everything that marks them as men. This is one of these passage that we couch in genteel
language. The word
ajpokovptw
means cut off. It's as if Paul were saying in total
exasperation, I wish these opponents who insist of circumcision would just get on with it
and cut the whole thing off! If you said things like this in your preaching, you would
probably lose your job.
I think I have said enough to give an insight into the personality of Paul. He could
let his anger get the best of him, and he minced no words in expressing himself. How
does this analysis fit in with the first half of the paper? Let me offer this scenario. You
probably have had encounters with this type of personality as you were standing in a cash
register line to make some purchase or been sitting in an airport terminal waiting to board
a plane. Suddenly the person next to you starts talking to you. He is obviously upset about
something, and he starts venting his feelings to you. Maybe it is something about politics,
or maybe it's something in his personal or business life. You don't have the foggiest
notion what is eating him or what he is talking about, but he keeps going on and on.
Every now and then he says, You understand what I am saying? Politely you perhaps
smile or grunt an acknowledgment (though you secretly wish he would find someone else
as his listening victim).
This is the feeling I get from the personality of Paul as I read certain parts of his
letters. As he is writing one church, some upsetting information reaches his ears about
what it going on somewhere else. Rather than put his present letter down and start a new
one, he pens a few words about that situation right in that same letter, often in the form of
a warning, and sometimes he can even get further carried away on a tangent. After his