A Truly Human Divine Savior
Throughout the twentieth century, there was considerable debate in New Testament studies regarding Paul’s knowledge of, and views about, the historical Jesus of Nazareth. On one extreme was skepticism that Paul had any knowledge of the historical Jesus at all, except for his death by crucifixion. On the other extreme was the idea that Paul viewed Christ almost exclusively in human terms and thought of Christ’s “divine” status in terms of a human savior exalted to heaven because of his self-sacrificial death.
In some ways both of these extremes can be seen as a reaction to an earlier Christian orthodoxy that failed to take Jesus’s full humanity with genuine seriousness, an orthodoxy that had come to believe on theological grounds that Jesus in his earthly life was non posse peccare (“not able to sin”). Such a view must be resisted since ultimately it turns Christ into a divine robot rather than a truly human person who was posse non peccare because, using Luke’s language, “the grace of God was on him” (Luke 2:40). At issue for this kind of orthodoxy was to build a convincing case for Christ’s true humanity that did not look as though his human temptations were not possible for him to act on.
When turning to the apostle Paul with these later theological questions in mind, the most striking thing we observe is the considerable paucity of the data, paucity that is related to the larger issue involved. As we have seen in previous chapters, Paul nowhere tries to establish a Christology as such. Rather, because he is primarily dealing with a variety of behavioral issues in his churches that need correcting—and need good theology as the way of doing so—his references to Christ are either soteriological in focus or emphasize Christ’s present reign as Lord. Nonetheless, Paul drops the curtain just often enough for us to reconstruct what he and his churches believed about Christ—that he was the truly divine Savior who effected salvation through an incarnation in which he became a truly human person. In this chapter we gather these various data points to present a picture of Paul’s presuppositional understanding of Christ’s humanity.
It is not our purpose to argue the case that Paul had knowledge about the historical Jesus. The evidence for that is clear enough in the passages we examine below. Instead, our goal is simply to present various places in Paul’s letters that confirm that he at least knew the traditions about Jesus that are found in the Gospels. Given this evidence, we can see how the human life of Jesus was presupposed by everything else that Paul came to believe regarding Jesus’s death and resurrection. It is simply unthinkable that in a basically oral and aural culture information about Jesus would not have circulated in a number of ways that would have given the learned Paul knowledge about Jesus’s life and teachings. And the evidence suggests that Paul did indeed have knowledge of the historical Jesus. Below we examine the Pauline data under three headings: knowledge of the life of Jesus; knowledge of the teaching of Jesus; and further knowledge of the historical Jesus.
Knowledge of the Life of Jesus
Though relatively few, the pieces of evidence that Paul knew the basic details of the life of Jesus are significant because in each instance the knowledge that Paul seems to assume is incidental to the argument he is making, which makes it all the more trustworthy. As is Paul’s pattern when communicating with fellow believers, his statements about the life of Jesus are expressed in such an off-the-cuff way that, at least in some cases, we can assume that his knowledge of Jesus’s life was shared by his readers and was therefore not something he had to demonstrate as true. We can see at least four unique aspects of Jesus’s life assumed in Paul’s letters: that Jesus was considered to be the Jewish Messiah, that he was crucified and raised from the dead, that he was the brother to leaders in the early church and son of Mary, and that his life presented a moral example for Paul and his readers to emulate.
Jewish Messiah
In Paul’s argument with the believers in Galatia that they did not need to observe the law, Paul offers a brief account of the life of Jesus that begins with the observation that Jesus was born into an observant Jewish family. Paul writes that when God “sent his Son,” this divine Son was “born of a woman, born under the law” (Gal. 4:4). Paul elsewhere notes that Jesus not only was Jewish but also was believed to have been the long-awaited Jewish Messiah (Rom. 9:5; 1:2–4; 1 Cor. 1:22), which further meant that Jesus had come to reign in God’s eschatological kingdom (1 Cor. 15:24; Col. 1:13–14). Indeed, Paul’s repeated emphasis on Jesus’s death and resurrection can best be explained in light of the radical departure of these events from the Jewish messianic expectations—to the extent that its true nature could have been revealed only by the Spirit (1 Cor. 1:20–25; 2:6–10).
Crucified and Resurrected
The historical reality that Jesus died not by stoning (the Jewish way of execution) but by crucifixion (and thus by Roman hands) is writ large in the Pauline corpus. In Paul’s earliest preserved letter, he describes Jesus’s death as belonging to, and in keeping with, the tradition of the killing of “the prophets” (1 Thess. 2:15). And Paul’s earlier allusion to Jesus’s sufferings, in the context of the Thessalonians’ “severe suffering” (1:6), likely refers not solely to Jesus’s crucifixion but also to the beatings and humiliation that preceded it. In light of these early allusions, there is no good reason to doubt the thoroughly Pauline nature of the historical affirmation expressed in a much later letter, which provides the added detail that Jesus made a “good confession” “while testifying before Pontius Pilate” (1 Tim. 6:13).
