missionaries in the history of the Christian church. He could say near the end of his life, “From Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. . . . I no longer have any room for work in these regions” (Romans 15:19, 23), and yet his only boast was relentlessly in Christ and not himself. “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me” (Romans 15:18; see also 1 Corinthians 3:5–8).

20. Paul gave us the most beautiful picture of marriage in the New Testament in Ephesians 5:22–33, but for the sake of total devotion to his ministry, and because of his innumerable sufferings, he did not marry (1 Corinthians 9:5; 7:35). 

21. Paul spoke in tongues more than any Christian he knew (1 Corinthians 14:18), but he mentions it only once, and in spite of this remarkable behind-the-scenes experience of the Holy Spirit, he never exalts himself because of such experiences, but boasts in his weaknesses and sufferings, which he said were meant to keep him humble (2 Corinthians 12:1–10).

22. For all the magnificent aims Paul could have articulated for his churches, he was willing to say, “We work with you for your joy” (2 Corinthians 1:24), and, “I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith” (Philippians 1:25). His joy in Christ was deep and his aim was “that my joy would be the joy of you all” (2 Corinthians 2:3).

23. In all his passion for truth and doctrinal maturity (Ephesians 4:13–15), Paul relentlessly carried a practical burden for the poor and collected funds for them throughout his ministry (Galatians 2:10; 1 Corinthians 16:1). 

24. In spite of Paul’s intense jealousy for gospel accuracy (Galatians 1:6–9), he was astonishingly tolerant of those whose motives in preaching the true gospel were defective, even those who wanted to hurt him (Philippians 1:15–18).

25. Although he was a “Hebrew of Hebrews,” with an impeccable religious and ethnic pedigree (Philippians 3:3–6; 2 Corinthians 11:22), he passionately worked for reconciliation and unity among Christians of different classes and ethnic backgrounds (Ephesians 2:13–20; Colossians 3:11).

26. Paul took the devil seriously (Ephesians 6:10–20; 2 Corinthians 11:3), but never let him dominate the Christian life. Nor did he ever portray him as the lurking cause behind every sin. Human responsibility dominates his treatment of sin, and the devil is a real, but defeated, foe (Colossians 2:13–15).

27. For all his indefatigable activity in the service of Christ (2 Corinthians 11:23–33), Paul showed us how to “always pray” by praying in his letters over and over (Colossians 1:9–12; Ephesians 1:15–23; 3:14–19; Philippians 1:9–11).

28. Paul’s amazing contentment was paradoxically in “facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need” (Philippians 4:12). Therefore, he was not controlled by a need for money. His ministry was not a “pretext for greed” (1 Thessalonians 2:5). He rested in the promise, “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).