Themes in Pauline Letters Part 3

In the previous posts, I shared with you six of the themes from Pauline Letters: Suffering, Joy and Discipleship, Grace, Second coming of Jesus and the Obligation to offer Forgiveness. This post I am going to share three more and with these, I conclude the themes.

The Power of the Holy Spirit:

The Holy Spirit plays a key role in the Pauline letters. In his letter to the Corinthians, he declares, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit …” (1Corinthians 6:19). In his letter to the Romans, he refers to the Spirit as the who would give life: “If the Spirit of hi who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also…” (Romans 8:11). A little further in the same chapter, he emphasizes that it is through the Spirit we call God our Father: “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back in to fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” It is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15-16).

Adoption:

Paul has talked a lot about how we are adopted into Christ’s family and that we will receive an inheritance because of it. By using this metaphor. “adoption”, he describes a change of status from an existence, marked by slavery to a new family with the freedom of the Spirit. He has used this term five times in his letters (Galatians 4:5; Romans 8:14, 23; Romans 9:4; and Ephesians 1:5). He uses this term to refer always to the people of the New Covenant. In the letter to the Galatians, he has written: “… when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:45).

The beauty of Unity:

Since Christ desired for his Church the stunning power of unity, Paul insisted the same theme in the image of a human body. In his first letter to the Corinthians he describes: “ For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body …” (1 Corinthians 12: 12-26).

May the power of the Spirit enlighten us

Fr. Arul Joseph V.