Charles Monroe Sheldon considered Christ the supreme model of Christian behavior. Thatâs why the Topeka pastor wrote the novel In His Steps (1896), a story about a minister who challenges his congregants to judge all their actions by first asking themselves, âWhat would Jesus do?â The title is borrowed from Peterâs words in 1 Peter 2:21, and the book is one of the best-selling publications of all time. The subtitle became a popular catchphrase a century later (WWJD) and challenged a new generation of Christians to follow the example of Jesus.
Jesus himself said, âFollow me,â so we expect our ministers and mentors to encourage us to be more like Jesus. All of us should be more like Jesus. Christians expect the disciples of Jesus to say, as Peter did, âFollow the example of Jesus,â but it takes a special kind of chutzpah for a disciple to say, âFollow my example.â
Paul had chutzpah.
âJoin together in following my example, brothers and sisters,â he encourages the Philippians (Phil 3:17, emphasis added). At the very least, he claimed an intermediary role between Jesus and other Christians. âFollow my example,â Paul exhorts, âas I follow the example of Christâ (1 Cor 11:1). This from the man who challenges the Romans to ânot think of yourself more highly than you oughtâ (Rom 12:3). It may be that Paulâs first-century readers had no problem with this instruction from their spiritual mentor. Maybe it didnât sound brash to people then, but few modern Christians could summon the self-confidence to say these words about their own life: âFollow my example.â Coming from someone else, even from the pen of an apostle, the advice sounds arrogant.
In another letter, Paul tells the Galatians that God âset me apart from my motherâs wombâ (Gal 1:15). We might not blink at that statement. We typically assume that all of us are chosen in our motherâs womb, but thatâs not what Paul meant. The Bible only identifies a handful of people as set apart by God from before birth: Samson, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Jesus. God specially appointed all of them for a specific role in redemptive history. Thatâs what Paul had in mind. He was like those guys. He was exceptional.
Statements like theseâfollow my example because Iâm exceptional!âhave earned Paul a reputation for being kind of a jerk. The truth is, this is just the beginning. Paul asserted his opinions, even when he was wrong. He bossed around churches and bulldozed other leaders. In 2014, the famed German scholar Gerd LĂźdemann noted Paulâs âstreak of arrogance and a tendency to vacillate,â and said Paulâs claims of âauthority reinforced his sense of infallibility and often led him to bully any who disagreed.â1 While we donât think Paul ever vacillated, he does seem to bully. This description may bring to mind certain celebrity pastors who seem immune to rebuke, or leaders from your past (and ours) who delivered their opinions from on high as if they were speaking the very words of God.
Elsewhere Paul curses his opponents (Gal 1:8). Some people try to rehabilitate Paulâs reputation by exclaiming, âIâm sure thatâs not what he really meant.â But that really is what he meant. He repeats it just to make sure we got it: âI say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under Godâs curse!â (Gal 1:9). Paul claims to be superior to many of his contemporaries in keeping Torah (Gal 1:14), claims to speak in tongues more than all the Corinthians combined (1 Cor 14:18) and claims to have worked harder than all the other apostles (1 Cor 15:10). Then he curses some others in Corinth (1 Cor 16:22). Taken in total, his conduct has caused at least one modern Christian to claim, âNo Christian genuinely seeking the righteousness of God should imitate a man like Paul.â2
APOSTLE TO THE GENTILESâ AND DONâT YOU FORGET IT!
Apostles held special status among the earliest Christians. In the New Testament, the term âapostlesâ usually designates Jesusâ twelve closest disciples. Throughout the Gospels and Acts, this core group is often identified by a collective name: the Twelve (see for example Mt 26:20; Mk 9:35; Lk 9:12; Jn 6:67; Acts 6:2). These men made up Jesusâ inner circle, his most intimate friends. To the masses Jesus spoke in parables, but to the Twelve he explained in detail the mysteries of the kingdom of God (Mk 4:10-11). They were the only people who saw Jesus calm the stormy sea, walk on water and break the bread of the Last Supper. Even after Jesus ascended to heaven, the apostles were forever affected by their experience with him in life. Everybody noticed. Even the enemies of the apostles, Israelâs leaders who tried to suppress the Gospel, noticed: âWhen they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesusâ (Acts 4:13, emphasis added). Having been with Jesus marked them as special.
