“I am what I am…”

General Superintendent Dr. T. Scott Daniels' message from NBC's Inauguration ceremony in September.

“I am what I am…”

Growing up, that phrase became familiar to me first, not through the Scripture, but through the Saturday morning cartoon “Popeye the Sailor Man.” In nearly every episode, Popeye would proclaim, “I yam what I yam, and that’s all what I yam.”

I don’t know if the creator of the Popeye the Sailor Man cartoon had Paul in mind when he gave his most famous character that catchphrase – “I yam what I yam.” What is clear, is that when Popeye said those words he meant, “This is just who I am. I’m not changing for anyone. Take it or leave it.” However, when the Apostle Paul wrote, (in verse 10) “I am what I am,” he added a critical next line, “by God’s grace.”

The focus of First Corinthians 15 – like so much of Paul’s writing – is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is not only the key to unlock the meaning of all that God had done in Israel’s past, and it is not only (as the rest of chapter 15 describes) the central act that shapes the hopes of the world’s eschatological future, it is the event that turns the present upside down. As N.T. Wright has written, the Gospel (or Good News) for Paul “is not a set of ideas. It isn’t a path of spirituality. It isn’t a rule of life. It isn’t a political agenda. It includes, and indeed gives energy to, all those things; but at its very heart [the Gospel and Christian faith] is something different. It is good news about an event which has happened in the world, an event because of which the world can never be the same again. And those who believe it, and live by it, will (thank God!) never be the same again either.”

Paul, now is what he is – a new creation – by God’s grace in the power of the resurrected Christ.

My wife teases me that I can’t preach a sermon without inserting what I think is the central piece of Paul’s theology. Growing up as a deeply devoted, Pharisaical, first-century Jew, there were three things Paul knew were going to happen at the end of history. On the last day, (1) the dead would be raised; (2) the judgment would take place; and (3) the new creation would begin.

What transformed Paul’s whole life and perspective was coming to the realization that what was supposed to happen at the end of history – the resurrection of the dead – in Christ, had now broken into the middle. Jesus Christ has not only come back from the dead – like the widow’s son, Jairus’ daughter, or Lazarus – who each came back from the dead later on. Only Jesus Christ has resurrected from the dead. Death no longer has dominion over him.

For Paul, because Christ has resurrected from the dead, the time (the chairos) of sin and death has been defeated and upended. Because Christ lives, it is now the time of the Spirit and new life. And because the hope of the resurrection has broken into history, the judgment has also begun. This is the judgment, that light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light. But most importantly, because the hope of the resurrection has broken into history, the new creation is also not just something we are waiting for in the future, but it is a reality that has broken into the present. As Paul writes in his next letter to the Corinthian church, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5:17).

So, despite the fact that the “old Paul” was (as he writes in verse 9) the least – and perhaps least likely – of all the apostles because, in his past he had been a diligent persecutor of the early church. The “new Paul” is now, by the power of Christ’s resurrection grace and power, a new creation, willing to share in the redemptive suffering love of Jesus for the sake of the world. He used to be a persecutor of the church, but he now “is what he is” – an apostle for the Gospel – by the grace of God.

At its core, I believe that is the heart of our holiness theology and the core motivation for our existence as the Church of the Nazarene. We are, like Paul, a people who are convinced that the good news of the Gospel is not just that through the atoning and gracious work of Jesus on the cross, there is the possibility of forgiveness for even a former persecutor of the church. But we are convinced, with Paul, that in addition to forgiveness, by God’s grace a holy (and holistic) transformation is also possible. The old persecutor Paul is now, by God’s grace, the Apostle Paul. He is what he is, now, - forgiven and transformed - by God’s grace.

This transformed life, by the way, is the source of Paul’s apostolic authority. Paul can claim to be an Apostle of Jesus, not because of his past accomplishments, nor is he eliminated as an Apostle because of his past failures. His Apostolic authority derives from the witness of his transformed life by the grace of Christ.

Nevertheless, as I thought about the significance of this night – and the purpose of Nazarene Bible College – I was drawn to an earlier line from Paul in verse 8. In verses 3-7, Paul is describing how, after the resurrection, the Lord appeared to the original disciples and then later to James and some of the other apostolic leaders of the early church. But then Paul writes, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he also appeared to me.”

That is an odd and interesting descriptive line – “as to one untimely born.”

In that line, Paul seems to be acknowledging that his journey to becoming an apostolic leader in the church, was (obviously) very different than Peter and the other apostles in Jerusalem. They were not “untimely born” – they were, what we might call today, “early adopters.” Peter and the other disciples had been with Jesus from the beginning. Most of them were probably quite young when they had first met Jesus. They witnessed firsthand the miracles of Jesus. They heard his teachings with their ears. They had long personal and formative conversations with the Lord. They witnessed with their own eyes his rejection and crucifixion. They were the first to witness and experience the power of the resurrection. They were filled with the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost… How nice for them… thinks Paul.

