Who went further in the knowledge of God—the apostle Paul or the apostle John? The following comparison points to an answer to this question that may be at odds with certain perspectives that many believers have been taught, especially concerning their understanding of gospel ministry.

COMPARISON

Based on the information that we have available, eight points of comparison between Paul and John should be noted:

Contact with John the Baptist

Paul : no information about his having contact personally with John the Baptist

John: disciple of John the Baptist

Discipleship experience with Jesus

Paul: disciple of Jesus after His resurrection appearance to Him; no information that Paul knew Him personally during His earthly ministry

John: disciple of Jesus since His earthly ministry who knew Him personally

Extent of knowledge of Jesus’ Miracles

Paul: no information that he knew of the miracles that Jesus did that were not recorded in Scripture

John: had first-hand knowledge of a multitude of signs that Jesus did that were not recorded in Scripture

Contact with Mary

Paul: no information about contact with Mary, the mother of Jesus

John: knew Mary personally; cared for her in his home after the Crucifixion; thus he very likely knew a vast amount of information about Jesus that we have no way of determining if Paul also had that information

Contact with the glorified Jesus

Paul: saw the glorified Jesus

John: last disciple to see the glorified Jesus

Vision of heaven

Paul: had a vision of heaven and saw and heard things that he was not allowed to share; thus we have no way of determining what Paul did or did not know as a result of that vision

John: had a vision of heaven and saw and heard a vast number of things that he was directed to write about for our profit; we have no way to know if Paul ever knew of this information or not; it is very likely that he never knew all that John knew in this respect

Profiting from other Scripture

Paul:

-likely had no knowledge of what John wrote in at least his letters and in Revelation;

-perhaps he also had only limited knowledge of much of what John wrote in his Gospel;

-may have profited from 1 & 2 Peter and Hebrews

-very likely did not have any access to the book of Jude

John:

-likely profited from all of Paul’s epistles for at least a decade and a half before writing any of his books

-very likely profited from 1 & 2 Peter and Hebrews

-likely profited from the book of Jude

Authoring of Scripture

Paul:

-Wrote 13 epistles; did not write a Gospel; did not write any book comparable to Revelation

-Did not write any of the final five books of the NT in the current topical order

-Did not write any of the final five books of the NT chronologically

John:

-Wrote 3 epistles (7 more epistles in Revelation 2-3); wrote the final Gospel long after the Synoptic Gospels (and also all the Pauline epistles) had been written; also wrote Revelation— John thus wrote three different genres of inspired NT books while Paul only wrote one; he has the unique honor of being the only one chosen by God to do so

-Wrote four of the five final books of the NT in the current topical order, including the last book

-Wrote all five of the final books of the NT chronologically; John thus gave us all the final inspired revelation that we have

DISCUSSION

Based on this information, it seems that we should hold that John, and not Paul, had the most profound knowledge of the things of God of any of the writers of Scripture. His writings, therefore, should be viewed as at least as theologically advanced as anything that Paul wrote.

Thus any analysis of a subject that does not thoroughly account for whatever John may have written about that subject is necessarily lacking and should not be accorded ultimate authoritative status for the doctrine and practice of the people of God. Moreover, when formulating our understanding of any subject, we should value whatever John may have written about that subject at least as much as anything that Paul has written.

APPLICATION

A key area in which our understanding of biblical truth and our practice needs to be addressed in light of the discussion above is our understanding of apostolic gospel ministry. Specifically, we must recognize that God did not give us everything that we need to know about this subject through Paul’s writings. For if he had, what need would there have been for yet another Gospel to be written after the Synoptics and the Pauline Epistles had already been written?

We must not, therefore, attach undue importance to passages such as 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 at the expense of key truths that we are taught through John’s record of Jesus’ own dealings with people in salvation accounts. For example, when each of the salvation accounts in John 3, 4, and 5 are thoroughly analyzed, we see that Jesus evangelized lost people with an emphasis on truths that are not mentioned explicitly in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (e.g., Jesus as the One sent by the Father; Christ as God’s judicial agent).

