Pauline Theology – JAYMS.COM

Very Little Is Needed

In Philippians 4:11, Paul borrows the Stoic word autarkēs but adds one word that changes everything: he had to learn it. The contentment he means is formed only by the circumstances most of us spend our lives avoiding.

You Are the Project

Epictetus was a slave. When he says focus on what's in your power, he speaks from the widest gap there is between control and circumstance. You are the project. But, Paul adds, not the only one working on it.

No Harm, No Foul

Marcus Aurelius on harm as a judgment we assign, not a fact we receive, and the honest line between naming a real injury and reflexively turning every setback into a wound. Paul works the same ground from Romans 8.

The Mind Is Its Own Place

Milton put the line in Satan's mouth as a warning. Marcus made the hopeful version. Paul calls it taking every thought captive. The mind is where your actual power lives, and the discipline is showing up to fight on it.

What Is a King? Will You Bow Now? (6 of 6)

Five sections of preparation, one question. We are between the two stages right now. The cross is past. The conquering King is future. The position you take now is the position you keep.

What Is a King? The Witness and the Unveiling (5 of 6)

You are responsible for the witness. You are not responsible for the unveiling. The weight modern American Christianity transfers onto the witness was never Scripture's to give.

What Is a King? Slave to Christ (2 of 6)

Paul opens Romans with a self-description 2026 American ears cannot hear correctly. *Doulos Christou*, slave of Christ. The softening costs more than translators know.

ABBA, Father

You have probably heard a sermon claim that Abba means "Daddy." That idea traces back largely to Joachim Jeremias in the mid-twentieth century, and it has stuck in popular preaching ever since. But the case does not hold up, and what the word actually means is something heavier.