Q:
The gate is narrow and
we have to listen to Jesus' voice, not Paul's. Paul is the one that entered
by some other way. He is the hired man, not the shepherd, and we should not
be following him, but most people can't stand even the idea of questioning
Paul. We are to test out supposedly inspired scripture, why not that of
Paul. It has long been know that Paul's theology is significantly different
from that of Jesus. Jesus shows us that works are critical to salvation, but
Paul tells us they are of no value. Sounds like a liar to me.
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A: I don't know if you feel the same about Peter's letters as
you do about Paul's. The apostle Peter said the following: "Dear friends, while
you are waiting for these things to happen and for [the Lord] to come, try hard
to live without sinning; and be at peace with everyone so that he will be
pleased with you when he returns. And remember why he is waiting. He is giving
us time to get his message of salvation out to others. Our wise and beloved
brother Paul has talked about these same things in many of his letters. Some of
his comments are not easy to understand, and there are people who are
deliberately stupid, and always demand some unusual interpretation--they have
twisted his letters around to mean something quite different from what he meant,
just as they do the other parts of the Scriptures--and the result is disaster
for them." (2 Peter 3:14-16, TLB) Notice how Peter includes Paul's
letters with the "other parts of the Scriptures," and if you reject the one you
might as well reject the others. Other translations say that Paul wrote "with
the wisdom that God gave him." (NIV, ERV, God's Word, etc.)
There are people who approach the study of the Bible as if it were a
smorgasbord. They pick and choose only what appeals to them, or what they find
easy to digest. As Peter points out, that is to their own harm or "disaster,"
for "the whole Bible was given to us by inspiration from God and is useful to
teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives; it
straightens us out and helps us do what is right. It is God's way of making us
well prepared at every point, fully equipped to do good to everyone." (2 Tim.
3:16,17, TLB) Of course, those words were written by Paul.
Another point not to be overlooked is the fact that Jesus himself chose Paul,
when he appeared to him and said regarding him that "this man is a chosen vessel
to me to bear my name to the nations as well as to kings and the sons of
Israel." (Acts 9:3-6, 15,16) This he zealously fulfilled. When Paul visited the
people in the Greek city of Beroea they actually did what you say we should do,
namely, they tested out what Paul was preaching to them, "carefully examining
the Scriptures daily as to whether these things were so." The result? "Therefore
many of them became believers, and so did not a few of the reputable Greek women
and of the men." (Acts 17:10-12)