The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1
II. Heart of Pauline Theology—Gift of Life Instead of Destruction
The apostle Paul was unquestionably the most powerful human personality in the history of the Christian church—truly a spiritual and intellectual giant. He was chosen to write a sizable portion of the New Testament. In his writings he gave a more fully developed theology than any other apostle. CFF1 309.6
He probes the deepest depths and rises to the highest heights of the mighty plan of redemption. He sweeps in all of God’s majestic provisions of grace and redemption. He presents the light of salvation for the believer and the darkness of doom for the rejectors of God’s grace. One can feel the pulsating heartthrobs throughout his mighty epistles. CFF1 309.7
1. REDEMPTION OF MAN BRINGS LIFE AND IMMORTALITY
Paul did not have the privilege of the three years enjoyed by the other disciples in the school of Christ, the master teacher of life and immortality. Saul the persecutor became Paul the apostle when he encountered Christ in a vision on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). He spent a period of study and readjustment in Arabia (Galatians 1:17). But his teaching is identical with theirs—and that of Jesus—on the nature and destiny of man. In fact, he surpasses other disciples in the fullness, clarity, and depth of his presentations. Paul was clearly God’s unique apostle not only to the Gentiles but to the Diaspora as well. CFF1 309.8
With Paul, Christ was not only the center but the circumference of his preaching and teaching, as well as of his personal faith and life. The essence of his message was humanity redeemed, justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, who by His life, death, and resurrection opened the way and provided the means for man’s restoration and his reception of eternal life and Immortality in Christ, bestowed at the resurrection or at translation, at the Second Advent. CFF1 311.1
2. TREMENDOUS SCOPE OF SALVATION
The three foundational facts of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, in their relation to sin and redemption for man, clearly constitute the sum and substance of the teaching and preaching of the great apostle. In his writings there is clarity and certainty in the provision of Life Only in Christ. That is unquestionably the essence of Paul’s gospel. Here the highest, broadest, and deepest lessons in the school of grace are set forth. Here is the culmination of revealed apostolic truth. Here is the powerful portrayal of the divine philosophy of salvation in contrast with all human foibles and sophisms. CFF1 311.2
3. OPENING MESSAGE IS ON ESCHATOLOGY
Paul wrote the Thessalonian epistles about A.D. 52. These epistles and the Corinthians, written some six years later, are replete with the message of life, death, and Immortality. This was the earliest Pauline emphasis. And Paul was the most explicit and extensive of all the New Testament writers in holding steadfastly to the original Biblical position that man is not naturally immortal. He maintains that man can become so only by a new infusion of life. He is not so by nature; he becomes so by faith and transforming grace. CFF1 311.3
Twenty times the apostle Paul declares that the wages of sin is death—absolute death, cessation of life. Twenty times he tells us that death is the punishment for sin—and also in a dozen places that life and immortality are special privileges, as in Romans 6:23 and Romans 8:11. Twenty-five times Paul spells out the fate of the wicked, and constantly uses terms connoting total destruction such as: CFF1 312.1
“In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God ... who shall be punished with everlasting destruction [olethron aionion, “eternal ruin, death”] from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints” (2 Thessalonians 1:8-10). CFF1 312.2
Paul speaks once of the resurrection of the wicked, or “unjust” (Acts 24:15). But their survival will be of such short duration that he usually passes it over in silence. In his Epistle to the Hebrews 3 it is stated: CFF1 312.3
“We are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” “For our God is a consuming fire” “which shall devour the adversaries” (Hebrews 10:39; Hebrews 12:29; Hebrews 10:27). CFF1 312.4
That which God consumes He does not allow still to exist. After the execution of the judgment, death will have no more victories, but will itself be abolished (Revelation 20:14). Immortality, Paul asserts, cannot begin before “this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:54; cf. 1 Timothy 6:16), which change takes place when Christ comes the second time. Here is Paul’s key declaration in his earliest epistle: CFF1 312.5
“The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead to Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17). CFF1 314.1
That is a bird’s-eye view of the Pauline witness. Now let us examine Paul’s testimony from the eschatological side. CFF1 314.2