The Kingdom Within: Faith in God, or Faith in a Cosmic Christ?

In my last blog post, we ended with a question: the kingdom of God is within you, the new covenant is written on the heart; will we dare engage the act that actually fulfills it? That act, I suggested, is the quiet, relentless work of letting Scripture soften the stony places from the inside out, without the scaffolding of any external religious machinery. The question does not dissolve when we turn the page. It cuts deeper. Because once we place the Jesus of the Gospels beside the Paul of the Epistles; not as harmonious teammates (because they are not) but as two distinct philosophical voices; the divergence refuses to harmonize. It becomes an ontological fork in the road of “salvation” itself.

Consider, for a moment, the spare and luminous command Jesus offers in Mark 11:22. A fig tree has withered at his word; the disciples marvel. Jesus does not pivot to a theory of atonement or a cosmic transaction. He answers with elemental directness: Have faith in God. Not "faith in my forthcoming death", not "faith in a blood ritual that will justify you", not "faith in the machinery of a new priesthood.” Simply put, "have faith in God".

The Greek is even more intimate: echo pistis theos—possess, hold, inhabit the very trust that belongs to “God.” The object of faith is the Deity itself, unmediated, unfiltered. In that moment the kingdom is not a future reward earned by correct belief about a cosmic event; it is the present reality that faith in God (theos) unlocks from within. The mountain of impossibility moves because the heart has aligned itself with the living Source, not because a forensic transaction has been notarized in “heaven.”

Set this beside Paul’s formulation in Romans 3:25, and the philosophical air changes temperature. “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood,” Paul writes, “to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.”

Here the object of faith has shifted. It is no longer God in the raw, immediate sense Jesus commanded. Faith is now channeled through a precise mechanism: the blood of a cosmic Christ, displayed as public propitiation. The Greek hilastērion (a propitiation) carries the weight of an altar, a mercy seat, a transaction that satisfies “divine justice.” Righteousness is “declared,” not grown. Sins are “remitted” not by the slow softening of the heart through Scripture, but by the forbearance that flows exclusively from this singular, once-for-all offering. The kingdom that Jesus located "within" has been subtly relocated; it now orbits a historical-cosmic axis whose center is the cross.

The divergence is not semantic. It is structural. Jesus’ faith is participatory and immediate: trust God, and the kingdom (already inside you) awakens like yeast in dough (Luke 17:21). Paul’s faith is referential and mediatory: trust the blood-event, and the cosmic Christ becomes the sole valid object of affection. Hebrews 10:10, written in the Pauline stream, makes the transaction explicit: “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Sanctification itself, the very word that should evoke the inward engraving of the law on the heart, has been outsourced to an external, completed act. The body offered on the cosmic altar does the heavy lifting. The believer’s role is to assent, to appropriate, to rest in the finished work. The kingdom within is thereby eclipsed by the Christ without. What Jesus presented as an ever-present inner reality becomes, in Paul, a future hope or a positional status secured by right belief about a blood transaction.

Philosophically, this is no small inversion. The Jesus character invites the soul to stand naked before the Deity and say, with the Hebrew prophets, “Write your law on my heart; let these words dwell in me richly.” The path is relational, devotional, ongoing, an internal alchemy in which the words of Torah and Prophets become the very instruments of transformation.

Paul, by contrast, presents a system in which the law has already been declared powerless to produce that transformation; its only remaining function is to accuse until the blood of his Christ silences the accusation. Faith is no longer the direct gaze of the heart toward God. It is the mental and mystical embrace of a cosmic drama whose climax occurred outside history, outside the self, once for all. The kingdom that the Jesus character insisted was already within is quietly postponed or spiritualized into a metaphor for the church’s possession of forensic justification.

This is not to deny the beauty or power many have found in Paul’s vision. It is simply to refuse the comfortable harmonization that pretends the two ontologies are the same path viewed from different angles. One voice says: Have faith "in God" and the kingdom is already here, softening you from the inside. The other says: Have faith "in his blood" and the cosmic offering sanctifies you once for all, rendering further inward law-work secondary at best. The first trusts the Hebrew Scriptures as living tutor; the second redefines them as a diagnostic mirror that can only condemn until a superior transaction intervenes. The first keeps the new covenant exactly where Jeremiah and Ezekiel placed it—on the heart. The second relocates the covenant’s power to an altar outside the self.

So the original question returns, sharper now, like a blade turned toward the light. If the kingdom is truly within, if the new covenant is the law written on the heart, will we dare let Scripture do its softening work without the machinery of any external propitiation? Or will we rest in the safer, more dramatic transaction Paul so powerfully proclaimed: a cosmic Christ whose blood mysteriously becomes the new and final machinery?