Our understanding, therefore, of apostolic gospel ministry cannot be limited basically to what Paul taught in this passage. We must fill out our understanding of it through truths that are taught in many other key passages, including several that are found in John 3-5.

The account of Saul’s conversion comprises the majority of Acts 9 (31 of the 43 verses in the chapter), and many have exposited this account carefully. Following that conversion account, however, Luke records two striking instances of many people being saved about which fewer people probably have heard  a careful exposition.

These two instances of great evangelistic success are noteworthy because of what we know about what took place on these occasions. Even more remarkable is what we are not told about them.

Lydda and Sharon

In the first, Peter dramatically healed a man in Lydda who had been paralyzed for eight years by proclaiming to him that Jesus Christ was making him whole (9:32-34). As a result, everyone who was living in Lydda and Sharon saw him and “turned to the Lord” (9:35).

Luke does not say anything about any testimony of the gospel in this account, and yet, we read of two entire cities being converted. Are we therefore supposed to understand that these masses of people were saved without hearing any gospel testimony? If so, how were they saved?

Joppa

Luke then relates an even more remarkable account of Petrine ministry. Joppa was a city near Lydda (9:38a). Because a beloved widow among the believers in Joppa had passed away, and the disciples had heard that Peter was nearby in Lydda (9:36-37a-b), they decided to send for him (9:38c).

Coming with the two men who had been sent to appeal to him to come (9:38c-39), Peter unhesitatingly acted prayerfully to raise her from the dead (9:40) and present her alive to the believers who were there (9:40-41). This marvelous manifestation of God’s power became known throughout the entire city (9:42a), and “many believed in the Lord” (9:42b).

As with the preceding account, Luke provides no information about any gospel testimony being given in Joppa at this time. How then were these many people saved?

Interpretation

These two accounts record numerous people who turned to the Lord and believed in Him after receiving testimony either visually or verbally about His miraculous working through Peter. Because elsewhere Scripture makes clear that people cannot believe in Him of whom they have not heard (Rom. 10:14), we must conclude that Luke intends for us to understand that there was gospel testimony of some sort to these who were saved, even though he does not record it.

Two other passages support this interpretation. First, Luke records that all the multitude of believers who were present at the proceedings of the Jerusalem council kept silent and listened intently to Barnabas and Paul as they declared “what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them” (Acts 15:12).

In the flow of thought in the passage, this testimony from Paul and Barnabas follows the account of how the Gentiles in Caesarea had heard the word of the gospel from Peter and believed it to be saved (15:7-11). Because what was at stake at the Council was how were the Gentiles to be saved (15:1), it cannot be that Luke intends us to understand that these two successive testimonies bore evidence to the Council of two differing ways in which Gentiles had been saved: some were saved by hearing the gospel and believing it (15:7-11), but others were saved only by hearing and seeing the miracles and wonders that God was doing among them (15:12).

This interpretation is confirmed by a second passage that also confirms the interpretation provided above of the two accounts in Acts 9:

“How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?” (Heb. 2:3-4).

God’s miraculous working among the apostolic company (including therefore what happened in Lydda and Joppa) thus was His acting to witness along with as well as to those who had provided verbal testimony (of the very great salvation that had been first spoken of by the Lord) both to the writer of Hebrews and to others.

Conclusion

Based on this handling of the accounts in Acts 9 and related passages, whenever we read in the NT of people being saved, we are to understand that they received testimony to the gospel prior to their being saved, even if the account does not say anything directly about such testimony being given to them.

Acts 10 provides us with the wonderful account of how Cornelius, an exemplary man, was saved. The glorious content of this passage reveals three key truths about how God also wants you to be saved!

I. God wants you to be saved by accepting the fact that you need to be saved, even as Cornelius did through the message that the angel gave to him.

