Unlocking the New Testament Part 29 - Paul and his Letters

slave. I just want to mention something here and some of you will realize its relevance. Paul rarely spoke of "Christ in me." Only once or twice in all the

letters

did he ever say, "Christ is in me." Dozens and dozens of times he said, “I am in Christ.” That is very, very important because if we talk so much about Jesus in me, you reduce the size of Jesus to a little Jesus inside my heart. The lesser is in the greater. Do you follow me? Now, when Paul spoke of the Holy Spirit, he almost always said that the Spirit is in me, but when he spoke of Christ, he said I am in Christ.

I remember talking to a German pastor years ago and he told me that in the 1930s, he was in the Hitler Youth and when he joined the Hitler Youth, he stood in front of a German officer who said, "How do you feel?" calls?" He gave his name, then the officer said, and what is his address, where does he live? And he said, I live in Hamburg and the officer said, wrong answer; Where do you live? He said I live in Germany. Wrong answer, where do you live? He said: I live in the Third Reich. Wrong answer; where do you live?

He said: I don't know what you want me to tell you. And the officer said: you must say that I live in Hitler! I live in Hitler! And that German shepherd told me, then I began to live in Christ. You could see what this total devotion was. Just adding that, I am much happier to hear people say that I am in Christ rather than that Christ is in me, because he is greater and we are in him. It is in Christ that we are blessed with every blessing. It is in him that everything is ours; I just add that.

But Paul was a man in Christ. That was his direction wherever he was in the Roman empire, that was his climate, his surroundings, he was in Christ. The second great motivation of his life was the Gospel. He would do anything to spread the Gospel and that is why he might even rejoice in prison. He said, I may be chained, but, he said, this is virtually what he's saying in the letter to the Philippians - he said, I'm chained to a Roman soldier for eight hours straight, I have three captive congregations a day and he said, now we have Christians in Caesar's house.

Then he said, I may be bound, but the Word of God is not, and then there were people who, while he was in prison, seized his pulpit and preached out of rivalry with him, and were glad that he was locked up like that. that they might seize the pulpit from him; and he says in Philippians, I hear they are doing it out of rivalry and jealousy toward me, but he said, hallelujah, he is preaching the Gospel. I don't care why they preach it as long as they are preaching it. Here is a man who lived for the Gospel and said: I owe it to everyone.

He didn't consider it a responsibility so much as a debt. He see, if he discovered a cure for cancer, what would be his relationship with everyone who suffers from it? You should tell them, right? Wouldn't he feel obligated to do it? Well, Paul says, I am under obligation, I am a debtor to both Jews and Greeks, I owe it to the world, I owe it to them. And that's why he did anything for the Gospel; That's why he was an ambassador, and he went anywhere to tell anyone what God had done in Christ. Let me just give you two little words to qualify the Gospel of him.

It was an eschatological gospel; There is a word you must pronounce. Eschatology comes from the Greek word 'eschaton' the last things, and it means the future and the gospel of it was an eschatological gospel. And what I mean by this is that it was a gospel about the future, a future that had invaded the present. And if we forget that future dimension of the Gospel, we forget the Gospel itself. The Gospel is not only good news about life here, it is good news about a new world that is coming, about new bodies that we are going to receive.

It is good news of Jesus' return. There will be a conference later this month where 60 national leaders will meet because they share the burden that the eschatological dimension of the Gospel has been neglected in the church in England. We're not singing about the second coming, have you noticed? We are not singing about heaven. We have been totally concerned with our problems in this world and how to live now, but the Gospel is eschatological. It was a Kingdom that was going to come and a King that was going to come. And all the time Paul saw the Gospel as the future that you can enjoy now;

We are the people of tomorrow. The other side of his Gospel, the other word that qualifies him, his Gospel was an Ethical Gospel, he was not interested in a salvation of souls that did not result in a different lifestyle, and his Gospel was a Gospel from the future. , was also a gospel to live it in daily life. And I want to say more about that later. The third word I wrote was Grace. Paul could never get over the fact that Jesus claimed him when he was on his way to imprison Christians; He simply could never get over the fact that what he was was totally undeserved and that if Jesus had given him what he deserved, he would have been in hell.