The choice is not between “grace” and “works.” It is between two irreconcilable visions of what grace "is": an immediate, inward alignment with the living God, or a completed cosmic transaction to which the heart must assent. The words of the Jesus character still hover, unsoftened by centuries of harmonization: Have faith in God. The “kingdom” is within you.

Jesus vs. Paul: The Law Paul Called “Sin” Is the One Jesus Obeyed

I ended my last blog post with a somewhat bold question: the kingdom of God is within you, the new covenant is written on the heart; will we dare engage the act that actually fulfills it? The act, that is, of letting Scripture soften the stony places from the inside out, without the force of any external religious machinery.

That question does not evaporate in the face of comfortable harmonizations. It sharpens. Because once we press the philosophical divergence between the Jesus character and the apostle Paul into the light of their own words, the tension does not resolve into a tidy “both-and.” It reveals two irreconcilable ontologies of salvation: one that trusts the law of Moses as the living path to heart-alignment with the Deity, and another that declares and defines that very law the engine of “sin” and “death,” to be supplanted by faith in a cosmic, blood-atoning Christ.

Paul’s position is not subtle. He does not just critique legalism; he philosophically dismantles the entire Hebrew apparatus of religious law as a category.

In Romans 3:20 he writes with stoic finality: “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” The law, for Paul, is not a tutor toward inward renewal but a diagnostic mirror that only accuses. It cannot produce righteousness; it can only expose failure. This is not a pastoral aside. It is the foundational axiom of his soteriology.

The same note sounds in Galatians 5:4: “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.” Here the logic is mercilessly binary: any attempt to stand before the Deity through observance of religious law severs one from the grace that flows exclusively through the cosmic Christ. There is no middle ground. The law and the crucified-risen Savior are not complementary; they are competitive. Choose one, and the other becomes “of no effect.”

Paul drives the blade deeper into the flesh of traditional law-based religion still in 1 Corinthians 15:56: “The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.”

“Sin” is not, in right context, primarily moral lapse in Paul’s framework; it is the very power generated by reliance on any external religious system—Torah, ritual, tradition—that promises to manufacture righteousness. The law, he insists, is the fuel that keeps “sin’s” engine running, which “sin” is a conscience yet governed by the conscience of priest and priesthood by handwritten religious routine. And yet, in the very next breath of his theology, Paul offers precisely such a system: belief in the atoning blood of a cosmic Christ as the singular transaction that justifies (Romans 3:25; 5:9). Hypocritical, no?

“Faith” becomes the new religious law, the new external machinery. Participation in the death-and-resurrection of this Christ; through mental assent and mystical union; replaces the old law’s rituals. By Paul’s own criterion, this new apparatus fulfills his definition of “sin.” The strength of the new “law” remains external: a propositional transaction rather than the internal yielding the prophets demanded. Acts 13:39 seals the replacement program: “And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.” The law of Moses is not fulfilled; it is declared impotent. The cosmic Christ is not the telos of Israel’s story; he is its philosophical overthrow.

I am not imagining this interpretive quibble; this is blatantly within the New testament text. It is an ontological inversion. Paul’s Christ Movement births a law-based religion about the dying-and-rising Cosmic Savior, detached from the supposedly historical teacher’s “way.” The kingdom Jesus proclaimed—“within you” (Luke 17:21)—shrinks to a future hope or a spiritual metaphor. Justification by faith becomes the whole gospel. Inward heart-work becomes optional piety after the forensic deal is done.

Now set this beside the Jesus character in Matthew 23:2,3: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.”

Here is the stark philosophical counterpoint. Jesus does not abolish the law or declare it powerless to justify. He affirms the very seat of Mosaic authority. The religious law of Moses; Torah as lived, observed, internalized; is to be obeyed. The problem is not the law itself but the hypocritical manner of the Sanhedrin: they teach without doing, they burden without embodying.

Jesus’ critique is surgical. He does not say, “Ignore Moses and trust my blood instead.” He says, in essence: Do what the law commands from the seat of Moses, but do not imitate the externalism of its current custodians. “Salvation,” in this vision, flows through a personal, devotional relationship with the law of Moses itself, the very law Paul will later define as “sin.” The path to the Deity is not a cosmic transaction outside history but an inward alignment with the Scriptures that have always been the Deity’s self-revelation. The kingdom arrives not by escaping the law but by letting its words rewrite the heart from within, exactly as Ezekiel 36:26 and Jeremiah 31:33 envisioned: a new heart, a law written inwardly, relational obedience that softens rather than accuses.