While it is true that Paul focuses primarily on Jesus’s death and resurrection for the purposes of his arguments and exhortations, this says nothing about Paul’s further knowledge of the life of Jesus. Paul was addressing particular needs of first-century churches and not writing to satisfy our curiosities. With the exception of his letter (of introduction?) to the believers in Rome, Paul wrote to his own churches for their correction or encouragement, not to spell out for later times what knowledge he and his readers held in common.
Brother to Early Church Leaders
A great deal of further knowledge can be assumed to lie behind Paul’s passing comments about Jesus’s biological brothers who were well-known members of the earliest Jewish Christian community (1 Cor. 9:5; Gal. 1:19). These comments provide intriguing reminders to us of how little we really do know about how much Paul might have known.1
Moral Example
Even though Paul does not provide many explicit details about Jesus’s earthly life, the nature of that life as one of servanthood was well known to him, as he reminds his friends in Philippi: “he made himself nothing” (Phil. 2:7). This was as equally a radical departure from Jewish messianic expectations as was a “crucified Messiah.” Paul’s appeals to his own imitation of Christ, which he in turn expects of his churches as they follow his example (1 Cor. 11:1), are best understood against the backdrop of Paul’s knowledge of the life of Jesus. While some of his appeals could refer simply to living a cruciform life—as it surely does in one instance (Phil. 3:15–17) and probably so in another (1 Thess. 1:6–7)—this can hardly be the case in his appeal in 1 Corinthians 11:1, which concludes his argument with the Corinthians regarding a believer’s freedom. In this instance, Paul’s imitatio, or imitation, refers to his doing everything for the glory of God and thus becoming all things to all people for the sake of the many (1 Cor. 10:31–33). What specific knowledge of Jesus is being assumed here is a matter for speculation, but the very fact that it is assumed is what is so significant. And such speculation could well be grounded in Paul’s appeal to “the humility and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:1) and to Christ’s splanchnois (“affections” or “compassion”; Phil. 1:8), which most likely refers to the extraordinary love shown by Christ and also at work in Paul.
That there are not more of these kinds of references in Paul’s letters means little since in every case they are quite incidental to some other issue at hand. In each case the historicity of these affirmations is not argued for but simply assumed and thus appealed to as common knowledge among the early followers of Christ. We must constantly remind ourselves that Paul was not writing letters with our future interests in view. All of his letters were ad hoc, addressing or encouraging early believers in a variety of historical situations. We are simply privileged to be able to benefit from someone else’s mail, as it were, albeit mail that was inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Knowledge of the Teaching of Jesus
For understandable reasons, not much by way of Jesus’s actual teaching emerges from Paul’s letters. As we said above regarding Jesus’s life, Paul’s ad hoc concerns were not primarily with what Jesus had to say but with who Jesus was and what he did for humans and our salvation. Nonetheless, as with Paul’s references to Jesus’s life, so too Paul’s references to Jesus’s teaching appear at once both offhanded—in the sense that it is obviously assumed to be something held in common between both the Apostle and his readers—and of such diverse nature that once again it suggests that in the preserved Pauline letters we encounter only the tip of the iceberg of Paul’s knowledge of Jesus. There are six moments in Paul’s writings where he alludes to Jesus’s teaching, which we treat here in turn.
According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
Paul’s first reference to Jesus’s teaching appears in the earliest letter preserved in the Pauline corpus, 1 Thessalonians, which was written a little less than twenty years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Here an appeal is made to “the Lord’s word” but without quoting it (1 Thess. 4:15). Since Paul uses “the Lord” exclusively to refer to Christ, there can be no question that he is alluding to the teaching of Jesus. Although it could possibly refer to a prophetic word from the risen Lord, more likely it is an appeal to something said by Jesus during his earthly ministry, known by the Apostle and assumed to be available to others and likely actually known to these believers.
GALATIANS 4:6
Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”
ROMANS 8:15
And by [the Spirit] we cry, “Abba, Father.”
It is truly remarkable that in the twin passages of Galatians 4:6 and Romans 8:15 Paul asserts that his primarily gentile and therefore Greek-speaking readers are crying out to God as “Father” and are doing so in the language of Jesus himself: Abba. Although in the Gospels this language is used by Jesus only in Gethsemane, it is equally a part of his teaching since it undoubtedly lies behind his instructions on how to pray (Matt. 6:9). That this Aramaic word has been maintained even in the Greek-speaking church indicates that here we are dealing with bedrock history regarding the earthly Jesus.2
1 CORINTHIANS 7:10
To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband.
In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.
