THE ENTRANCE OF PAUL OF TARSUS

The clash between the Messianic and Transcendent views of Yeshua comes to its forte in the ministry of Paul. Everyone understands of course that Paul’s first level conflict was with unbelieving Jews—that is, Jews who did not believe Yeshua was the Messiah. But it’s as important to understand that Paul’s conflict was equally great with Messianics who did believe Yeshua was the Messiah, but who also believed Gentiles and Jews alike must remain linked to various facets of the Mosaic Law (Torah) and/or Jewish culture.

Paul’s writings—which consume the lion’s share of the New Testament (also as ordered by the Holy Spirit)—clearly refute the Messianic advocacy for a remaining New Covenant linkage to the Jewish legal heritage (which we will verify). Yet also, as central and deciding as Paul was in defining the faith contrary to the Messianic view, we should be able to tell by now that he did not author the ideas of Jewish heritage denial and Legal release, nor did he begin the progression of events that brought the Gentiles into the faith of Christ outside the Jewish cultural framework.

- Paul’s Conversion and Calling

It’s in the tumultuous period between Stephen’s stoning and Peter’s visit to Cornelius, when the Holy Spirit is shifting the gospel’s dynamic away from Jerusalem and Judaism, that Yeshua Himself arrests Saul of Tarsus (later called Paul) on the Damascus Road. At that very first encounter, Yeshua personally reveals to Paul the transracial nature of the mission he will fulfill (Ac. 26:17-18). Yet the context developed before his conversion and eventual release into ministry proves that Paul’s unique appointment as apostle to the Gentiles and his crucial role as the definer of the gospel contrary to the Messianic view of Yeshua was not an aberration nor occurred in a spiritual vacuum.

The unspeakably potent and provocative nature of Paul’s spirit and message is explained by the presence of two polarized elements at his spiritual birthing. The first is that, unlike any of The Twelve, Paul originated from the party of the Pharisees—the “brood of vipers”—the most virulently opposed of all Jews to Yeshua and the least likely to ever come to genuine repentant conversion in His name.

The second element is that, also unlike the Twelve, Paul received his vision of Yeshua with absolutely no prior human contact with or faith in Him as the Son of Man. Paul had his direct encounter only with the risen transcendent glorified Son of God—and such a blinding encounter it was! This single fact explains Paul’s unyielding contrariness to Messianism. Paul never had a Messianic view of Yeshua because he never knew Him as a Jew.

As a recent persecutor of the church, and certainly as one who had never walked with Yeshua during the years of His humanity together with the other apostles, Paul had clear obstacles to overcome just to be received as a believer, never mind an “apostle” on par with the Jerusalem apostles. How utterly improbable!

Yet the improbability of a man from the most humanly opposed party to Yeshua obtaining the most transcendent vision of Yeshua given to that hour, and so totally apart from those who followed Yeshua in His humanity, was exactly what Yeshua ordered to give focus, definition and point leadership to the transnational dynamic He had initiated at Stephen’s stoning.

Having commandeered a “Pharisee of the Pharisees” (i.e., a “viper of the vipers”) with the most transcendent vision of Himself ever given, Yeshua now had at His disposal a vessel with all the legal knowledge of a Pharisee with the capability to

-         articulate for all mankind the precise nature of and spiritual legalities associated with the transcendent gospel (something of which the Jerusalem apostles were not capable),

-         become the new point channel for Yeshua’s race-free, Law-free transcendence to the nations (which He could not accomplish with the Jerusalem apostles), and

-         skillfully face the immature adherents of the Messianic view (including the Jerusalem apostles!), as well as resist the intimidatingly articulate Pharisaic poisoners of the Messianic view (“those of the circumcision”) with the truth of Yeshua’s transcendence.

·        Under the Anointing of Stephen

To say that Paul received the most transcendent vision of Yeshua known to that hour and that he received his gospel in isolation is not to admit that Paul had no prior influence paving the way in his heart to receive it. It is not to say he had no “spiritual lineage.” To the contrary, Paul was actually “inseminated” via the testimony of the very man in whose martyrdom he had only recently assisted!  

Everyone knows that Saul of Tarsus attended the trial and stoning of Stephen. But the connection between what happened at that trial and what happened to Saul afterward is little perceived. As the Pharisee Saul—Paul was greatly influenced by Stephen’s defense, trial and martyrdom. Though he revolted against Stephen’s words and turned to become a persecutor of the church, the record clearly shows that Paul’s ministry was established through a transfer of the anointing that was on Stephen, and that Paul’s rage against the church was due to the hidden goads deposited in his spirit from Stephen’s testimony.

The evidences of an anointing transfer are outstanding. First, Paul received a vision of Yeshua on the same order of magnitude as Stephen did at his stoning. In that vision, Yeshua referred to the goads now in his heart, goads acquired only from Stephen’s testimony—which he could no more resist than Stephen’s other opponents could. Next, Paul’s first presentation to a Galatian synagogue (Ac. 13:16-41) is modeled on Stephen’s defense oration. His later teaching on the replacement of the Law hearkens back to Stephen’s testimony about the change in the Law.

Finally, Paul’s numerous near-martyrdom (and final martyrdom) experiences (especially his stoning at Lystra), also betray the anointing for martyrdom that was upon Stephen. The rage Paul evoked in his Jewish audiences (especially his last time in Jerusalem [Ac. 22:23]) precisely mirrors the rage evoked by Stephen at his trial!

·        In the Footsteps of John the Baptist

If we trace the spiritual lineage of both Paul and Stephen further back, we will really find that both followed in the fiery train of John the Baptist, who also held a transcendent view of Yeshua in his heart. Paul became the refined, skillfully educated voice of John to the same class of Pharisees that had once checked out John in the wilderness.

What John was to the Pharisees of Israel, Paul was to the new Messianic Pharisees of the church of Yeshua, particularly those of the Jerusalem church. What for John was the “ax laid to the root of the tree” was for Paul the “cross” laid to the root of human heritage. Paul’s inheriting of the spirit of Elijah from John is all anyone needs to see to understand his unsettling influence everywhere he went. And as surely as there was none greater among men than John the Baptist, so there was as surely none greater among the leaders of all the churches than Paul of Tarsus—whose cross went one crucial dimension deeper than theirs.

- Paul’s Preparation