One of the many benefits of John Barclay’s Paul and the Gift is the manner in which he captures how for Paul the effects of the cross are seen in the social ordering of churches.

The cross is a world-shattering and world-creating event, refashioning the cosmos, effecting a new creation. This cosmic upheaval brings about a radically new social order among those communities that claim loyalty to Jesus Christ.

Speaking for all those in Christ, Paul says that “the world has been crucified to me and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14), creating a community in which ethnic distinctions no longer determine social capital (v. 15).

This is why Paul reacts so strongly to communities that are still ordered socially according to worldly valuations such as gender hierarchies and claims to ethnic and racial priority that privilege one group over another. These hierarchies belong to the world that has been put to death in the death of Christ (Gal. 6:14), and if they continue to shape Christian communities, then those communities are inherently worldly.

Such communities manifest a cosmic reality in which “Christ died for nothing!” (Gal. 2:21, NIV). Such churches proclaim the death of Christ as impotent to bring about the reality that Paul’s gospel declares.

The cross is not a private reality. The cross is public and political because it calls into being a visible community that enacts in its transformative social practices the gift given without any consideration of worldly measures of worth.

This is the scandal of the cross.