Paul Wasn’t There Either
Paul never saw the cross — he came in years late, on the wrong side of it — yet no one in the New Testament staked more on it than he did. Why would a man build everything on an afternoon he wasn’t there for?
Paul never saw the cross — he came in years late, on the wrong side of it — yet no one in the New Testament staked more on it than he did. Why would a man build everything on an afternoon he wasn’t there for?
Strip the familiarity off a baptism and it’s a strange thing to do to someone — laid all the way back until the water closes over the face, held under, then lifted out. A staged death, with a rising on the end of it. And the claim underneath it is stranger still: that it’s his death, and we’re joined into it — even those of us who weren’t there.
Every feast God gave sits on a fixed date — except one. The Feast of Weeks you don’t look up; you count to it. And the day you count from refuses to sit still. Why does Pentecost slide?
We read the cross as the answer to our sin — and it’s so deep in us we never check it. But watch what the Passover actually does at Calvary: the same thing it did in Egypt. The lamb is never called a sin offering, even there.
The feast calendar puts Atonement years past the cross. The cross says otherwise. Both are true — and the contradiction dissolves the moment you stop reading it as one straight line.
The feast calendar places Atonement long after the cross. The cross is full of it anyway. Both appear true — how do we hold both?
Almost all of us read the Passover as being about sin. But open Exodus 12 and notice what the lamb is never once called. The whole account is pointing somewhere else.