section_path: Views/Understanding of Jesus Christ
section_name: Understanding of Jesus Christ
paragraph_text: Understanding of Jesus Christ
  
  Paul's writings emphasized the crucifixion, Christ's resurrection and the Parousia or second coming of Christ. Paul saw Jesus as Lord (kyrios), the true messiah and the Son of God, who was promised by God beforehand, through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. While being a biological descendant from David ("according to the flesh"), he was declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.
  
  According to E. P. Sanders, Paul "preached the death, resurrection, and lordship of Jesus Christ, and he proclaimed that faith in Jesus guarantees a share in his life." In Paul's view, "Jesus' death was not a defeat but was for the believers' benefit", a sacrifice which substitutes for the lives of others, and frees them from the bondage of sin. Believers participate in Christ's death and resurrection by their baptism. The resurrection of Jesus was of primary importance to Paul, bringing the promise of salvation to believers. Paul taught that, when Christ returned, "those who died in Christ would be raised when he returned", while those still alive would be "caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air".
  
  Sanders concludes that Paul's writings reveal what he calls the essence of the Christian message: "(1) God sent his Son; (2) the Son was crucified and resurrected for the benefit of humanity; (3) the Son would soon return; and (4) those who belonged to the Son would live with him forever. Paul's gospel, like those of others, also included (5) the admonition to live by the highest moral standard: "May your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ"."
  
  In Paul's writings, the public, corporate devotional patterns towards Jesus in the early Christian community are reflective of Paul's perspective on the divine status of Jesus in what scholars have termed a "binitarian" pattern of devotion. For Paul, Jesus receives prayer, the presence of Jesus is confessionally invoked by believers, people are baptized in Jesus' name, Jesus is the reference in Christian fellowship for a religious ritual meal (the Lord's Supper; in pagan cults, the reference for ritual meals is always to a deity), and Jesus is the source of continuing prophetic oracles to believers.