1 CORINTHIANS 11:23–25
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord, Jesus, on the night that he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
In the third letter chronologically in the Pauline corpus, 1 Corinthians, Paul appeals three times to a saying or teaching of Jesus as support for a position that he is espousing. In the first instance (1 Cor. 7:10) he appeals to a saying regarding a wife separating from her husband—a much more unusual form of divorce in the Greco-Roman world than one initiated by the husband. Since Paul’s version is adapted to the present situation, it is of little value to pursue the precise nature of its origins, but it clearly reflects what appears in two forms in the Gospels (Mark 10:11 // Matt. 19:9; Luke 16:16 // Matt. 5:32).
In the second appeal to “the Lord” in this letter (1 Cor. 9:14), Paul refers to a command of Jesus as supporting his affirmation that he has the right to material support from the believers in Corinth, even though he has given up that right. This same saying emerges again in a similar context in a much later letter, that “workers deserve their wages” (1 Tim. 5:18), which significantly seems to allude to the language of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 10:7), whose author was a gentile believer and friend of Paul.
Finally, in his attempt to correct the abuse of the Lord’s table in Corinth, Paul appeals to the words of institution as something he has received from the Lord and has in turn handed on to the Corinthian Christians (1 Cor. 11:23–25). Although there is a degree of ambiguity with regard to what he means by “I received from the Lord,” what Paul cites is almost verbatim what appears in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 22:17–20; cf. Mark 14:22–25 and Matt. 26:26–29, which reflect a slightly different version). That the form of Paul’s saying can be traced specifically to the Gospel tradition of Paul’s friend Luke affirms the basic historicity of both the Gospel accounts and the Apostle’s knowledge of them.
Again, even though there are only a few references to Jesus’s teachings in Paul’s writing, those that do appear provide sufficient evidence that there is a much deeper pool of the Jesus tradition from which Paul could cite if he had been so inclined. Why he was less inclined is a matter of speculation, but simple frequency of references is not the important point. That Paul knew about Jesus’s life and teachings is incontrovertibly attested in his letters.
Further Knowledge of the Historical Jesus
Along with the places Paul alludes to Jesus’s life or teachings, there are several other moments in Paul’s letters that indicate Paul’s knowledge of the historical Jesus.
PHILIPPIANS 2:6–8
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!
In a passage that begins with the assertion that Christ existed “in the very nature [or form] of God” but did not tightly grasp his “equality with God” (Phil. 2:6), Paul makes the strongest kinds of statements regarding the genuineness of Jesus’s incarnate humanity. This begins with the especially telling metaphor, translated literally as “he poured himself out by taking the form [morphē] of a slave.” As discussed in chapter 3, the Greek word morphē is nearly impossible to render into English since it basically refers to something or someone’s outward appearance. But Paul goes on to interpret the metaphor in terms of Christ’s “being made in human likeness” (v. 7), which in this context can mean only that, even though Christ had prior existence as God, his incarnation involved being born just as all other humans but without ever losing his divine identity.
The second sentence narrates what Christ did as an anthrōpos, or “human,” namely, accepting the path to the cross in obedience to his Father (Phil. 2:8). Thus Paul’s language simultaneously assumes that at one point in history Christ had not been a human but that when he did become one of us, he was fully and completely so. And only in this way could true redemption have been possible. Christ became one of us so that we might be transformed and thereby conformed to the divine image that had been marred by the fall.
1 TIMOTHY 2:5–6
For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.
1 TIMOTHY 3:16
He appeared in the flesh, was vindicated by the Spirit . . . was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.
In a way similar to what Paul said to the Philippians, 1 Timothy stresses Christ’s true humanity when speaking of Christ as the divine mediator between God and humans. The NIV puts it nicely: “For there is . . . one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people” (1 Tim. 2:5–6)—language that, like Philippians 2, presupposes both choice and obedience. Thus even though the Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy is disputed, its essential theology is thoroughly Pauline. Likewise, the “hymn” in 1 Timothy 3:16 begins with the line, “He appeared in the flesh,” once again stressing Christ’s true humanity.
GALATIANS 4:4–5
But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”
ROMANS 8:3
For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.
Galatians 4:4–5 and Romans 8:3 offer what might be called Paul’s “sending formula.” In Galatians, the narrative of salvation found in this very brief summary is used at a crucial moment in Paul’s argument that Christ’s death eliminated the need for Torah observance. Its essential parts put it clearly: “God sent his Son . . . to redeem those under the law.” The two middle phrases, which elaborate the first part of the sentence and anticipate the latter, emphasize Christ’s humanity: “born of a woman, born under the law.” The first phrase eliminates any possibility of a divine Savior who was not truly human; the second places him squarely within a clearly identifiable historical context. So even though Paul is not intending to emphasize Christ’s humanity as such, he does so without trying—precisely because this was the common understanding of the early church and thus shared between Paul and his addressees. Indeed, from Paul’s perspective this is a fundamental reality that makes everything else in the Christian narrative hold together. As we have seen repeatedly, what Paul argues from—as a common denominator between himself and his readers—is more significant than arguments for what they should believe.
