Jesus teaches by example and image. Paul, by contrast, renders the risen Christ as a shared life: not only the person remembered, but the living Lord in whom the assemblies—Corinth, Galatia, Philippi—now exist and act. In Paul, “Christ” is both personal and transpersonal.
Thesis
This essay explores the difference between example and abstract teaching in the New Testament. In the Gospels, Jesus forms people by lived action and concrete images. In Paul’s undisputed letters, the same ethic is reframed conceptually: “in Christ,” “by the Spirit,” “new creation.” Both aim at agápē, but they arrive there by different roads.
Paul’s undisputed letters: Romans; 1 Corinthians; 2 Corinthians; Galatians; Philippians; 1 Thessalonians; Philemon.Jesus as Embodied Teaching
Jesus teaches by doing and by images taken from ordinary life. A few snapshots:
- Table fellowship with “sinners” to model mercy (Mark 2:15–17).
- Touching the untouchable (a leper) to restore dignity (Mark 1:40–45).
- Healing on the Sabbath to show mercy over ritual (Mark 3:1–6; cf. Matt 12:7).
- Welcoming children as the measure of the kingdom (Mark 10:13–16).
- Non-retaliation taught as a direct imperative (Matthew 5:39).
- Parables—the Samaritan, the Prodigal, the Banquet—turning ethics into narrative memory (Luke 10; 15).
In short: conscience by example. The ethic is carried in scenes, gestures, and short commands anyone can grasp.
Paul as Theologian of Participation
Paul rarely narrates Jesus. He thinks Jesus. Key moves:
- Justification by faith (Romans 3:28).
- Participation language: “in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17), “Christ in you” (Galatians 2:20).
- Life by the Spirit—desires re-trained from the inside (Galatians 5:16, 22–23).
- The church as the “body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27).
- Cosmic scope: the last Adam, new creation (1 Corinthians 15:45; 2 Corinthians 5:17).
Paul turns Jesus’ way into a shared reality the community inhabits and reasons about.
Where They Meet
- Agápē at the centre:
- Jesus: “Thou shalt love… thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37–39).
- Paul: “Love… is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10).
- Mercy over ritual:
- Jesus: “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13).
- Paul: the fruit of the Spirit replaces boundary-keeping (Galatians 5:22–23).
- Non-retaliation:
- Jesus: “Turn… the other also” (Matthew 5:39).
- Paul: “Overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
Where They Differ
- Form
- Jesus: Example—embodied scenes, parables, imperatives.
- Paul: argument—definitions, contrasts, application to cases (food, status, money, conflict).
- Focus
- Jesus: direct practices (mercy, generosity, forgiveness) and vivid reversals (last/first).
- Paul: inner participation and identity (“in Christ”), then conduct derived from that.
- Wealth stance
- Jesus: sharp renunciation—“sell… distribute to the poor” (Luke 18:22).
- Paul: voluntary generosity—“God loveth a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7).
- Imagery
- Jesus: seeds, tables, roads, coins, children.
- Paul: body, Spirit/flesh, new creation, justification—conceptual imagery.
Strengths and Risks
- Example (Jesus)
- Strength: immediate, memorable, universally intelligible.
- Risk: can be romanticised without the hard communal work of application.
- Abstraction (Paul)
- Strength: scales to mixed communities; resolves clashes; trains conscience.
- Risk: can drift into jargon; feels distant from the Galilean scenes that began it.
A Working Synthesis
Let Jesus set the pattern; let Paul supply the grammar. Practice the scenes (mercy, welcome, non-violence, care for the least) and use Paul’s categories to stabilise the practice in community: “walk in the Spirit,” “bear one another’s burdens,” “let each esteem other better than themselves” (Galatians 5:16; 6:2; Philippians 2:3).
Conclusion
Religion is a universal human phenomenon. Whether we speak of Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism, we meet a common code of conduct framed by belief in God. For most, God is imagined as a being “outside” us, located—at least in thought—within time and space. Yet it is nonsense to treat God as something that could be pinpointed and travelled to like a place on a map. Here the teachings of Jesus and Paul matter, because both speak of an inner transformation that becomes, in itself, an encounter with a reality of cosmic scope.
Their aim is moral awareness. I have suggested that human beings are born with an innate potential for goodness—something like Chomsky’s language device. It does not activate itself. It needs contact with the world (living examples, stories that stick) and moderation—ongoing assessment and correction, weighing each act against the whole pattern of life we claim to live by. The New Testament calls this work metanoia—a change of mind and heart that issues in changed conduct.
The Parable of the Sower is the clearest picture of how potential succeeds or fails. Not everyone gets the same chance. Hard ground, shallow soil, and choking thorns are real conditions: trauma, thin roots, worry and wealth. But where there is good soil—steady care, true examples, habits that hold—seed bears fruit. The hope the Bible offers is that, whatever the odds, we can still shape our circumstances by responsible action—by agápē. English has the word love, but it is too thin for the range of steadfast mercy, justice, generosity, and courage that agápē names.
The human mind interprets reality through metaphor and narrative; we are not made for objectivity. We need images and stories to make our concepts live. The Bible’s stories are among the most powerful we have, but we should not mistake the narrative veil for what lies behind it. Taken as a whole, the New Testament gives inspiration and impetus; what finally matters is not the storyline itself but the life beyond it—our potential to live in love and in harmony with the world and with one another.
As a schoolboy, the daily readings I heard from the Gospels shaped me more deeply than the dogmas I met later. Jesus’ teaching by example and image is immediate and graspable; Paul’s abstraction, however valuable, is farther from the ground. If Sunday is to mean anything, it must change Monday—toward mercy, reconciliation, generosity, courage, and self-restraint. Everything else is scaffolding.
