{"id":17824,"date":"2019-02-25T09:26:49","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T14:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17824"},"modified":"2019-02-25T09:52:11","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T14:52:11","slug":"17824","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17824","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Christ in Paul\u2019s Eyes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JWiFYJMGas0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/the-journey-of-conversion-2019-02-24\/\"><strong>The Journey of Conversion<\/strong><\/a><br><strong>Sunday, February 24, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surely the biblical writer who most helps us discover the Christ Mystery is the Apostle Paul. Letters by Paul or influenced by him form one third of the New Testament. Paul is a foundational teacher for what became Christianity. [1] Yet he hardly ever quotes Jesus. Paul never met Jesus. He did, however, encounter the risen Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is not as strange as it may seem at first. After all, the Jesus that you and I participate in, are graced and redeemed by, is the risen Christ who is no longer confined by space and time. God raised up Jesus and revealed him as the \u201cAnointed One\u201d or the Messiah (Acts 2:36). I believe it was not until the Resurrection that Jesus\u2019 human mind fully realized he was the Christ. It seems to have been an evolving awareness, as \u201che grew in wisdom, age, and grace\u201d (Luke 2:52) and lived in faith just as we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The entire biblical revelation involves gradually developing a very different consciousness, a recreated self, and eventually a full \u201cidentity transplant\u201d or identity realization, as we see in both Jesus and Paul. The sacred text invites us, little by little, into a very different sense of who we are: We are not our own. Your life is not about you; you are about Life! We gradually find ourselves part of the Great Vine, eventually realizing that we have never truly been separate from that Source (John 15:1-5). Once we are consciously connected to the True Vine, our life will bear much fruit for the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paul seems to understand this well because it happened rather dramatically to him. He writes, \u201cI live no longer, not I, but Christ lives in me\u201d (Galatians 2:20). Like Paul, the spiritual journey leads us to know that Someone Else is living in us and through us. We are part of a much Bigger Mystery. We are recipients, conduits, and gradually become fully willing participants in the Christ Mystery (which is not to be equated with simply joining the Christian religion).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No biblical writer had yet named what theologians now call \u201cTrinity,\u201d but Paul has a deep intuitive conviction about the Trinitarian flow\u2014Love\u2014passing through him. He comes to know that he is hardly \u201cinitiating\u201d anything, but instead it is all happening to him. This is the same transition we all must make. Like the divine conception in Mary, we will eventually realize it is being done&nbsp;<em>to and within<\/em>&nbsp;us much more than us doing anything. All God needs is our \u201cyes,\u201d it seems, which tends to emerge progressively as we grow in inner freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This understanding gives us an utterly different sense of self; this person is truly a \u201csounding through\u201d (<em>per-sonare<\/em>) much more than an autonomous being. This identity transplant is true&nbsp;<em>conversion.<\/em>&nbsp;It is not about joining a new group or church; it is coming to know a new and essential self that is interconnected with everyone and everything else. Just as in Paul\u2019s conversion, it takes quite a while for the scales to fall from our eyes (see Acts 9:18), with plenty of help from friends like Ananias (Acts 9:17) and others, lots of failures (1 Corinthians 11:17-22), and long quiet retreats in \u201cArabia\u201d (see Galatians 1:17). His is the classic pattern of real but gradual transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/pauls-conversion-2019-02-25\/\"><strong>Paul\u2019s Conversion<\/strong><\/a><br><strong>Monday, February 25, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of Paul\u2019s major themes are contained in seed form in his conversion experience, of which there are three descriptions in Acts (chapters 9, 22, and 26). Scholars assume that Acts was written by Luke around 80-90 CE, about twenty years after Paul wrote most of his letters. Paul\u2019s own account is in the first chapter of Galatians: \u201cThe Gospel which I preach . . . came through the revelation of Jesus Christ\u201d (1:11-12). Paul never doubts this revelation. The Christ that he met was not the Christ in the flesh (Jesus); it was the risen Christ, the Christ who is available to us now as Spirit, as \u201can energy field\u201d that we eventually called the Mystical Body of Christ, or what I call in my new book \u201cThe Universal Christ.\u201d [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Paul describes his life pre-conversion as an orthodox Jew, a Pharisee with status in the Sanhedrin (the governmental board of Judea during the Roman occupation). He was delegated by the Temple police to go out and squelch this new sect of Judaism called \u201cThe Way\u201d (not yet named Christianity). \u201cI actually tried to destroy it. And I advanced beyond my contemporaries in my own nation. I was more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers than anybody else\u201d (see Galatians 1:13-14).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSaul [Hebrew for Paul] was breathing threats to slaughter the Lord\u2019s disciples. He had gone to the high priest to ask for letters addressed to the synagogues that would authorize him to arrest and take to Jerusalem any followers of the Way\u201d (Acts 9:1-2). At this point, Paul was a black and white thinker, dividing the world into good guys and bad guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSuddenly, while traveling to Damascus, just before he reached the city, there came a light from heaven all around him. He fell to the ground, and he heard a voice saying, \u2018Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?\u2019 He asked, \u2018Who are you, Lord?\u2019 The voice answered, \u2018I am Jesus and you are persecuting&nbsp;<em>me<\/em>\u2019\u201d (Acts 9:3-5).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This choice of words is pivotal; Paul must have wondered: \u201cWhy does he say \u2018me\u2019 when I\u2019m persecuting these people?\u201d Paul gradually comes to his understanding of the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12) as an organic, ontological union between Christ and those who are loved by Christ\u2014which Paul eventually realizes is everyone and everything. This is why Paul becomes \u201cthe apostle to the nations\u201d (or \u201cGentiles\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This enlightening experience taught Paul nondual consciousness, the same mystical mind that had allowed Jesus to say things like \u201cWhatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me\u201d (Matthew 25:40).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Until grace achieves that victory in our minds and hearts, we cannot comprehend most of Jesus\u2019 and Paul\u2019s teachings. Before conversion, we tend to think of God as \u201cout there.\u201d After transformation, we don\u2019t look out&nbsp;<em>at<\/em>reality as if it is hidden in the distance. We look out&nbsp;<em>from<\/em>&nbsp;reality! Our life is participating in God\u2019s Life. We are living in Christ. As Paul tells the Colossians, \u201cyour life is hidden with Christ in God\u201d (3:3). Paul is obsessed by this idea. It undergirds everything he writes. Paul is the great announcer of what is happening everywhere all the time much more than he is the architect of a new religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christ in Paul\u2019s Eyes The Journey of ConversionSunday, February 24, 2019 Surely the biblical writer who most helps us discover the Christ Mystery is the Apostle Paul. Letters by Paul or influenced by him form one third of the New Testament. Paul is a foundational teacher for what became Christianity. [1] Yet he hardly ever [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17824"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17824"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17829,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17824\/revisions\/17829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}