In the second instance of this sending formula, Romans 8:3, the emphasis is especially on Christ’s humanity, which enabled him to serve as an adequate sin offering. Thus he came “in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Paul’s point is that Christ’s “flesh,” or body, was like all other human bodies; however, unlike the rest of us he did not yield himself to sin. As in Galatians, so too here Paul argues from rather than for the reality of the incarnation.
GALATIANS 3:16
The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ.
ROMANS 1:3
. . . regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David.
ROMANS 9:5
From [the people of Israel] is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.
Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David.
A number of passages present a picture of Jesus’s humanity in terms of his status as the long-awaited Jewish Messiah—a picture that will be spelled out in greater detail in part 3. These passages are introduced here because together they demonstrate the presuppositional nature of Paul’s understanding of Christ’s genuine humanity. Jesus is identified as Abraham’s “seed” (Gal. 3:16), the embodiment and culmination of Israel itself; as born of David’s lineage (Rom. 1:3; 2 Tim. 2:8); and explicitly as “the Messiah” (Rom. 9:5), the culminating expression of Jewish privileges.
Again, the point in these passages is not about Christ’s humanity as such; rather, Christ’s humanity is presupposed in the language itself. The same can even be said of Paul’s use of Christos, or “Christ,” as his primary way of identifying the now risen Jesus. Indeed, some have argued that the “name” Jesus Christ always carries with it its titular connotations of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. Whether or not that is so, this title-turned-name—even when used simply as an identifying referent—harks back to the historical reality that the earthly Jesus lived and died as the Jewish Messiah, whom God raised from the dead to be Lord of all.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have seen that throughout Paul’s letters the name “Jesus” always has as its primary referent the historical human, Jesus of Nazareth, whom the Romans crucified and the earliest Christians believed to be the Jewish Messiah and the now risen Lord. While Paul places much of his theological emphasis on the Messiah’s redeeming work in his death on the cross, the language of crucifixion never loses its historical bearings. When, for example, Paul speaks of “the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20), he is referring not to the theological outcome of that death but to the historical event of the death itself—the excruciating death by crucifixion at the hands of the (very historical) Roman Empire.
And so it is with every mention of the cross and of Christ’s death for us. This event does not begin for Paul as theology; it begins as history, where a truly human Jesus died as the Jewish Messiah. What Paul came to see clearly is that this historical event, which was humanity’s loud “No!” to Jesus of Nazareth, was God’s louder “No!” to human sin. The great glory of the biblical narrative is that God has pronounced an exclamatory “Yes!” to everything the Jesus of human history has done for sinners through his death and resurrection to life forever.
Paul concedes that there is one aspect of common humanity that Jesus did not know by experience. While Paul is adamant about the universality of human sinfulness (“all have sinned and fall short of the [intended] glory of God”; Rom. 3:23), he asserts that Christ knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21), by which he means that Christ had not personally experienced sin.3 Yet even here Paul’s very reason for this assertion is to place it in stark contrast with the climactic phrase: “God made him . . . to be sin [or a sin offering] for us” (2 Cor. 5:21). This is the great exchange, and from Paul’s perspective it could happen only because the sinless one was nonetheless truly human and came to know our sinfulness not by his own experience of it but by bearing the weight of it in his death on the cross. In all of this, Christ never ceased to be God. This is the mystery that lies at the very heart of the Christian faith, and Paul is one of its primary advocates.
As we will see in parts 3 and 4, Paul’s conviction was a combination of two realities: first, that Jesus in his earthly life fulfilled God’s promise that David’s greater Son would effect final redemption for God’s people; and, second, that through his exaltation the eternal Son also assumed the role of the messianic Lord seated at the right hand of the Father—the Lord to whom all are now subject and before whose lordship ultimately “every knee will bow” and “every tongue will acknowledge” (Rom. 14:11, citing Isa. 45:23).
1. Incidentally, these comments also call into question the current Roman Catholic Church’s designation of Jesus’s mother as “the Virgin Mary”—at least inasmuch as that designation refers to her perpetual virginity.
2. A similar phenomenon can be found among the forbears of the families Fee (my mother was a Jacobson) and Lofdahl (my wife Maudine’s maiden name) with the occasional Swedish tak sa mycket (“thank you much”).
3. Indeed, the Hebrew verb “to know” is the primary Jewish way of talking about sexual intercourse (e.g., Gen. 4:1, 25), indicating more than just cognitive knowledge.