This is not legalism. It is the deeper grace discussed in my previous blog post. Jesus’ endorsement of Moses’ seat preserves the Hebrew Scriptures as living tutor, not dead letter. The law, rightly engaged, becomes the very mechanism of transformation, the “doing the Father’s will” (Matthew 7:21) that opens the kingdom. Paul’s system, by contrast, renders that engagement optional at best, dangerous at worst. Once forensic justification is secured through the cosmic Christ, the law’s ongoing formative power is eclipsed. The inwardness the Jesus character lived and taught becomes a secondary “sanctification” project rather than the ontological core of salvation.

The philosophical contradiction cannot be ignored. Paul’s letters reveal a visionary mystic who encountered a cosmic Christ apart from the supposed historical discipleship of the Jesus Movement. Jesus, consistent with the prophets, embodied the law as the path of heart-renewal. One despises the philosophy of religious law as impotent and accusatory; the other upholds it as the Deity’s chosen instrument, provided the heart—not the priesthood—does the observing. One offers a transaction that silences ongoing inward work; the other demands relentless yielding to the words of Scripture that create anew.

To embody the Jesus character, then, is not to reject grace. It is to reclaim grace as the enabling power for the very inward philosophy the Hebrew Scriptures and the kingdom parables always proclaimed. The new covenant is not a superior blood ritual. It is the law written on the heart, the kingdom within, the personal relationship with the Hebrew Scriptures that Jesus himself supposedly modeled and commanded.

The question remains. Will we dare engage the act that actually fulfills it—opening the Scriptures, letting them do their slow, stony-softening work, refusing any external system (even a Pauline one) to stand in for the heart’s quiet yielding? The kingdom is within. The choice is not between law and grace. It is between two irreconcilable visions of what grace was always meant to accomplish: a strict declaration, or a transformed self. Only one of them keeps faith with the Jesus who sat at a table with the Hebrew Scriptures and declared their reign already among us.

Is Christianity More Pauline Than Jesus-Like?

The New Testament paints a vivid picture of the Jesus character, a Hebrew priest proclaiming only the Kingdom of God, and the Paul character, the self-appointed apostle whose mystical encounter with a Christ reshaped early Christianity. But what if Paul’s gospel, often seen as the cornerstone of modern Christianity, diverges from the message of the supposedly historical Jesus? It isn’t difficult to liken Paul to Balaam, the false prophet who blessed what he once cursed, yet remained an outsider, never fully trusted (Numbers 22–24). If Paul echoes Balaam (and he does), what does this say about the gospel he preached? Was it the same as Jesus’ message, or something else entirely?

In this post, I’ll explore the tension between Jesus and Paul in the New Testament, answering whether Christianity today is more Pauline than Jesus-like, and what that means for those seeking an authentic return to the message of that historical Hebrew priest we call “Jesus.”

Paul as Balaam: A Blessing with a Shadow of Doubt

The comparison of Paul to Balaam is interesting. Balaam, a non-Israelite prophet, was hired to curse Israel but was divinely compelled to bless them instead. Similarly, Paul, a zealous Pharisee, initially persecuted the Jesus Movement (Galatians 1:13,14). His dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9) transformed him into a fervent advocate for including Gentiles in the movement he once opposed. Yet, as Wilson (2014) argues, this shift raises questions about Paul’s reliability. Was his gospel a divinely inspired continuation of Jesus’ mission, or did it introduce a new theology that diverged from the original?

Yet much like Balaam, who was compelled to speak blessings over Israel while inwardly remaining suspect and ultimately tragic, Paul enters the Jesus movement not as a disciple of the Nazarene, but as an outsider who rebranded the message for Gentile consumption. Maurice Goguel, writing in Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History? (1926), observed that “Christianity was born at the beginning of the second century from the meeting of the different currents of thought originating in Judea, Greece and Rome” and that “the person of Jesus was merely a literary fiction” for some early Christian thinkers, highlighting how quickly the focus shifted from the man to the myth (Goguel, 1926, p. 10). Though Goguel himself defends the historical Jesus, his analysis shows that the Jesus remembered by Paul is already a reconstructed figure—one whose teachings were submerged beneath theological reinterpretation.

