The Ancient Israelites believed in the ‘end of days’, a time when God would bring the present age they were living in to an end and usher in a new age where Creation would be as God intended it to be. An example of the imagery used in the Old Testament to describe what this new age will be like is the following verse from the Book of Isaiah: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.” (Isaiah 65:25 NRSV)
The Pharisees, a leading Jewish religious group in the time of Jesus, would have subscribed to the belief in the end of days. By his own admission, the Apostle Paul was a Pharisee who devoutly kept the traditions and customs associated with the Torah (Jewish Law). “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” (Philippians 3:4b-6 NRSV)
We can see the influence of this belief on Paul’s thinking in his Second Letter to the Corinthians. Paul writes, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.” When Paul says “we regard no one from a human point of view”, he is talking about looking at things from a spiritual perspective, rather than a human perspective. That’s why he writes, “So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.” He is making the point that while being human means being in a mortal body, the soul or spiritual presence is ultimately meant to be with God.
This implies a fundamental connection or integration between human beings and God, which is something I have written about in one of my earlier blogs. I suggested we could perhaps think of God as the very essence of being, and that if God is the essence of being, then God is already part of us, and we are already part of God. There is an unbreakable interconnectedness between us and God, and between all things and God. This has implications for the notion of eternal life, which is a topic for another day.
Sufficed to say though, the basis for the idea of eternal life is the resurrection of Jesus, which is of the utmost importance to the Apostle Paul. It is through the death and resurrection of Jesus that Paul believes God is revealed. In the Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul also writes, “And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.”
Paul believed that Jesus died and was raised from death by God so that anyone who was a follower of Jesus would live their live for Jesus. How might they do this? By doing their utmost to uphold his teaching, and by trying to emulate his life as best as they possibly could.
We would describe this today as trying to live a Christian life.