When heresy and schism threatened the unity of the young church in the next generation after all the apostles were dead, church leaders appealed to the authority of the apostles to give church members confidence in their pastors and in the Scriptures. Clement of Rome, one of the first bishops of Rome who was possibly a companion of the apostle Paul (Phil 4:3), argued that the leaders of the local churches could be trusted because they were appointed by the apostles. The pastors were appointed by the apostles, the apostles were appointed by Christ, Christ was sent by God (1 Clement 42:1-4; 44:1-3). In the next couple of generations, âapostolicityâ was an important criterion for a book to be considered part of the canon of Scripture. You could trust the content of the books written by folks like Matthew and John because they had been there. They had witnessed Jesusâ miracles and heard his teaching with their own ears. John himself asserts: âThat . . . which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touchedâthis we proclaim concerning the Word of lifeâ (1 Jn 1:1). So the earliest Christians âdevoted themselves to the apostlesâ teachingâ (Acts 2:42). Christian tradition inherited its reverence for the apostles from the New Testament itself.
There are times Paul seems not to care about all that. Paul was not one of the Twelve. He did not follow nor interact with Jesus before his crucifixion. Gerd LĂźdemann observes, âHe did not consider the life of Jesus of Nazareth to be an important topic. Paul never met Jesus personally and had little familiarity with his deeds and teachings.â3 This is overstating the case, though it is true Paul rarely quotes Jesus. And the only sense in which Paul ever spoke with Jesus was on the Damascus road, yet in that interaction Jesus told Paul off. Paul dismisses the fact that the other apostles had walked with Jesus; they knew him âaccording to the fleshâ (2 Cor 5:16 ESV). He never expresses any disappointment that he didnât follow Jesus through the villages of Galilee. Instead he brags about learning at the feet of Gamaliel (Acts 22:3).
Instead of honoring the apostles, Paul insisted that he was just as authoritative as any of them. He says the apostles were âreputed to be pillarsâ (Gal 2:9 NASB)âan expression not intended to be complimentary. He asserts âI consider myself not in the least inferior to the most eminent apostlesâ (2 Cor 11:5 NASB). He doesnât consider the apostlesâ proximity to Jesus to have elevated their status in the least. Luke thought it was important that he had received the message from those who had been there. He was careful to compose a faithful account âjust as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the wordâ (Lk 1:2). It mattered to Luke if you were an eyewitness. It didnât matter to Paul that he wasnât.
Time and again Paul emphasizes that âhis gospelâ is precisely that: his own. âI did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught itâ (Gal 1:12). Following his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paulâs âimmediate response was not to consult any human beingâ (Gal 1:16). When Paul finally interacted with the Christian leaders in Jerusalem a decade later (Gal 2:1), he insists that they âadded nothing to my messageâ (Gal 2:6). How arrogant it seems that Paul would be so unwilling to submit himself to the teaching of the apostles when others didâand on the grounds that he didnât have to because he was an apostle too!
So confident was Paul in his understanding of the gospel that he felt free to challenge the Twelve. Peter, for example, was happy to eat with Gentiles in Antioch. But when âcertain men came from James,â Peter withdrew from the Gentiles and he influenced other Jews to do the same (Gal 2:12). On the face of it, Peter appears guilty of little more than being cliquish. But Paul lays into him. When he saw that Peter was ânot acting in line with the truth of the gospelâ (Gal 2:14) Paul âopposed him to his face, because he stood condemnedâ (Gal 2:11). And he did it âin front of them allâ (Gal 2:14). In the process of calling Peter out, he delivers a theological treatise on the law and the gospel. He presumed to correct Peterâs gospelâa gospel Peter knew firsthand because he had walked with Jesus.
Imagine This
Paul is the newest staff member at the booming five-thousand-member church you started. He wasnât there when the church was planted. He wasnât part of the first meetings in your living room. He never had to load and unload the sound equipment in the hot sun at the rented high school. And yet he is so confident in his opinion that he corrects you publicly on stage and in your face. Or, Paul is the new employee youâve hired at your company who has a fancy degree and no experience, but is certain that heâs doing it right and youâre doing it wrong. I wonder if it bothered Peter to be corrected in front of everyone. It certainly would have irritated me. I donât mind being corrected, but there is a right way to do it and then there is a way that makes you a jerk.
