We should note that Paul, writing with apostolic authority, repeatedly instructs churches to imitate him (Philippians 4:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:6). He specifically charges church leaders to follow his pattern of life, both his faithful teaching and his sacrificial suffering (Acts 20:17–35; 2 Timothy 1:8–2:3).

In the world of evangelical missions, it’s common to appeal to Paul’s example when developing or defending missionary praxis. Many seek to articulate a Pauline approach or critique others for diverting from it. While Roland Allen wasn’t the first to do this, his classic work on Paul’s missionary methods presented them as the plumb line for contemporary missions.
More recently, some missiologists have questioned the degree to which we’re called to follow Paul’s example, but I’m convinced we have much to learn from the great apostle to the nations (Rom. 11:13). However, whenever we seek to construct missionary methods based on a Pauline model, we encounter various challenges.
Much of Paul’s life and ministry isn’t revealed in Scripture. Even when we can observe what he did, we don’t always know why he did it. Most challenging of all, missiologists must come to terms with how Paul’s calling and world were far different from ours. This doesn’t negate the possibility, or even necessity, of following Paul’s missionary example, but it suggests we must be careful when trying to reconstruct a Pauline approach.
Critical Differences
Any attempt to build a methodology from Paul’s ministry must reckon with the reality that he wasn’t your average missionary. Paul was uniquely called and specifically commissioned by our Lord. While the Bible can use the term apostolos for a variety of people, the church has long acknowledged a defined group of individuals who hold unique authority to transmit Christ’s teaching and thus serve as the foundation for his church (Eph. 2:20). Paul was one of those apostles.
No missionary today can claim a similar apostolic position. We don’t speak on behalf of Christ with the same authority, nor should we expect churches to receive our teaching in the same way. While this truth is rarely debated, it means we can’t always assume a one-to-one correspondence between Paul’s ministry and ours. It’s like comparing a foundation stone to a roof rafter.
Paul didn’t only have a unique role in the founding of the church; certain historical factors also make his example rarely replicable. From what we know, Paul never had to learn another language. Wherever he went, he could operate in Greek or Aramaic or Hebrew. And although culture wasn’t monolithic in the Roman Empire, Paul wasn’t a cultural outsider in the way many missionaries are today. He possessed a deep awareness of social dynamics and could quote popular sources, bringing the gospel to bear on the various groups he encountered.
For most cross-cultural missionaries today, attaining a similar fluency and aptitude in their context could easily take more than a decade. They can’t walk into a global city or a tribal village and immediately communicate the gospel as clearly or effectively as Paul.
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As one Old Testament scholar has put it, “I like the New Testament, because it reminds me a lot of the Old Testament.” Indeed, the New Testament should remind us of the Old Testament, because every page of the New Testament (and often every paragraph) is filled with quotations, allusions, and echoes from the Old Testament.

Have you ever watched a new movie, where you started 10 minutes before the end?
Many years ago, when big hair was still in style, I was introduced to Back to the Future in this way. My friends were watching this movie and I joined them at point where Doc Brown crashed through garbage cans, warned Marty and his girlfriend about their future children, and drove to a place where “we don’t need roads.”
If you only know the last ten minutes of Back to the Future, however, you won’t understand the significance of the DeLorean, the date (November 5, 1955), the speed (88 miles per hour), or the electricity (1.21 Gigawatts) that makes time travel possible. Nor will you understand the flux capacitor and its cruciform power to rewrite history. All of these details are revealed over the course of the movie and only in watching the movie from beginning to end, can you make sense of its ending.
Something similar happens when we open our Bibles and behold the man hung upon a Roman cross. While many well-intentioned evangelists point to Christ’s cross as the center piece of our Christian faith and the way of our salvation, it is an event in history that only makes sense when you begin in the beginning. That Christ was buried in a garden tomb does more than give us an historical referent; it tells the significance of Christ’s death as the way of God’s new creation, because after all it was in a garden where Adam sinned and brought death to the world. Now, raised from a garden tomb, Jesus as the new Adam has introduced a new way of life.
In this vein, the biblical storyline is necessary for understanding why the Son of God had to die on a tree, be buried in a tomb, and raised to life on the third day. Indeed, even if we know that Christ did not stay dead—that he rose from the grave, walked the earth teaching his disciples for forty days, and ascended to heaven, where he now sits in glory—we cannot make sense of the cross. Or at least, our interest in Christ’s death and resurrection leads us to ask: But what does it mean?
Indeed, the way to understand Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is to place those events in the timeline of God’s redemptive history. That timeline begins in creation, proceeds through the fall of mankind into sin, and picks up countless promises of grace and types of salvation throughout the Old Testament. In fact, to be most precise, God’s plan for Christ’s cross did not begin in space and time; it began before God spoke light into the darkness (Gen. 1:3). As Peter says in his first sermon (Acts 2:23) and his first epistle (1 Peter 1:20), the cross of Christ was the centerpiece of God’s eternal plan for the salvation of his people.
In Scripture, therefore, the cross is the climactic work of God to redeem sinners and rescue the dying.
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Judge according to the Word of God, yes, but never indulge in self-righteous, hypocritical, hypercritical, prejudiced, merciless judgmentalism. That is never the way of Christ, and it should not be the way of Christians either.

Matthew 7:1 is one of the most needed and one of the most abused statements in the Bible. It is not uncommon to meet people who seem to know only three verses from the Bible: “Judge not” (Matt. 7:1), “God is love” (1 John 4:16), and “Let him who is without sin…be the first to throw a stone” (John 8:7). These people—professing Christians or not—are not really interested in understanding the Bible on its own terms. They are happy to sloganize the Scriptures if it suits their purposes.
Yet just because people can misuse a verse does not give us a reason to throw out that verse. The fact is that Matthew 7:1 is a necessary corrective that many Christians need to hear. If we can first clear away the false claims, we will be in a position to let Matthew 7:1 shape us as Jesus intended.
A Misused Command
So what does this verse not mean? First, “judge not” does not mean that we suspend the rule of law. God has ordained officers in the state (Rom. 13:1–2) and in the church (Matt. 18:15–17; 1 Cor. 5:9–13) to exercise judgment when the members of each institution fail to do what is right. We do not judge in the sense of exercising individual vigilante justice because we trust that God will exercise His justice through the proper authorities (Rom. 12:17–21).
Second, “judge not” does not mean that we turn off our brains. Elsewhere in Scripture, we are warned not to believe every spirit (1 John 4:1). We must be a discerning people, judging with right judgments (John 7:24). There is simply no way that we can read the Bible and conclude that godliness entails accepting everything all the time and affirming everyone no matter what. The same Jesus who preached about not judging also rebuked the church at Thya­tira for tolerating false teachers and sexual immorality (Rev. 2:20).
Third, “judge not” does not mean that we suspend all moral distinctions. The Sermon on the Mount does not forbid theological and ethical evaluation. Jesus does not prohibit harsh criticism when necessary. Think about it: the Sermon on the Mount is full of moral judgment. Jesus calls people hypocrites (Matt. 7:5). He tells the people to beware of false prophets (v. 15). Just a few sentences after the command to “judge not,” Jesus expects us to understand (and discern) that some people are dogs and pigs (v. 6). It’s as if Jesus is saying, “I don’t want you to be censorious, but neither do I want you to be simpletons.”
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