Top Highlights

• Hans Kung said this of Paul's cross-centered focus:Paul succeeded more clearly than anyone in expressing what is the ultimately distinguishing feature of Christianity.... The distinguishing feature of Christianity as opposed to the ancient world religions and the modern humanisms ... is quite literally according to Paul "this Jesus Christ, Jesus Ch...
• One standard definition of spirituality in a Christian context is "the lived experience of Christian belief."4 As a starting point for the understanding ofspirituality as adopted in this book, we may describe it as the experience of God's love and grace in daily life.
• Paul's mission in life was to seek to "order the lives of Christian congregations by pulling everything into the tremendous gravitational field of the cross.""
• That the Messiah, God's Son, was sent by God to be crucified, and then raised by God, meant that somehow God and the cross were inextricably interrelated. This connection led Paul to see not only Jesus, but also God the "Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," as defined by the cross.
• Paul's experience of God was personal and transformative. He felt himself "dead to" - unplugged from, so to speak - his former self and life, and thereby alive to and for God: