Discuss Theology

“Paul, too, believed himself to have a special unique role within the overall purposes of Israel’s God, the world’s climax – that had been done in the death and resurrection of the Messiah – but rather to perform the next unique task within an implicit apocalyptic timetable, namely to call the nations, urgently, to loyal submission to the one who had now been enthroned as Lord of the world. Paul believed that it was his task to call into being, by proclamation Jesus as Lord, the worldwide community in which ethnic divisions would be abolished and a new family created as a new creation had been launched and would one day come to full flower”. N.T. Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, pg 157.

This is a follow-up to my previous post. Like Paul, and his missionary calling, our task is also to call the nations to loyal submission to the Messiah. We do this by going and proclaiming. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Trinitarian baptism), teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age”.

Christianity is not a ghetto religion. We are not allowed to stay in our comfortable religious ghettos, but are order out into the world (this does not mean you need to cross the ocean). We are also called to make disciples of the nations (this is not an individual salvation kind of deal, but rather we are to disciple whole cultures…this my friend will take some work to accomplish). We are to make members, through baptism, into the Trinitarian fellowship (The Holy Catholic Church). And finally, we are to follow Jesus, and His ways, through this new age into the future history of the new age.

Steve