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There is an allegory of the human body in 2 Cor 5:1–4 that is discussed by many scholars and has many different interpretations. The author of this article joins this discussion and tries to answer the question of what the theological message of this pericope is. The metaphors that make it up can be divided into two groups: 1) home metaphors; 2) metaphors of putting on and taking off of clothes. In his text, Paul arranges them in an antithetical way and refers to two stages of human life: the earthly life of believers, which a person leads in a destructible body and which ends in death, and the future condition of believers, which begins with the reception of the resurrection body. The analysis carried out in the ar­ticle leads to the conclusion that, in his reflection, Paul does not write anything about the intermediate state which is referred to by the followers of Platonic and Gnostic thought in the Hellenistic environment. He eagerly wishes to stand before the Lord during the Parousia without losing his mortal body in order to pass to eternal life without the experience of death by putting on the glorious body.

Hellenistic literature, having great achievements in the fields of philosophy, drama, and poetry, did not know the theological concepts and issues which underlie the texts contained in the Hebrew Bible. So when the creators of the Septuagint, and then also the authors of the New Testament, used the Greek language to convey God’s inspired truths to the world, they were forced to give secular terms a new theological meaning, frequently choosing neutral words for this purpose, not burdened with ne­gative associations. With their translation work, they built a kind of bridge between Hellenic and Jewish cultures. On the one hand, the Septuagint allowed Jews reading the Bible in Greek to remain connected not only with the religious heritage of their fathers, but also with the cultural values that were closely related to that language and its world. In turn, for the Greeks, who after some time began to appreciate this work and gained knowledge of its content, it opened vast horizons of new religious and spiritual values, which until then were completely alien to them. The work of the authors of the Septuagint was continued and developed by the authors of the New Testament, which added to their theological output many new religious and moral values arising from the teaching of Jesus Christ. That way they contributed considerably to the development of the Koinē Greek and significantly transformed the spiritual life of the people speaking the language.

The author of this article analyzes the texts, in which St. Paul writes on the subject of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. In Ga 2: 19–20 the apostle presents the love of Christ as an essential feature of his nature and he suggests that this love was expressed in the particular, historical self offering on the cross. In Rom 5: 7–8 he states that the only motive for the redeeming sacrifice, which the Son of God offered of himself, following the will of the Father, is the heroic love, shown in the death for sinners. Despite the fact that in the antiquity the cross was a tool of the most degrading and humiliating death, St. Paul writes in Ga 6: 14 that he boasts of the cross of Jesus Christ, furthermore, in 1 Cor 1: 24 he adds that the crucified Christ is “the power of God and the wisdom of God”. In Ga 3: 13 Paul observes a state of humanity, overloaded with the curse of sin, as a slavery, from which the Christ freed it, through his sacrifice offered on the wood of the cross, because on it, by his own will he took this curse, which was leading humanity to condemnation, on himself. Further deepening of the theological reflection on the role of the cross in the saving work of God can be found in Eph 2: 13–16 and Col 1: 19–20. The author of these texts recognizes the blood of Christ, poured out on the cross, as the tool of reconciliation and introducing peace and reconciliation to the world.

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