From the time of the Protestant Reformation to the present, most Protestant scholars have maintained that Paul's central message is the doctrine of justification by faith, which is frequently taken to mean also salvation by faith. In 1994 I published prematurely a little work, The Apostle Paul, Christian Jew: Faithfulness and Law, in which I suggested that Paul says some other things that are more important than his so-called doctrine of justification. The present work is a development and correction of some ideas contained in it.

Some scholars have questioned the centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith in Paul's letters, and for the last several decades have begun to question again whether the faith Paul writes about in several key texts is that of the believer or of Jesus. Books, if any, that emphasize the centrality of Paul's moral/ethical teachings with the goal of moral perfection for converts in his churches are unknown to me.

The place to begin for the best understanding of both Paul's theology and his moral/ethical teachings is with his earliest letter, 1 Thessalonians. Two texts are especially significant. The first is 1 Thess. 1.8-9: ‘Your faithfulness toward God has gone out everywhere…how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God’. The second is 1 Thess. 4.7: ‘For God did not call us for (moral) uncleanness but (to live) in holiness’. If we begin with those texts and then study Paul's letters, we learn the real significance of moral probity demanded of persons faithful toward God.