Peter may have been wrong. Like all of us at times, Peter may have momentarily stepped off the path of discipleship. But show some respect. Peter was there when Jesus was arrested. Peter was there when Jesus fed the five thousand. Peter was the spokesperson at Pentecost. For goodness sake, Peter was chosen to be one of the three to witness the transfiguration! In a storm, Peter walked on water (Mt 14:29); Paul, in a storm, had to swim (Acts 27:42-44). Jesus commanded his disciples, âIf your brother sins, go and show him his fault in privateâ (Mt 18:15 NASB, emphasis added). Paul didnât do that. He confronted Peter publicly and to his face. He shamed a highly regarded shepherd of God in front of the flock.
PAUL ON A PEDESTAL
Evangelicals often give Paul extra credit and justify his behavior because we have him on a pedestal that is just an inch or two shorter than Jesus. Itâs an honest temptation since Paul wrote most of the New Testament. Even so, Paulâs contemporaries did not share that temptation. Luke, the writer of Acts and occasional traveling companion of Paul, obviously admired Paul but he still went out of his way to remind us that Paul wasnât perfect. Many popular Greco-Roman stories of the day included a âdivine-manâ character. But Luke wants everyone to know that Paul wasnât half-man, half-god. Paul wasnât Hercules, so Luke tells two stories in which his readers would have immediately recognized that Paul was wrong.
In the first, Paul has a falling out with Barnabas, âa Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means âson of encouragementâ)â (Acts 4:36).
Notice that Luke starts the story by reminding us of Barnabasâs excellent pedigree and nickname that all of us would admire. Barnabas was the first disciple to vouch for Paul after Paulâs âconversionâ from persecutor to propagator of the gospel (Acts 9:27). In Acts, Barnabas always acts with integrity (Acts 11:22-25). On the second missionary journey, Barnabas wants to take John Mark along. Paul disagrees, because he considers John Mark a quitter (Acts 15:37-38). The disagreement becomes so strong that Barnabas and Paul split. Who was right, Barnabas or Paul? Our instinct might be to justify Paulâheâs the hero, right? Not at the time. The first readers of the book of Acts would know John Mark had written a Gospel. Many would know that Mark was a later companion of Paul (Col 4:10; Philem 24) and that Paul considered Mark personally useful (2 Tim 4:11). In other words, while we modern readers give Paul the benefit of the doubt, in the first century that honor would have gone to John Mark and Barnabas. Besides, if you had a problem with Barnabas, you were the problem. He was a saint.
Luke records another episode in Acts that illustrates his willingness to point out Paulâs faults. It also illustrates an insight into Paulâs personalityâthat being wrong didnât stop Paul from being confident. When Paul wanted to travel to Jerusalem, the Christians in Tyre urged Paul âthrough the Spiritâ not to go to Jerusalem (Acts 21:4). When Paul left Tyre, he traveled toward Jerusalem to Caesarea. While he was there, the prophet Agabus received a vision from the Holy Spirit and walked all the way from Judea (thirty miles!) to tell Paul not to go to Jerusalem. The apostles who traveled with Paul to Caesarea told him not to go to Jerusalem. The Caesarean believers told Paul not to go to Jerusalem.
Paul decided to go to Jerusalem. He simply âwould not be dissuadedâ (Acts 21:14). In his defense, he gave a very spiritual-sounding explanation for ignoring everyoneâs advice. âI am ready not only to be bound,â Paul said, âbut also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesusâ (Acts 21:13). Thatâs good, because when he arrived in Jerusalem, he was promptly arrested.
Letâs avoid letting Paul off the hook on which Luke clearly puts him. Luke was careful with his words. He tells us Paul said that the Spirit wanted Paul to go to Jerusalem, and then Luke clearly states that the Spirit said otherwise: âThrough the Spirit they urged Paul not to go on to Jerusalemâ (Acts 21:4)....