PAUL AND THE RHETORIC OF REVERSAL: KERYGMATIC ...

1 Corinthians 10:16: The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the
blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of
Christ?
2 Corinthians 4:10: Always bearing the death of Jesus in the body, in order that the
life of Jesus might also become manifest in the body.
Galatians 6:17: For I bear the marks of Jesus in my body
Ephesians 2:16: And to reconcile both of them, in one body, to God, through the
cross, putting the enmity to death in it.
Philippians 1:20: [It is] my eager expectation and hope that I might not be put to
shame in any way, but that, in all boldness, now and always, Christ might be exalted
in my body.
Colossians 1:22: But now he has reconciled you in the body of his flesh, through
death, to present you holy and unblemished and blameless before him.
It seems reasonable that Paul’s christocentric kerygma, stemming especially from his
Damascus Road experience, gave a new centre and logic to the ethics that he had already
inherited as a Pharisee: Christian believers are to identify ethically with Christ, whose bodily
crucifixion and resurrection they share. Thus they are to turn from godless bodily habitation
(sexual immorality, greed, impurity), and inhabit the body of Christ (relating to their fellow
believers in partnership and love). This need not be thought of as the only concrete way in
which Paul could elaborate on his conviction that “living is Christ”; nevertheless it appears to
be a common pattern.
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