Did you ever notice in Paul’s writings that virtually no two lists -of anything -were the same?
Whether he’s defining love, fruit, ministry gifts or graces the concepts are all far more free rolling, yet incomplete, than we like to think.
In our world, we want closed ended and complete categories. That’s why we always try and combine Paul’s writings to come up with a complete picture. But he didn’t write all of his letters to everyone, nor at the same time. Maybe, he wrote with an awareness of what each church needed to apply most specifically and when it brought the greatest value.
Perhaps, he knew the Lord as bigger than we know Him.
Perhaps he knew that even born again humanity, was so far beneath the full idea that a shotgun blast of truth to get us started was more important than a bulls eye.
It’s a holy thing thing that we can look at all that remains of Paul’s mind and heart, to contrast, compare and assemble good doctrine- but I wonder if in our assembling, we sometimes forget the real genius of the vessel: that God was too big for any mind to understand and capture.
Perhaps Paul knew God as the ultimate Creative and simply refused to close Him.
Maybe the cornerstone of Pauline theology is that the building is never actually complete. There’s always more to see.