Matthew Wright’s Reviews > Paul: A Biography > Status Update

Any "power" that they have comes not from their own quasi-divinity, but from the fact that humans, worshipping them, have given to the malevolent forces that use their name as a cloak the authority that God always intended humans themselves to exercise.

it is time to turn away from all this playacting and experience the power and love of the God who puts all the gods to shame.

People often think of "miracles" as the "invasion" of the natural order by a force from outside. That wasn't how the early Christians saw it. For them, dramatic and otherwise inexplicable healings were seen as evidence of new creation, of the Creator himself at work in a fresh way.

those who worshipped idols became enslaved to them, trapped in a downward spiral of dehumanization.

They were aimed at the establishment of a new kind of kingdom on earth as in heaven.

Paul's "missionary" journeys were not simply aimed at telling people about Jesus in order to generate inner personal transformation and a new sense of ultimate hope,

When a person has come to faith in Jesus, as the risen, Lord, that event is self assign of the spirit work through the gospel, and that, if the spear has begun that, “Good Work,” of which that Faith is the first fruit, you can trust that the spirit will finish the job.(Philippians 1:16 & Romans 5-8)

Believing allegiance; altogether larger, in a way that this PISTIS, this heartfelt trust in and allegiance to the God revealed in Jesus, was the vital marker, the thing that showed whether someone was really part of this new community or not.

One obvious Greek term for loyalty is one of Paul’s favorite words, PISTIS, regularly translated as Faith.
But, PISTIS, could also point to the personal commitment that accompanies any genuine belief, in this case that Jesus was now LORD THE WORLD RIFLE SOVEREIGN. HENCE THE TERM MEANS, LOYALTY, OR ALLEGIANCE. THIS WAS WHAT CESAR DEMANDED FOR HIS SUBJECTS.