He just couldn't get over it... That's what grace means. It means something that you simply do not deserve, that is given to you freely. It's summed up in the statement in Romans, Paul says, while we were still enemies, Christ died for us - and of course, that was very true of him. He was an enemy. He was using all his energy to fight against Christ, and Christ said, I'm going to use you. You're going to be one of mine. Now this grace produced gratitude and you can see that the motive of gratitude is behind much of this man's efforts.

He was so grateful for having been treated so contrary to what he deserved that the grace of the Lord Jesus became the motivation of his life. Now those three words, we could add many more, but those were the three that I felt yesterday were the three great things in Paul's life, Christ was the greatest. He was in Christ; The Gospel was what he wanted others to have more than anything else, and the pure Grace of God was what motivated him. Now let's look at his

letters

. The most famous letter writer in history. If you enjoy reading other people's letters, you will love the New Testament because it is full of letters to other people.

Now writing letters was very rare among the Jews. There were very, very few letters written by Jews in the ancient world. The reason is very simple, they lived in a small country, they did not need letters and of course writing letters was a very expensive occupation. An imperial postal service existed in the Roman Empire, but it was for the exclusive use of Roman officials. Ordinary people couldn't go to the mailbox and put a letter in there, you just couldn't do that. You could write a letter, but then you had to find a postman to accompany it to the end, so that you didn't write too many letters; and if you lived close to your relatives, you didn't write letters, go see them or give a message to a friend who was passing by their house.

So within Israel very, very few letters were written. In the Roman Empire many things were written, but they were usually written by officials or rich people who could afford to pay a postman to carry them to the end. There was no postal service, so you had to have a pretty important reason to write a letter; You wouldn't just wish you were here; having a great time.” You wouldn't write that kind of postcard. You would write a letter about a crisis or a major problem, and of course, every letter from Paul was written for that type of crisis situation.

Generally, in the ancient world letters were quite short, a sheet of papyrus; anything up to 20 words, but sometimes they would glue one sheet to another and roll it up and then you could write a longer letter. Paul's letters are the longest we have from the ancient world. Its average length was about 1,300 words, and that's long; You can imagine it handwritten on a strip of paper. It's a big scroll and his letter to the Romans is 7,114 words, which is the longest letter ever written in those days, so Paul really put himself into these letters. Now the format of each letter followed.

If you can imagine a piece of paper rolled up like that, and very sensibly, the first thing you wrote on a letter was the name of the sender. Isn't that sensible? Why do we put the sender's name right at the end? Sometimes I get 20-page letters from people who think I have nothing else to do, no doubt, and they put their name right at the end, so you have to scroll to the end before you know who sent them. Well, very sensibly they put the name of the sender, that was the first word you wrote: Paul, an apostle, slave of Jesus.

The next thing he wrote was the address, so the mailman only unrolled the first piece you see. Of course, if you wanted to read the rest, you could but the name and address came first, that is, Paul, to the saints in Ephesus, or wherever. The next thing you would do was greet them, that was a normal letter, then you would greet them with some kind of greeting, followed by some good wishes for them, which Paul always turned into prayers for them, which is interesting, he didn't. say "best of luck British". He said, I pray this for you, or that for you.

And the next thing you would do in a letter was compliment the person you were writing to, say something nice about them, and put them in a good mood for the rest of the letter. And it's interesting that Paul always, if he could, wrote nice things about the people he wrote to before dealing with their problems. That's not a bad pattern to follow. If you have a criticism to make to someone, first say something good. It's interesting that in the seven letters to the churches of Asia in Revelation, which Jesus himself wrote, he followed exactly that same pattern, praising them before criticizing them, just a small point;

That's the Christian way. After you've done that, you move on to the subject of the letter, review it, and then summarize the subject, usually summarizing in one sentence what you've written and then giving them a few more greetings and signing off with your own signature. Now most people didn't write their own letters. I'm sure you've seen pictures of letter writers in India. Get someone else to write it. In the Greek world, they called that person an amanuensis and Paul did not write his own letters, but he dictated them to an amanuensis. Sometimes it was Silas, sometimes someone else.

