A stand-off between master and slave, a quarrel between two women, a community wracked with grief over the death of loved ones, a heartfelt expression of thanks to friends for their love and care — these were the kinds of issues that, in part, prompted the letter writing of the apostle Paul.

But with the gospel at the center of his ministry, why did Paul put so much effort into addressing the seemingly less important, everyday stuff of the human experience? New Testament scholar Nijay K. Gupta answers this question and more in Paul for the World: A Grounded Vision for Finding Meaning in this Life — Not Just the Next.

Gupta calls the book a “companion” for a previous book, Strange Religion, which explained why outsiders were suspicious of the followers of Jesus, whose seemingly odd practices confused and concerned their Greco-Roman neighbors.

Paul for the World, on the other hand, looks at what was happening inside Christian communities to grow these early believers into Christlike maturity. Much of their maturing process was due to the influence of Paul, who taught them to mature in ways that would impact all aspects of their lives in the world.

To help frame Paul’s worldview for the reader, Gupta borrows language from Deitrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who resisted Hitler’s Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer suggested Jesus was “worldly” in the sense that He immersed himself fully in the world, thereby initiating the redemption of all aspects of creation — even the stuff we might consider ordinary, mundane, and unspiritual.

Calling this “holy wordliness,” Gupta suggests Paul’s directives to early Christians were bent on helping them “grow up” in Christ for the sake of our entire world.

Gupta begins by using Paul’s letters to the Corinthians as a case study on how the apostle tried to correct their “spirituality gone wrong.” Although the Corinthians thought they had “arrived at the pinnacle of self-actualization” because of their spiritual gifts, Paul rebuked them for behaving foolishly, carnally, and selfishly.

Paul redirected his readers toward behavior that would emulate the way of the crucified Christ. This, Gupta says, is the “medicine” they needed to cure their poisoned spirituality. It is far better to live by the Spirit for the sake of the world (as Christ did) than to seek personal gain.

In returning to Bonhoeffer’s framework, Gupta says this means living with the “hope that in the power of the Spirit and the way of Christ, we may turn (the world) right-side up.”

Paul’s directives to early Christians were bent on helping them “grow up” in Christ for the sake of our entire world.

A major strength of Gupta’s work is his ability to bring to life the Greco-Roman world, so the reader sees how entwined Paul’s language is with the cultural mores of his day. Paul often used popular cultural slogans to correct or redirect the Corinthians.

Additionally, Paul’s metaphor of growing up into Christ resembled the way Stoic philosophers often discussed moving from a life of vice to one of virtue, a process involving struggle, discipline, and training.

Paul, too, saw training and struggle as necessary components to the Christian’s maturing journey to become more like Christ.

With these metaphors in view, Gupta seeks in the second part of the book to shed light on how Christian training and maturity intersect with specific issues Paul addresses in his letters.

Along with his extensive teaching about God, the spiritual realm, resurrection, and redemption in Christ, Paul confronted practical and logistical matters causing problems in early Christian communities.

Gupta identifies eight of these issues, which Christian communities in any age regularly care about. These include justice, ethnic equality, economics, work, friendship, athletics, wellness, and the arts.

From Paul’s correspondence, Gupta constructs Paul’s views on these matters in light of his desire for Christians to grow up in the way they handled them.

In other words, Paul was always inviting believers to Christlike maturity as they lived their lives and engaged with matters of justice, slavery, money, vocation, relationships, and craftsmanship.

Gupta illuminates Paul’s specific ideas on each subject, using contextual insights from the world early Christians inhabited.

Ultimately, Gupta believes the operating force behind Paul’s this-worldly teachings is the hope-generating conviction of Christ’s resurrection and future redemption of our suffering world. It is “because Christ has defeated sin and death, (that) we can already start living according to the gospel kingdom’s principles, values, and culture right now.”

Paul for the World may leave readers hungering to learn even more about what it means to grow in Christ as we seek to live out the gospel in our 21st-century world.

Not everything Paul had to say finds a simple correlation to the phenomena of bitcoin, AI, and social media reels. But Gupta offers enough of Paul’s thoughts on this-worldly matters for Christians to continue to prayerfully discern what it means to live their faith for the sake of the world.

Book Reviewed

Nijay K. Gupta, Paul for the World: A Grounded Vision for Finding Meaning in this Life — Not Just the Next (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2026).