So how does it all work?

We have learned that we, made in the image of the triune God, are relational, loving, and covenantal. This is God’s will for us and for our behavior—a certain way of relating—while God’s ultimate plan for the universe is to gather us all up into a joyful play of communion together.

It is this divine reality and accompanying ethic that lies behind the diversity we see in the early church. Jews committed to Jesus and pagans converted to him coexisted within a common loving relational pattern that was nevertheless open to their cultural differences. The church lives out of its resurrected location, beyond many of the structures shaping our current life in the flesh. This allows God’s will to be expressed and obeyed diversely among different people. However, this is no flight from bodies. Our present bodies of flesh experience the empowerment of a resurrected mind and the pressure of a God who draws us ceaselessly into loving relationality.—Paul: An Apostle’s Journey, 178–79