Comparison of Jesus and Paul's Teachings on Human Nature and Inter-Human Relationships

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Comparison of Jesus and Paul's Teachings on Human Nature

and Inter-Human Relationships

In my paper on human nature and inter-human relationships, I am going to prove that Jesus is more loving and forgiving in his teachings and commands to the people, where as Paul is more direct and unyielding.

Both Jesus and Paul had similar ideas of what human and inter-human relationships should consist of, but they differed in the way they delivered their individual messages. When Jesus speaks to the people he conveys a more positive and uplifting tone. He encourages us to be like God instead of acting out on our deeply ingrained sinful nature. Paul differs from Jesus because instead of speaking in love and understainding, he speaks to the people in a more condemning way. He lays the blame of the sinful and death-filled world onto them. Paul’s message to the people is basically that there is little room for change of the way we are as people because sin has already entered the world through man.

Jesus believed that it was human nature for people to gravitate towards darkness instead of ‘light.’ Our human nature was to be evil and we did not want that part of us to be exposed. In John 3:19-20, Jesus speaks of how light has come into this world and been made available to us, but because of our sinful human nature we are ashamed to reach out and expose that part of ourselves.. According to him, we do not accept the light at first

because we are scared it may show our true identity. Jesus explains this concept in a non-judgmental way. He is trying to convey that he accepts us no matter what state we are in as individuals and this passage is showing that humanity may possess darkness, but we all have the free will to come into the ‘light’ because he has given us that option to redeem ourselves. We no longer need to fear and hide from it, we can come out in the open and receive what Christ has given to us.

Jesus believed that we should exemplify God’s behavior within our inter-human relationships. He does not just want us to love those that are easy to love in our everyday lives, such as brothers or sisters, friends. Jesus wants us to take on the hard and arduous task of loving all mankind, even enemies. In Matthew 5:43-44,48, Jesus states "You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

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