Paul's urgency to preach the gospel.

[Gary Amirault]

Here's another email inquirer with some good questions.:

Good morning,
 
I have been reading through the material on your site and I'm hoping you can address a couple of questions for which I have yet to find answers.
 
The first is one of urgency.  Paul clearly felt a high degree of urgency to preach the Gospel to as many as possible (1 Cor 9:16).  If he was a UR as your suggest, what was his driving motivation?  Was it only his desire to obey Christ's command (commonly referred to as the Great Commission) or was there more?
 
My second question is about "offence."  How is the Gospel an offence (Galatians 5:11) to unbelivers if all are to be ultimately saved?
 
Respectfully,

[Michele]

I think the sense of urgency was due to the excitement and inspiration that came from the "Good News".

When someone has their first child....they announce it to their friends and relatives ASAP.  Why would anyone wait to share exciting News?????

Now in reference to the "offence" question -- I'll use a similar analogy as the one above.  I recall the feelings I felt when I miscarried in my first pregnancy, and this sounds bad but it sort of offended me when people talked about having babies, and invited me to baby showers.

Who'd a thought that one day God would bless me with 3 children.

Anyway, it's very much the same with our Spiritual birthing....there is a proper time for everything, and if some have not given birth to the "Holy Child" yet...they may not be very receptive to those that say they have and that one day they will too.

[Cardinal]

  Hi; I don't think it was all Paul's urgency, I think it a lot of it would have been the Holy Spirit's urgency moving thru him. Paul was anointed for that, and the anointing itself quickens or speeds you up and makes you feel an urgency to do whatever it is He's telling you to do. It's like you can't do it fast enough.

From a natural perspective, Paul had just been given the bulk of revelation pertaining to the New Covenant God wanted to keep with mankind, and as a natural Jew taught by one of the most knowledgeable rabbis of the Jewish world, he would have understood the responsibility that entailed. To whom much is given, much is expected. Just my  . Blessings to you in your search........

[dboutwell]

Paul spoke of the "terror" of the Lord. Also about being a "castaway" himself. Much had been given him and he knew it was required.

And, I believe because he was constrained by God's own love for humanity, he didn't want people to be ignorant of what Christ had accomplished for them.

As for the offence. The gospel was an offence to the one's who wanted to be righteous by their own works. To be righteous in God's eyes, one must admit failure and depend on something other than themselves.

Romans 9:33...As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

my two cents too 

[Cardinal]

  PS. Didn't realize I missed the second question in my musings over the first. The gospel is only an offense to the flesh=our soulish ways, not the spirit....the spirit returns to the One who sent it. Whether in the body or out of the body, it only matters in the sense that if they shed the body they have missed the superior resurrection, and denied Him a temple to dwell in. We are not our own, we were bought with a price. Therefore, the scripture......He would not that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. We are saved; spirit, soul and body, and it's in that order.

In Hosea He tells us that He will go and return unto His place until we acknowledge our offense. Our offense is, that our ways are not His ways. When we acknowledge that fully, and begin to seek His face/nature, then He begins to come and sup with us as we sup with Him. To sup means to consume and our God is a consuming fire. So as we consume Him (Spiritual Word), He consumes us, until as Paul said, "It is no longer I that liveth, but Christ that liveth in me."

We tend to think that means we must be some super spiritual being before we can say that, but the reality is that this comes about as a result of the statement, "Reckon yourselves DEAD." If the us part of the equation is dead due to sins and trespasses, then we must wait upon the Lord to raise us up into newness of life. He does this every time He reveals His perfect will about a subject or situational choice for us. That IS His life, His life IS Spirit, and that Spirit becomes one with us as It translates us out of the kingdom of darkness (our ways/carnal mind) and into the kingdom of light (His ways/mind of Christ). It's both a one time experience and a continuing process, thus He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Blessings to you.....

[Gizmo]

The first is one of urgency.  Paul clearly felt a high degree of urgency to preach the Gospel to as many as possible (1 Cor 9:16).  If he was a UR as your suggest, what was his driving motivation?  Was it only his desire to obey Christ's command (commonly referred to as the Great Commission) or was there more?

He was so overwhelmed by the freedom of the gospel he wanted to free everyone, but mostly the Jews, as they were still under the law...bowing knee to a wrathful, distant diety.
 
My second question is about "offence."  How is the Gospel an offence (Galatians 5:11) to unbelivers if all are to be ultimately saved?

He was writing to legalists and those being swayed by them, so they were offended by the freedom and universality of the gospel, just like Christians today.  Tell a Christian today that I am free to do ALL things without causing God to leave me and that ALL men are in Christ and He sees all humanity as holy and pure.  Tell the average funda-gelical those 2 things and you will get quite interesting responses!!!