Paul, on the other hand, experienced none of that. While the twelve had been traveling around, being mentored by Jesus, (while they had been attending Sunday school and competing in Bible Quizzing), Paul had been out in the “real world” as a pre-Law major in college and then after graduation he took a job in Torah-enforcement. He had been a diligent student and a hard worker. In the eyes of the world, many might have considered him a success. But from the perspective of the Gospel, he was a mess. He was 180 degrees heading in the wrong direction. But then, in the midst of his messy life - destroying not only his own life but the life of others - the Lord appeared to him.

And this is where things get interesting but a bit mysterious. We know there is a time gap between Paul’s Damascus encounter with Jesus and his later ministry among Gentiles in Antioch. It’s complicated but if we piece together some of what Paul writes in Galatians 1 and what Luke describes in Acts 9, biblical scholars argue that after Paul’s conversion he spends something like three years (maybe years of preparation) in Arabia before he goes to Jerusalem to meet the apostles for the first time. This first encounter with the Church’s leaders doesn’t go all that well and some of his first sermons get him run out of town and almost killed. In the midst of that rugged start, Barnabas takes him under his wing and journeys with him back to Paul’s home region of Syria and Cilicia for six or seven years.

In other words, between Paul’s late and untimely conversion, and the initiation of his primary years of ministry, church planting, and theological writing, (all the stuff that will make him famous and significant to the history of the church), there is about a ten-year gap. Let me say it this way. Paul may not have had all of the advantages Peter and the disciples had been given, but despite his late arrival to faith in Jesus, he was, by God’s grace, granted three years of schooling and formation in Arabia, and a seven-year ministerial internship – supervised by Barnabas – at his home church in Tarsus.

You can see where I’m going with this. Perhaps the most important apostolic leader in the history of the church did not come into ministry through the traditional route. Paul was “one untimely born.” He was an adult convert, called into ministry later in life, who – despite a powerful and radical conversion and transformation – needed significant preparation and mentorship before the Lord who called him unleashed him on the early church.

Coming into church leadership through “traditional” paths is not a bad thing. I can easily imagine, for example, someone being raised in a family of pastors, giving their heart to Jesus as a young child at a Nazarene camp, becoming a leader in their youth group, sensing a call to ministry at a Nazarene Youth Conference, attending a Nazarene university as a theology and ministry major, later going to seminary (and earning a couple of degrees), and being mentored in the early years of ministry by gifted pastoral leaders. (That sounds pretty good). Some in this room may have been blessed with all or part of that path.

But even though I am very familiar with that “traditional path,” I also recognize that this traditional path is increasingly the exception and not the rule. And like the Apostle Paul, some of the church’s most significant leaders will not come through the traditional pathways of ministerial preparation but will have been shaped by later conversion and transformation, and, like Paul, they will bring with them a theology and passion for evangelism shaped by such experiences.

That is why Nazarene Bible College was formed in 1964 and has continued to be important for the last six decades. NBC was birthed, to provide ministerial education for people who needed an alternative route to preparation for holiness ministry. As Dr. Greathouse put it in 1976: “NBC was created to provide adequate training for ordination, especially for people who came to a call to ministry later in life and could not pursue the regular college-seminary route.”

The process of that preparation and formation has obviously changed since the first class of 117 students arrived at NBC in 1967. What started as a residential program in Colorado Springs has appropriately and helpfully become a program, through technology, available to anyone, anywhere, anytime. The process has changed, but the need has not.

In this moment, Nazarene Bible College finds itself, like all other centers of education and formation, in a time of significant disruption. There are a lot of anxieties and uncertainties that come in this moment. There are many questions of vision and sustainability hanging in the air. What will pastoral preparation look like in the future? What should it look like? What languages will it be in? Is it just for ministers or should it include lay-people? And where will its resourcing come from?

I am thankful for my friends Doug and Becky Pierce and their willingness to step into this role of leadership at this time. I believe in Doug’s giftedness, but I believe even more in his commitment and trust in the Lord. As NBC’s eighth president, I believe God has given Doug the kind of preparation as a pastor, an administrator, a superintendent, and an educator that can help the college dream about and navigate into a healthy and meaningful future.

I believe I can speak for my colleagues on the Board of General Superintendents when I say that we are deeply grateful for the significant contribution Nazarene Bible College has made to the life and health of the Church of the Nazarene for the last sixty years. And I can affirm our commitment to ensuring that its purpose of preparing men and women for effective ministry will continue as long as the Lord grants the church’s existence. I am thankful for those – like myself – who may come through “traditional” pathways of ministry. However, many of our most significant leaders will be, like the Apostle Paul, “untimely born.” May the Lord help us to be, like Barnabas, the source of preparation, formation, and encouragement that people need as they journey from new creation to all that they can be in ministry to the world by God’s grace.

- Dr. T. Scott Daniels serves as General Superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene.