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Show Bible Comment: Christ Was Paul's True World rpHE mortal world of St. Paul A was a Roman world. As Paul was a free-born Roman citizen, the fact of Paul's world being under the power of Rome gave him a great opportunity for his missionary enterprise. It was not as it is in the world today. A missionary or an ordinary ordi-nary traveler is hampered by boundaries, Iron Curtains, exclusive exclu-sive laws and innumerable handicaps. Paul's difficulties and obstacles came not so much from Rome and Roman officials as from the persecuting zeal of his religious enemies. When Romans inier-fered inier-fered it was usually at the instigation insti-gation of these religious enemies who had stirred up riot and strife. But Paul's world was a Roman world only in an external and physical sense. In his outlook it was a very different world from that which most Romans knew. It was also a very different world in its inner aspect and outlook from the world that many people, professing high intelligence, live in today. When Paul uses the phrase, "in Christ," it is as if he spoke of the place in which pne lived. Christ, indeed, was his environment, and that made all the difference from hat outward Roman world. It is difficult for us to grasp the full glory and significance of a free-born Roman citizen, living in a world that was largely ;lave-bound and marked by ra-:ial ra-:ial and sectional prejudices more widespread and deeper than those of today, yet who was entirely free from all prejudice. In that world of the Gospel creation, the world of "the new man renewed in knowledge after aft-er the image of Him that created him" there was "neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncir-;umcision, uncir-;umcision, Barbarian, Scythian bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all." |