Apostle Paul

The New Testament authors call the hallowed rites of the Old Testament, shadows,- unsubstantial images of the realities of which the believer in Christ is possessed. Indignant that Christian believers should retreat back to the Mosaic observances, the Apostle Paul styles them "weak and beggarly elements," or rudiments, which the Gospel has left behind. The law which formed the kernel of the Mosaic Revelation is described in its moral as well as ceremonial features, as a schoolmaster, taking charge of the unripe youth, and leading him to a place where this provisional office is superseded.

Apart from all other defects, the Apostle Paul sets forth the radical insufficiency of the Old Testament system. It was, in its predominant character, a law-system. Law, coming from without, had to encounter the principle of sin within the soul; and law had in it no power of moral regeneration. The proper result of the Old Testament system, as the Apostle Paul explains it, was to make this fact manifest in the consciousness of men, and to awaken a yearning for deliverance from sin, through a power working from within. The triumph of the Old Testament form of the kingdom was in the demonstration of its own failure; its failure, that is, to do more than to pave the way for something more effective. The ancient theocracy wrought its victory and attained its end when it moved "a Hebrew of the Hebrews" to turn from it in despair, with the cry, "Who shall deliver me?"

The Apostle Paul refers to the birth of Christ as having occurred "when the fulness of time was come." His thought evidently is, not only that a certain measure of time must run out, but that a train of historical events and changes must occur which have the coming of Christ for their proper sequence. Of the nature of these antecedents in the previous course of history, he speaks when he has occasion to discuss the relation of the Mosaic dispensation to the Christian, and to point out the aims of Providence in regard to the Gentile nations.

Yet underneath the superstition of heathenism the Apostle Paul recognized a true seeking for God. He quoted with approval a sentence from a heathen poet to the effect that there is something in man akin to the divine nature. He declares that if a law had been given to the Jews, the same was true of the heathen.

The Apostle Paul had been surprised- we might say, perplexed- by this unexpected and startling fact. This feeling in his mind was at the root of that whole discussion about election and the plan of God, in the Epistle to the Romans, which has been a battleground of theologians ever since. What could be the meaning of Providence? That the chosen people, the posterity of Abraham, should turn away from the blessing which the Gentiles were flocking to grasp! The immediate cause which the Apostle assigns, was the unbelief of the Jews. A moral blindness had overtaken them. But if the Old Testament people had become degenerate, and if the heathen were more open to the truth than they, where lay the pre eminence of the Judaic system as a pedagogic instrument? Is not this a case where the tree is to be judged by its fruits?

The Apostle Paul affirms this very principle of selection in the case of the Jews. There was an elect fraction who did not turn their backs on the Messiah- just as, in the days of Elijah, seven thousand were found who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Moreover, it must be remembered that in some cases the docility which the heathen manifested when the Gospel was first preached, was due to an influence of the Old Testament religion upon them.

The Apostle Paul illustrates the character of ancient heathenism, by comparing the Gentile part of the church to the wild olive grafted into the native olive. The wild olive is not worthless, but it can not bear savory fruit until it draws its sap from the stock that has grown up in the garden of the Lord.