The scriptures were put together by the church and are our heritage. But the gospel did not come to us gentiles in this form at all, but by a way that is described in portions of those scriptures. It came from a man named Paul. It came from a man who was to represent Christ to those in sin apart from the law, namely us gentiles. He told us of two things, of a man who proved what a man could be, namely Jesus, and then of a man who proved what a man could become, namely like himself, Paul. What a sinful man could become was marvelous, it was to become a friend of this man, Jesus, who never sinned.

According to Paul’s amazing revelation, we all can become like this him. All we have to do is simply to believe that this Jesus died in order that we might be saved, and then to believe that this man rose from the dead to prove that we shall indeed be saved. If we will believe that, Paul says, then our lives will become transformed and we shall have entered into eternal life.

And that’s all we have to do in terms of faith. We must first want to believe these things and then we will come to believe them, and then we shall be saved, and we shall become like Christ even as I, Paul, have become like Christ in my present condition. To help you gentiles believe, consider this that I, his great enemy Saul, have become I, his friend Paul. If you can believe me, they you will believe that Jesus died for you and rose for your hope.

Now what does it mean to be a follower of the Lord? There are two meanings that must be distinguished. There is the physical meaning and there is the spiritual meaning. The Jewish Christians follow in the physical meaning and continue to be Jews obeying the law except when it seems to conflict with doing good (and so they too have a new spirit) as Jesus did. The Gentile Christians (sometimes called Paulians) ignore the law entirely and are concerned merely with doing good. And so one spirit actually guides two conceptions of a follower of Christ. Namely: good and love above all else.

Now even though the Paulian is exempt from all law by virtue of the Edict of the Council of Jerusalem as interpreted by Paul, this is not to say that he is lawless. He possesses what might be called the core of laws and which is identified for him by his personal, sincere derivation of his actions from the three great maxims of: love of God beyond measure, neighbor as self and fellow Christian more than self. The mark of this commitment to his quest of representing Christ in his condition (as Paul was doing as an example) was his self control, for self is the great temptation for a Christian who has the body of the flesh. This is expressed in the great vow to chastity which is the “circumcision of the spirit” for the Christian (Jewish and Gentile alike). And so we have in the Paulian a person who is dedicated to serving Christ in his condition and demonstrates this by his chastity. I.e., this dedication is not idle talk, but practice and discipline. Hence it is a very vigorous and living dedication. It is a determination of the will for Christ.

As far as specifics are concerned this is what Paul called matters of expediency, namely figuring out the best way of implementing the three loves. All things are clean and all things are lawful, and so all we need is information as to the right course and then simply doing it. That is our intention as Paulians. If there are too few children we can discourage birth control; if there are too many, we can encourage birth control.

For Paul this notion of the Gentile Christian finally gave some real sense to history. Now we see that God had something far greater in mind than a world of Jews praising his son for his great acts. No, it was a world of gentiles doing the very same thing. The whole point of history was to produce the new Adam, a man who had no law but the three loves, and everything else was left to him. By virtue of this new creation out of sinful man, no law whatsoever was needed in addition to these three, for by virtue of these three, the second one, for example, the Paulian comes to be an exceptionally good citizen of his state or tribe. And so all the good that men could possibly imagine for themselves flows from this Gentile Christian. By virtue of having no law other than the three loves, he becomes a better citizen because he, unlike many, has no need of threats of the sword, but merely the information as to what makes for a better world and an orderly world, and he complies cheerfully, as though by nature.

For indeed God has created here a miracle as can be seen in those gentiles who were naturally good as reported by Paul in Romans 2, and a suggestion that those who happen to enjoy doing good should never fear to face death. Instead of having to give laws to people, God has people who make their own laws as adults, and thus who are competent to judge the angels.

The whole point then is that through Christ the gentile might become like him also, i.e., in the spirit of one excommunicated, for had the Jews accepted Christ these gentiles would most surely have had to become Jews. But because God knew of their rejection, preferring to keep their deal with God rather than to accept the gift of God, they will come in later after all the gentiles have been made Christian. We have in the gentile Christian the greatest and most surprising miracle of all, lawlessness (rightly understood) instead of all the (Jewish and other) lawfulness which had failed so miserably due to the natural inclination of man to mitigate all pain of compliance with externally imposed laws and thus to fight the laws in spirit.

In the same way that the Jews chaffed under the law of Moses, the gentiles chaffed under the law of their governors. But the gentiles were freed of the reason for this chaff, for now they could make their own law of right conduct and could see that this law of their own making (through the three loves) means that they must be conscientious citizens and neighbors, i.e., due to conscience alone. Even as they must be sensitive to the inhibitions of those of the Jewish congregation, people who were “weak in faith” and who clung to laws, which is a rule derived from the third of the three loves.

And so the whole point of creation is accomplished in the Paulian who will come to good naturally and as a result of a changed spirit, and so where no external law is necessary, thus fulfilling God’s observation that his creation was not only good, it was very good. Adam is back but this time with the foresight of experience, for he has the leadership of Jesus, King of kings, and the example of Paul and so can see where he is going.