As an evangelical teenager in the late ’90s, the “end times” were a source of hope, fear, and confusion. I hoped to join my fellow believers on the flight to heaven. I feared getting “left behind.” And I was confused about whether the “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13) of believers had any bearing on my life in the world. If we were just waiting for such an imminent end, why was I studying for tests, playing sports, and making friends? How could these things matter, in light of eternity?
It was not until seminary that I found more satisfying answers, along with a more robust theology of creation. Thinkers like Abraham Kuyper, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Richard Mouw gave me reasons to believe that life in this world matters. But I could have also found that in a more obvious place.
“Paul rejected any form of escapist theology,” New Testament scholar Nijay K. Gupta writes in his book Paul for the World: A Grounded Vision for Finding Meaning in this Life—Not Just the Next. Gupta’s vision challenges readings that cast the apostle as more otherworldly, like the Paul I envisioned as a teenager, whose greatest contribution was the “Romans road” showing the way to eternal life.
Gupta’s reading also brings balance to scholarly accounts that privilege Paul’s eschatological teaching over his ethical outlook. More recently, “apocalyptic” readings of Paul have emphasized the way that the gospel brings an end to the old order of things. And yet, whether believers are looking for the rapture or reckoning with the rupture of the age, the question remains: How shall we live here and now?
This question is a throughline from Gupta’s earlier book, Strange Religion, which highlights the subversive shape of early Christian belief and practice. If that book aimed at an immersive investigation of “how the first Christians were weird, dangerous, and compelling,” Paul for the World meets us where we are with more contemporary themes and topics. Gupta wants to show Paul speaks to the “things that make up our concerns and preoccupations in this life.”
Gupta’s reading of Paul is capacious, encompassing the concern for evangelism, provided that it is clear that “God doesn’t want Christians to escape the earth to make it to heaven. He wants to bring heaven to earth.” Similarly, Gupta points out that the rupture that Jesus brings is one that renews the world, rather than replacing it. It is the “evil age” (Greek aiōn) that is coming to an end (Gal. 1:4), not the “world” (kosmos) that God is reconciling to himself (2 Cor. 5:19).
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Taking a page from Bonhoeffer, Gupta argues that the Incarnation means Christ has chosen to belong to the world in order to heal. And Christians should be a contagious force of good wherever they are, seeking “to be not less worldly, but more worldly.” Our hope is not to become angels, but to become more fully human, like Jesus.
This part of the book reminds me of an insight I once heard from New Testament scholar Scot McKnight. The difference between Jesus and the religious teachers, McKnight said, was that they saw holiness as something fragile to be protected, while Jesus saw holiness as something powerful to be unleashed. Similarly, Gupta writes that the gospel is God’s “plan for making good what has been corrupted, making beautiful what has become ugly, and making holy what has been made ungodly by sin and death.”
But how does this happen? Rather than expounding a grand project of systematic renewal, Gupta shows what it looks like when Paul’s vision of cosmic salvation gets pressed into the corners of ordinary life into “justice, equality, money, work, friendship, athletics, wellness, and creativity.”
Short and accessible chapters on each of these subjects make up the second half of the book, where Gupta manages to do multiple things at the same time.
First, he offers a crash course on the social and cultural context of Paul’s writings on these subjects. What did Paul’s contemporaries take for granted? What did the Stoics or Epicureans think about work or friendship? Are there parallels to our contemporary preoccupations with fitness and wellness?
Second, Gupta shows how Paul’s lived theology models a posture that is conversant with but often radically distinct from his world. The cumulative case results in the third thing: a demonstration of Gupta’s thesis that life in this world matters, and that our goal is not to “go up” but to “grow up in all things” (Eph. 4:15, NKJV) into Christlike life in this world.
As a recovering escapist, I was struck by the force of Gupta’s larger project to inspire Christians to live together in a way that is constructive and compelling. I also found myself wondering what other topics could be brought into the orbit of Paul’s theology, where we might feel Paul’s sharper edges. What does Paul have to say to us about our obsession with efficiency, self-optimization, or performative virtue? How would he evaluate our dating lives or political identities? What would he say about youth sports?
Grappling with these questions requires imagination. But as Gupta points out, it also requires a theology marked by hope. This “blessed hope” is not that we will get to go someplace else, but that this world, this fallen world, is still deeply loved by the triune God. And that means that we can engage every part of it with curiosity and courage.
As Paul wrote to Titus, Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good” (2:14). Until the Lord returns, there is so much good to do. For it is in our eagerness to do good that we testify to character and scope of Christ’s redemption, on earth as it is in heaven.
Justin Ariel Bailey is a professor of theology at Dordt University. He is the author of Interpreting Your World: Five Lenses for Engaging Theology and Culture.
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