Giz

[shibboleth]

He was writing to legalists and those being swayed by them, so they were offended by the freedom and universality of the gospel, just like Christians today.  Tell a Christian today that I am free to do ALL things without causing God to leave me and that ALL men are in Christ and He sees all humanity as holy and pure.  Tell the average funda-gelical those 2 things and you will get quite interesting responses!!!
No kidding about the kind of resposes you get when you preach a Jesus who loves us in spite of our sins. I am on an ET forum and have been called all kinds of names for believing in a God of love and forgiveness. I can see how the so-called Christians burned, tortured, brutalized and murdered real Christians in the not too distant past.

[Gizmo]

shib-
Which board are you on, if you don't mind me asking...
G

[AbbasChild]

The Body of Christ plays a vital part in bringing about the restoration of all things. Our Heavenly Father's purpose to gather all things into Christ and His love should urge us to proclaim the Good News, cause its Christ's Body through Whom He will fill all things. No one will be saved until they are saved, even though all are reconciled. We are reconciled through the death of Jesus Christ, but we are saved by His life and if the Father's love is working in us we want everyone to experience this life, we will stop just living for ourselves. However I think that this is the work of the Holy Spirit and we can reproduce it on our own. Not everyone seemed to sense this urgency in the early church, not everyone went out and planted churches etc. At least not till they were ready to go on their own.

The Gospel is a offense to the natural man, for even if we say all will be united with our Heavenly Dad in the end, Jesus Christ is the only way. Most people would rather offer their own performance and believe that they must return home, because of their good conduct instead of living by the faith of the Son of God. The cross is an offence to our legal mentality that we inherited from Adam because he ate from the tree of knowledge.

[firstborn888]

I would agree with the comments above about urgency. One is the urgency of God's timing. When the 'fulness of time' comes for any event, it becomes an urgent matter. Paul stated on Mars hill that God overlooked the past times of ignorance, but now cammands men everywhere to repent. Did God change? No. The day of free repentence/restoration had come to all nations.

The other urgency is from the call of God AND the sheer joy/fun of sharing good news. It saddens me, GREATLY saddens me that a lot of people see no need in sharing Christ if there's no eternal hell to save people from. That's like keeping food and water from someone who's starving of thirsty just because you know God will take care of them in the end.

I think if you withhold this great news (for any reason) Jesus will have words with you about that issue down the road.

God did not send Jesus to save us from the consequences of sin (missing the mark) - He came to save us from sin itself.

People who think that people will not serve God without the threat of eternal torture hanging over there heads don't really know what the love of God is or what it does.  That's what saddens me the most.

  Blessings,
   byron

[martincisneros]

Here's another email inquirer with some good questions.:

Good morning,
 
I have been reading through the material on your site and I'm hoping you can address a couple of questions for which I have yet to find answers.
 
The first is one of urgency.  Paul clearly felt a high degree of urgency to preach the Gospel to as many as possible (1 Cor 9:16).  If he was a UR as your suggest, what was his driving motivation?  Was it only his desire to obey Christ's command (commonly referred to as the Great Commission) or was there more?
 
My second question is about "offence."  How is the Gospel an offence (Galatians 5:11) to unbelivers if all are to be ultimately saved?
 
Respectfully,

Let's talk about the wicked, the really wicked:  Nero, Hitler, Stalin, Henry Ford, the "President" of Iran that Iran currently suffers under, or the street gang on the other side of town.

Did Nero envision EVERYONE in the same heaven as himself?

Did Hitler want to spend eternity with Jews, gays, handicapped people, people of African descent, George Patton, Winston Churchill, etc.?

What about Stalin?

What about Henry Ford? a bit of an antisemite if I remember right.

How about the current President/Dictator of Iran?  All of eternity in heaven with Jews, Americans, and other infidels to his religion?

What about the gang on the other side of town that distinguishes itself by color differences?  bloods want to spend eternity with crips?  YEAH RIGHT!!

As far as Paul's urgency to preach the Gospel, he believed in his product, if for a moment I may be allowed to reverently put it that way.  He was a salesman with the best product in the universe, but he didn't want your money!  He wanted you!!  Also, is it so difficult to believe that Paul was actually transformed by Christ and that apart from any considerations of the blackmails of hell that he sincerely loved all of mankind and wanted them actively participating in Christ's Kingdom?  Is Christ's Kingdom so atrocious that it takes the thread of an inferno to make anyone want to become a part of it?  Are Christ's effects upon the nature of those that He transforms so pathetic that they must live the rest of their lives under the blackmail of where they might otherwise end up if they're less than 100% appreciative??