Despite his being devout, fearing God with his entire household, giving much alms to the people, praying to God always, being just, having a good report among all the nation of the Jews, and having some previous knowledge about Jesus, Cornelius was not saved. Neither was he saved simply by having a genuine supernatural experience with a true angel of God, who informed him that his prayers had been heard and his alms had been remembered by God.

He, therefore, was not saved even though he was an exemplary man in so many respects. Moreover, even the genuineness of his religious activities and of his supernatural experience did not save him.

Every person must likewise come to the point that he accepts that he is not saved despite however good of a life he may have led. He must also recognize that no mere supernatural experience that he might have can save him, even if it were to be genuine.

II. God wants you to be saved by accepting that the only way you will be saved is by hearing the words by which you will be saved, even as Cornelius did. 

The angel that Cornelius encountered informed him that he would have to hear the words by which he would be saved. He thus had to accept that the only way that he could be saved was through his hearing those words.

Every person must likewise come to the point that he accepts that simply being genuinely religious will not save him. To be saved, he must hear the words by which he will be saved. 

III. God wants you to be saved by having your sins forgiven through your responding properly to the words by which you will be saved, even as Cornelius did.

Through Peter’s preaching the gospel to him, Cornelius heard the words by which he would be saved. In a nutshell, Cornelius heard that through the Lord Jesus Christ he had to believe in God, that raised Jesus from the dead and gave Him glory, so that his faith and hope might be in God (1 Pet. 1:21).

Cornelius was saved through his receiving the forgiveness of his sins by responding to the gospel message with repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ. Every person must likewise be saved by receiving forgiveness of his sins by responding to the gospel with repentance toward God and belief in Jesus Christ to be saved.

Have you accepted that you need to be saved?

Have you accepted that the only way that you will be saved is by hearing the gospel, the words by which you will be saved?

Have you received the forgiveness of your sins by hearing the gospel, repenting toward God, and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ? (To learn more about the gospel, please see my post, The Gospel of God and His Christ.)

God wants you to be saved by doing so! He wants you to be saved from the eternal punishment that awaits those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thess. 1:8).

In behalf of Christ, I beseech you to turn to God and be saved before it is too late.

Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 to reiterate the gospel that he had preached to the Corinthians in order to deal with some among them who were saying “that there is no resurrection of the dead (15:12). As important as this passage is for our understanding of the gospel, it is vital that we keep the following points in mind about what this passage was not in its original historical context.

1. It was not a first-time revelation of what the gospel was to the Corinthians—Paul had already made the gospel known to them when he had evangelized them while he was with them. The Corinthian church thus did not need this passage to know what the gospel was!

2. It was not an initial revelation of what the gospel was to the apostles; the apostles had received the gospel message directly from Christ some twenty years prior to Paul’s writing this passage and had been preaching it ever since. Peter preached the gospel at Pentecost without any prior instruction from Paul, and he did not need any such instruction at any later point in his life. The same was true for all the other apostles as well (Acts4:33;5:20-21; 42) and also for Philip (8:4-40).

3. It was not an instance of either progressive revelation or a progress of doctrine such that it supplemented, corrected, or fine-tuned in any necessary way any supposedly rudimentary or unclear notions that the original apostles may have had of what they were to preach as the gospel.

4. It was not an initial revelation of what the gospel was to the early Church at large. Those who were in the Church prior to Paul’s writing this passage had been saved by hearing the gospel ministered to them by someone who knew what to preach to them. The early Church at large, therefore, already knew definitively what the gospel was before Paul penned this passage because they knew what they had believed to be saved.

5. It was not some vital theological revelation that the early Church was lacking until Paul wrote these words. Proof positive of this statement is seen from the fact that the leaders of the early Church, including Paul, were able to definitively resolve a key doctrinal matter concerning how Gentiles were to be saved (Acts 15) before Paul had even gone to Corinth to preach the gospel to the Corinthians (Acts 18).

