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Thu, Mar

The early Church had to come to terms with the cross of Christ precisely because it was this crucified-and-dead Jesus who was proclaimed as the Messiah. The early Christian pronouncement spoke of Jesus who was rejected by the Jewish leaders, who was crucified by the Romans, but whom God raised from the dead. It is now in Jesus’ name that salvation is offered to the human race. Paul came to believe this not through some kind of mental syllogism but through an outside force, through a direct revelation from Jesus Christ. He came to terms with the seeming contradiction of a crucified Christ not by denying its perplexing character but by showing how God vindicated Jesus by filling his ignominious death with unexpected positive significance.