© 2020 David Kantor
© 2020 The Urantia Book Fellowship
What we know as Christianity—as well as most of the New Testament—is based almost exclusively on the experience of Paul of Tarsus with “the risen and glorified Christ” on the Damascus Road.
But Paul never knew the human Jesus–God incarnate, encountering human life as a mortal man. Paul never worked up a sweat with Jesus, hauling in heavy fishing nets from the Sea of Galilee. He never observed Jesus chatting up vendors in the produce market in Capernaum. Paul never knew about Jesus’ early struggles as the eldest son in a working-class family making its way in the world. He never sat with Jesus and the apostles around a campfire late into the night listening to the Master talk about his kingdom—a spiritual civilization which pervades our universe. Paul essentially missed the most fundamental element of revelation in the Incarnation—the observation of God living life as a human being in the midst of daily life.
Key early Christian leaders who had actually spent time with the human Jesus, objected to Paul’s teachings. Among them were the Master’s brother James, Peter, Barnabas, Abner, and John Mark. Neither of the two men most influential in the early spread of Paul’s teachings–Luke and Marcion–had any experience with the human Jesus. Paul never even read the Gospels; he was dead before they were written.
It’s instructive to contrast the teachings of Jesus with those of Paul:
Jesus founded the religion of personal experience in doing the will of God and serving the brotherhood of man; Paul founded a religion in which the glorified Christ became the object of worship and the brotherhood consisted of baptized believers in the resurrection and imminent return of the Master.
Jesus focused on expressing the love of God in the service of humanity; Paul focused on personal salvation for the individual.
Jesus taught salvation was freely available from God “who knows how to give his children what they need” (Matthew 7:11); For Paul, there needed to be a ritual transaction–Christ had to be “made sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21) and “handed over for our transgressions” (Romans 4:25).
Jesus taught that sin is deliberate disloyalty to God; Paul taught that sin was an inescapable element of human nature.
For Jesus, faith is trust in the Father’s watchcare and guidance; for Paul, faith is belief that Christ died for our sins.
Jesus proclaimed salvation as a gift from God freely available to each individual; Paul proclaimed that Jesus had to purchase salvation for us from an alienated God.
Jesus described man’s relationship to God as that of a child and its loving Father; Paul described it as that of a criminal to a judge.
For Jesus, the kingdom of heaven is a present reality, here and now; for Paul the kingdom was a future event associated with a second coming and a judgment.
Jesus taught that we live in the presence of a loving Father; Paul taught that we live in the midst of an evil force seeking to control us.
The coming reformation will shake the very foundations of Christianity because it will finally replace Paul’s morose metaphysics of death with the robust revelation of life which Jesus lived and taught during his mortal sojourn as the Son of Man and the Son of God. ([UB 196:2.1])
Said Jesus, “You are to go forth preaching the love of God and the service of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can actually realize, and daily experience, this ennobling truth.” ([UB 193:0.4])