The life and work of St. Paul

610 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
we find it to be in any of St. Paul's previous writings. Already, in writing to
the Corinthians, he had said that " if he had ever known Christ after the flesh,
from henceforth he knew Him no more," and in this Epistle the Person of our
Lord as the Eternal Co-existent Son is represented in that divine aspect the
more transcendent than a human
apprehension of which is a boon infinitely
and external knowledge of Jesus in His earthly humiliation. And yet as
though to obviate beforehand any Cerinthian attempt to distinguish between
Jesus the man of sorrows and Christ the risen Lord, between Jesns the
crucified and Christ the Eternal Word
in the statement that these are one.
he is, even in this Epistle, emphatic
1 To say that there is any change
in St. Paul's fundamental conception of Christ
false,
would be demonstrably
since even the juxtaposition of our Lord Jesus Christ with God
the Father as the source of all grace, and the declaration that all
things, and we among them, exist solely through Him, are statements of
His divinity in St. Paul's earliest
2
Epistles as strong as anything which
could be subsequently added. But hitherto the Apostle had been led to
speak of Him mainly as the Judge of the quick and dead, in the Epistles
to the Thessalonians as the ;
invisible Head and Ruler of the Church in those
to the Corinthians ; as the Author of all spiritual freedom from ceremonial
bondage, and the Redeemer of the world from the yoke of sin and death, as
in those to the Romans and Galatians ; as the Saviour, the Raiser from the
dead, the Life of all life, the Source of all joy and peace, in that to the Philippians.
A new phase of His majesty had now to be brought into prominence
one which was indeed involved in every doctrine which St. Paul had
taught concerning Him as part of a Gospel which he had received by
revelation, but which no external circumstance had ever yet led him to explain
in all its clearness. This was the doctrine of Christ, as the Eternal, Preexisting,
yet Incarnate Word. He had now to speak of Him as One in whom
and by whom the Universe and that not only its existing condition but its
very matter and its substance are divinely hallowed, so that there is nothing
irredeemable, nothing inherently antagonistic to Holiness, either in matter or in
the body of man ; as One in whom dwells the " plenitude " of the divine per-
fections, so that no other angelic being can usurp any share of God which is
not found in Him as One who is the ;
only Potentate, the only Mediator, the
only Saviour, the Head of the Body which is the Church, and the Source of
its life through every limb. And the expression of this truth was rendered
necessary by error. The Colossian teachers were trying tcf supplement Christianity,
theoretically by a deeper wisdom, practically by a more abstentious
holiness. It was the beautiful method of St. Paul to combat false doctrine as
little as possible by denunciation and controversy (though these two have at
times their necessary place), and as much as possible by the presentation of
the counter truth. We are able, therefore, to find the theological errors of
i 1. 20, 22 ; ii. 6.
1 Thess. i. 1 ; v. 28 ; 1 Cor. viii. 6 ; 2 Cor. iv. 4 ; v. 19 ; Rom. ix. 5. Even Renas
fully admit this (St. Paul, x. 274),