Similarly, J. Gresham Machen in The Origin of Paul’s Religion (1925) acknowledges the radical divergence between Paul and Jesus. He frames Paul’s theology as something utterly unique, “not merely one manifestation of the progress of oriental religion,” but a wholly different system founded on a particular conception of Jesus’ death and resurrection (Machen, 1925, pp. 8,9). This mirrors the role of Balaam who, though speaking blessings, nonetheless aligned with Moabite interests and introduced elements foreign to Israel’s covenantal ethic. So too does Paul bring into the original Jesus movement an unprecedented fusion of Hellenistic religious forms and theological universalism.

Jesus’ Gospel: A Jewish Vision of the Kingdom

The Jesus character’s message, as depicted in the Gospels (written 20-60 years after Paul’s letters), was deeply rooted in the Jews’ religion (something Paul said he left behind in Galatians 1:13-15). He preached the imminent arrival of God’s Kingdom, urging repentance and a philosophical adherence to the Torah (Mark 1:15; Matthew 5:17). His teachings, like the Sermon on the Mount, emphasized ethical philosophical living, love for neighbor, and obedience to his Deity’s law (Matthew 22:37–40). As Wilson notes, Jesus’ followers, including James, continued these practices, functioning as a Jewish sect alongside Pharisees and Sadducees (Paul versus Jesus, p. 5). Salvation, for this Jesus, was about mindfully living accordingly within God’s covenant with Israel, not a cosmic transaction tied to his death.

Paul, however, rarely references Jesus’ life or teachings. In Paul versus Jesus (p. 19), Wilson points out that Paul mentions only sparse details about Jesus: he was born of a woman, was Jewish, had brothers, was crucified, and died (Romans 1:3; 1 Corinthians 9:5, 15:3). Paul’s focus is on a risen Christ, a cosmic figure whose death and resurrection offer salvation to all, independent of Torah observance (Galatians 3:28). This shift, Wilson argues, moves Christianity from a Jewish reform movement to a Gentile-centric religion resembling Roman mystery cults (p. 15).

Paul’s Gospel: A New Religion?

Pamela Eisenbaum, in Paul Was Not a Christian (2009), challenges the traditional view that Paul rejected Judaism for Christianity. She argues Paul remained a Jew, committed to monotheism, but saw Jesus’ death as God’s provision for Gentiles, not a replacement of the Torah for Jews (p. 9). Paul’s gospel was tailored for Gentiles, emphasizing Jesus’ faithfulness (not faith in Jesus) as the means of their inclusion in God’s plan (Romans 3:22). Eisenbaum suggests Paul’s mission was to extend Jewish monotheism to the nations, not to negate Jesus’ teachings but to reinterpret them for a broader audience (p. 10).

Yet, this reinterpretation created a divide. Wilson highlights that Paul’s letters, like Galatians, show him distancing himself from Jerusalem’s authority, insisting he received his gospel directly from Christ (Galatians 1:11,12). This independence, coupled with his dismissal of Torah practices for Gentiles, led to accusations of distortion. As Wilson (2014) notes, Paul’s opponents in the original Jesus Movement saw his teachings as a departure from Jesus’ Torah-based message (p. 8).

These thoughts are interesting because while Eisenbaum argues that Paul never left Judaism (Eisenbaum, 2009), Goguel’s historical investigation points to a theological re-centering. He writes that “the person of Jesus...is the product, not the creator, of Christianity” for many early communities (Goguel, 1926, p. 11). That statement reinforces the idea that Paul’s letters, with their sparse references to Jesus’ teachings and dense metaphysical framing of the crucifixion and resurrection (see Romans 6:3–11; 1 Corinthians 15), place the Jesus character into a mythic structure alien to the rabbinic ethic found in Matthew or the Didache. Goguel argues that the Gospels themselves are often "dominated by dogmatic and allegorical ideas" (p. 10), suggesting that Pauline theology had already started to shape even the narrative memory of Jesus before it was canonized.

Machen, though defending Paul’s orthodoxy, inadvertently reinforces this divide by admitting that Paul’s gospel required a radical break from Judaism’s national identity: “Gentile freedom, according to Paul, was not something permitted; it was something absolutely required” (Machen, 1925, p. 13). Yet this absolutism is absent from Jesus' teachings, which prioritize righteousness, Torah adherence, and Jewish communal life. The Balaam analogy here becomes sharper: just as Balaam did not curse Israel directly, neither did Paul overtly reject Jesus, but both altered the trajectory under a veil of blessing.

Christianity Today: Pauline or Jesus-Like?

