<p>11:24 <em>Of the Jews five times I received thirty nines lashes- </em>When the world reviled him, Paul saw himself as the beaten prophets Jesus had spoken about (2 Cor. 11:24,25 = Mt. 21:35).&nbsp;But such punishments from the synagogue system could have been avoided if Paul had not gone to the Jews and left them to Peter; see on :23. Forty lashes were thought enough to kill a man, and the thirty nine lash punishment was only to be given to a man once in his lifetime, according to synagogue law. The repeated experience of such major beating would have left Paul's back a real mess. In Acts 22:25 we get the impression Paul was willing to be scourged yet again, but at the last minute played the card of his Roman citizenship to avoid it. Perhaps this was because the previous lashings had left him so deformed and infected that he realized that if he were to be lashed again he would probably die.</p><p>The pattern of preaching which we see in the Father and in the Lord Jesus must be our model. He identified with us in order to 'get through' to us; the power of His personality and work rests in the fact that He was genuinely human. God Himself chose this method, of manifestation in a Son of our nature, in order to redeem us. We can do likewise, in identifying with our audience; living as they do when in a mission field; learning their language, both literally and metaphorically; patient bearing with those suffering from depression, Aspergers, alcoholism, various neuroses... to win them. Thus to the Gentiles Paul became as a Gentile; and as a Jew in order that he might win them who were under the law (1 Cor. 9:20). This is exemplified by the fact that he underwent synagogue floggings (2 Cor. 11:24)- which were only administered to Jews who willingly submitted to the punishment because they were orthodox Jews. This was the extent to which Paul became as a Jew in the hope of winning the Jews. Fly by preachers, seeking to establish a colony of their home base, will never achieve much lasting success. Paul would pay any price in order to identify with his audience, in order to win them to Christ. He was living out the spirit of Jesus, who likewise identified Himself with us to the maximum extent in order to save us. &ldquo;Forty lashes minus one&rdquo; was a synagogue punishment, based on Dt. 25:2,3, which could only be administered to members of the synagogue community- and apparently, the members had the right under local Roman law to resign from the synagogue and escape the punishment. It would&rsquo;ve been far easier for Paul to disown Judaism and insist he was not a member of any synagogue. But he didn&rsquo;t. Why? Surely because this was the extent to which he was willing to be all things to all men, to truly be a Jew in order to save the Jews. And we too can choose daily the extent to which we identify ourselves with those whom we seek to save. It&rsquo;s not simply the case of a Western missionary suffering privations along with the impoverished local population to whom he or she seeks to preach. It&rsquo;s about us each getting involved in the mess of others&rsquo; lives, at great personal cost, in order to show true solidarity with them, on which basis we can more effectively witness to them. This is surely the way in which we are to &lsquo;love the world&rsquo;; this inhuman world, this enormous collection of desperate, lonely people, into whose mundane experiences we can enter simply through genuine, caring, person-to-person encounter. And by doing this we will find ourselves. For it seems to me that the truly creative and original personalities, the Lord Jesus being the supremest, are those who give of themselves in order to enter into the lives and sufferings of others. And that, by the way, may explain why there are so few truly freethinking minds. Paul didn&rsquo;t just love the Jewish people in theory, he didn&rsquo;t draw a distinction between the Jews as persons, and their role or status before God. He loved them as persons, and so he suffered for them in order to save them.</p>