Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1958, Page 30

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30 Proceedings of the Forty-fifth Convention

as long as neither created a new legalism with his belief. “I am
made all things to all men,” he wrote (1 Cor. 9:22), “that I might
by all means save some.”

Paul was equally effective as a missionary. Imbued with an
unusual measure of self-confidence, he approached heathen phe-
nomena with the calm assurance of one who is certain he will
triumph over them. Heathen morals, as described in Romans 1,
were an abomination to him, and he utterly condemned them,
but he rarely spent much time in condemning heathen religions.
Why should he approach the challenge negatively when his religion
was so much better and he had so many wonderful things to say
about it? A heathen religion might even serve as a beachhead, as
at Athens. “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you
are very religious,” he begins his sermon to them. Incidentally
the King James Version does not give his meaning by trans-
lating: “I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.”
Paul rarely said no to these pagan cults, because he was so sure
that his hearers would soon be saying yes to his own Gospel.

A highly educated man in two cultures, Hebrew and Greek,
he was completely sincere and selfless. He remained unmarried
so as to be able to move about more easily and at small expense
and asked for no salary. His labors cost the church not a penny.
On the contrary, he brought back a collection for the poverty
stricken in the Palestine home churches. It would hardly be pos-
sible for a missionary in our church to follow him in either of
these particulars.

Paul preached the Gospel to everyone, Jew or Gentile, male
or female, bond or free, the poorest of the poor and the well-
to-do. It was he who wrote that God has chosen the foolish, the
weak, and the base things of the world to confound the wise and
the mighty. Yet he also made a practice of getting in contact with
the most intelligent and influential people in the most important
and influential cities — people like the Roman governor Sergius at
Paphos, Dionysius the Areopagite at Athens, Crispus, ruler of
the synagogue at Corinth, also Aquila and Priscilla and Luke
the physician and “those of the emperor’s household” in Rome.

He created cells of believers, then traveled on to the next
city to repeat the process. He did not engage in the task of edu-
cating children or performing charitable services or setting up
forms of worship, not because he was not interested in these
things — his collection for the poor of Palestine shows how much
he was interested in social service — but because he felt that
the local congregation must attend to these things. He never lost
contact with his congregations, receiving reports from them, visit-
ing them occasionally, and writing epistles to them when need
arose.

A second Paul or a second apostolic age is hardly conceivable
in the Christian church. No other age can ever be so close to the
great events that created Christianity; no other is likely to have
such an outpouring of the Spirit or such a virgin harvest field
to work in. Paul and his fellow apostles will always remain our
ideal and our inspiration as we go about our double task in the
kingdom of God, especially when we combine the contemplative
and the active to form the composite mode of spiritual living,
which we shall consider next.