In light of these points, we need to adjust certain theological and practical viewpoints that have resulted from attaching undue importance to 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 at the expense of other equally inspired and relevant revelation from God concerning the gospel that the apostles preached. The changes that we need to make include the following:

1. The lack of explicit mention of the kingdom of God in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 has led some to reason that the gospel “changed” from a preaching of the gospel of the kingdom (e.g., Acts 8:12) to a preaching of the gospel of Christ. A careful examination of a number of passages in Acts (as well as in the Epistles, including even 1 Corinthians 15 itself) shows that this reasoning is fallacious (see my post, Did the Gospel Change from Samaria to Corinth?). We must, therefore, reject such reasoning.

2. Not keeping in mind that these verses are merely a brief summary of what Paul actually preached to the Corinthians, some have resorted to an approach to evangelism that too often more or less only amounts to a quoting of these statements to people. A close comparison of Peter’s preaching of the gospel in Caesarea with this passage brings out key truths that are missed when such an approach is taken.

First, Acts 10 teaches us how an apostle preached Jesus as the Christ to unsaved Gentiles (10:38) before testifying to His crucifixion and resurrection (10:39-41). By communicating to the lost the specific information that Peter did in this statement, we will properly explain to them the meaning of the term Christ and also preach the kingdom of God to them (cf. Matt.12:28)!

Second, it reveals to us a key truth (Acts 10:42) that an apostle proclaimed after testifying to His crucifixion and resurrection (10:39-41) and how he based his subsequent appeal to sinners for salvation (10:43) on the basis of his prior proclamation of that key truth. By evangelizing the lost in the same way, we will inform them of the proper significance of these key events for both God and man, and we will also further preach the kingdom of God to them.

When presenting 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 to the lost, therefore, we should be careful to explain the term Christ properly to them and not take for granted that they will invest it with its right biblical significance upon merely hearing it from us (see this post for an example of the problem of not doing this). We should also properly explain the significance of the key historical events that the Messiah experienced (crucifixion and resurrection) in the manner explained above.

Doing so, we will preach to them the gospel of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ!

The gospel is theological. This is a short-hand way of affirming two things. First, as 1 Corinthians 15 repeatedly affirms, God raised Christ Jesus from the dead (e.g. [1]5:15). More broadly, New Testament documents insist that God sent the Son into the world, and the Son obediently went to the cross because this was his Father’s will. It makes no sense to pit the mission of the Son against the sovereign purpose of the Father. If the gospel is centrally Christological, it is no less centrally theological.

—D. A. Carson, <em>The Gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1 — 19)</em>, 3

The Gospels record two important statements by Jesus about worldwide preaching of the gospel:

“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14).

“And He said unto them, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mk. 16:15).

Unlike the former statement, the latter statement does not specify the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom; it only speaks of the apostles preaching the gospel. Several facts, however, make it clear that it was a command to the apostles to preach the kingdom gospel.

First, Jesus gave the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24-25) late during His time on the earth, and He commissioned His apostles (Mk. 16:14-18) during the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension. Because the Scripture does not indicate that He gave any intervening teaching about the content of the gospel, we are justified in concluding that both references pertain to the gospel of the kingdom.

Second, Acts 1:3 highlights Jesus’ “speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom” during the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension. Because Mark 16:15 records a key statement in seminal teaching that Jesus gave His disciples during that period, we are justified in identifying it as part of the key teaching that Jesus gave about the kingdom.

Third, Luke’s recording that Philip preached as the gospel “the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12) makes it certain that the gospel that he received from the apostles was the kingdom gospel. The gospel that they themselves, therefore, were commanded to preach by Jesus must have been the kingdom gospel.

We thus conclude that Jesus commanded the apostles to preach the kingdom gospel to the entire world (Mk. 16:15). Furthermore, because He also taught that the end will only come after the gospel of the kingdom will have been preached in the entire world for a witness to all nations (Matt. 24:14), His followers must continue preaching that same kingdom gospel to the entire world until the end!