The tension between Jesus and Paul has major implications for modern Christianity. Paul’s letters, written decades before the Gospels, shaped early Christian theology more than Jesus’ teachings. His emphasis on faith over works, universal salvation, and the cosmic Christ became central to Christian doctrine, especially after the Roman Emperors Constantine and Theodosius endorsed Paul’s vision in the 4th century (Paul versus Jesus, p. 3). The Gospels, while preserving Jesus’ Jewish (Hellenistic Jewish) teachings, were later interpreted through an already established Pauline lens, often downplaying their Torah-centric elements.

G.A. Wells, in The Jesus Myth, argues that Paul’s minimal reference to Jesus’ historical life suggests he was more concerned with a mythical Christ than the historical Jesus (p. 19). This aligns with Wilson’s view that Paul’s religion was “quite a different religion altogether” from Jesus’ (Paul versus Jesus, p. 16). Modern Christianity, with its focus on salvation through faith, sacraments, and the divinity of Christ, reflects Paul’s theology more than Jesus’ call for mental and spiritual living within Judaism.

Combining insights from Goguel and Machen clarifies that modern Christianity owes more to Paul’s reinterpretive genius than to the historical Jesus' teachings. Machen notes that Paul’s exclusivist theology; insisting that “there is no other name under heaven...by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12); drew Gentiles away from syncretic religious expressions and into a dogmatic system (Machen, 1925, p. 9). But that dogma diverged from Jesus’ Torah-centric ethic, one which even Goguel insists was deeply embedded in a specific Jewish framework (Goguel, 1926, pp. 12–13).

In this light, Paul's gospel acts like Balaam’s oracle: impressive, far-reaching, and infused with “divine” imagery, but ultimately carrying within it a “doctrine of Baal” that introduces division. The Jesus character’s original message (should we incline ourselves to actually invoke the Hebrew Scriptures), rooted in covenantal justice, mental spiritual discipline, and community responsibility, becomes eclipsed by a mystical faith in a risen Christ who, as Machen admits, “possessed sovereign power over the forces of nature” (Machen, 1925, p. 5), a cosmic redeemer rather than a Galilean prophet.

What Does This Mean for Seekers of the Historical Jesus?

For those seeking an authentic return to Jesus’ message, the Pauline influence poses a challenge. Jesus’ gospel was not about himself at the center of a message, but about transforming human lives through ethical conduct and Torah observance, anticipating only God’s Kingdom within and the Son of Man (who he is not) destroying those preventing the reign of that Kingdom within doers. Paul’s gospel, while rooted in Jewish monotheism, shifted the focus to a spiritual salvation through his Christ’s death, appealing to a Gentile audience. As Eisenbaum notes, Paul didn’t abandon Judaism but adapted it for a new context (Paul Was Not a Christian, p. 10). However, this adaptation, as Wilson argues, created a rift with the Jesus Movement, leading to a Christianity that often overshadows Jesus’ original vision.

If Paul is a literary echo of Balaam, his gospel carries both a blessing and a shadow. He blessed the inclusion of Gentiles, expanding the reach of his God’s message, but his divergence from Jesus’ teachings left him distrusted by the Jerusalem community. For modern seekers, returning to the original message of Jesus means prioritizing his call to discipline the mind, to educate the belief, to remember love, justice, and covenantal living with the Hebrew Deity over Paul’s theological framework. This involves separating Hellenism from the Jesus character to embracing the covered up Hebrew philosophy within his teachings, which align more closely with the original Jesus Movement (Paul versus Jesus, p. 27).

Reclaiming the Historical Jesus

The question of whether Christianity is more Pauline than Jesus-like invites us to reexamine the New Testament’s competing voices. Paul’s gospel, while transformative, reshaped Jesus’ possibly original message into a universal religion that gained traction in the Roman world but drifted from its Hebrew roots.  Paul, like Balaam, spoke words that appeared to honor the people of God, but his doctrine redirected their path. It isn’t difficult to see how Paul's gospel, though influential and theologically sophisticated, transformed the original Jesus movement into a religion barely recognizable to its origin. For modern seekers of the historical Jesus, disentangling his message from Pauline overlay is not only a matter of academic curiosity, it is a necessary task of devotional restoration. Christianity may be Pauline in shape, but our devotional conversation need not rest on what ultimately departs from the intended growth and development promised from Genesis to Malachi.

References:

Eisenbaum, Pamela. (2009) Paul Was Not a Christian. HarperCollins.

Goguel, M. (1926). Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History? (F. Stephens, Trans.). D. Appleton & Company.

Machen, J. G. (1925). The Origin of Paul’s Religion. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Wells, G.A. (1999) The Jesus Myth. Open Court.

Wilson, Barrie. (2014) Paul versus Jesus. York University, Toronto