Now, that's important because it means the letters were spoken and not written, you follow me? Most of the New Testament was spoken before it was written and you can imagine Paul walking around saying, now tell them this and tell them that, it's all really said. It's like he's present and talking to them, it's a very conversational style. It is not a literary style, it is a conversational style. Now, my wife's mother died this year at 98, she just didn't survive, but until the end, her letters were just news, news, news. She knew everything about everyone, she had a phenomenal memory, better than both of us, and she wrote those news letters as if she were sitting in the room telling you all about her great-grandchildren, who are now numerous.

And there she was. That's how Paul wrote letters, he spoke to them, he didn't write a lecture. He's writing a letter, and he's doing it because he can't be there, but it's just as good as there because he's just talking it out and saying, now write this down while I'm talking, and he's talking, walking up and down and just talking. to that congregation, and I wrote it and yet it is in the form of a letter. He almost always signed his letters at the end. Now, of course, there was something wrong with Paul's eyes, we don't quite know what, but it meant that he wrote in huge letters like this... and he says at the end of Galatians, 'look what big letters I'm writing.' with my own hand'.

He

part

icularly began to do that as we will see in the next study on Thessalonians because people began to imitate Paul and send letters as if they came from Paul, which were false and did a lot of harm and the church in Thessalonica had such a letter, so Paul was very careful to say, look, I'm signing this second letter to you in my own handwriting, and don't create any letter that doesn't have my signature. The Devil can deceive in many ways. That's what his letters were like. Now, there were three types of letters that he wrote, there were personal letters that he wrote to individuals: Philemon, Timothy, Titus.

There were what we call occasional letters, which were written to churches and when we say occasional, we mean that they were occasioned by something happening in the church. There was one occasion when he required a letter, do you follow me? That's what we mean by occasional, not just once in a while. And third were the general letters, like the ones we received by the dozen at Christmas. Do you know what a general letter is? It is usually printed and tells us everything about the family, vacations we have had, etc. They are circular letters that really have no connection to the reader, they are not caused by the reader, they are general news and would apply to wherever you sent them.

The Pope writes letters like this from time to time and he calls them encyclical letters. We call them circular letters. Do you send Christmas letters, send all the family news, duplicate them and send them to everyone? And missionaries do that too. That is a general letter. In reality, Paul only wrote one of those letters, which one was it? Ephesians, that's right. Not Romans: Romans was occasioned by a situation in Rome, but Ephesians is the only letter where he does not addressno local problems and gives a general account of Christian beliefs and behavior. It is a very good card to study as a general card.

It applies to every Christian. But it is with occasional letters that we have trouble interpreting and applying them, because occasional letters are one side of a correspondence. And again, when I think in a previous study I shared this with you... Have you ever been in a room where someone is on the phone and you only hear their side of the conversation? What do you do with your mind, you know? And someone says, "You should consult a lawyer about that." Now, what does your mind think has been said to the other side, see? What happened, whether they went bankrupt, or were falsely arrested, or had an uncomfortable neighbor, you don't know.

Or "well, I'm glad you're fully recovered" and you're sitting there listening, thinking fully recovered from what? Know? Shock, illness, grief, you don't know. Now you see a letter like this. An occasional letter has been caused by a situation that we know nothing about a

part

from the letter, and you have to try to guess what is going on in that church that needed this letter, do you follow me? Again, here you have a telephone conversation, one-sided, and you try to guess what it is about. "Hello". 'Has arrived? Congratulations!’ ‘How much does it weigh?’ ‘What “Don't let your wife take it.” "You will see that she is very thirsty." "For a caterpillar, she moves pretty fast." It is not like this?

Maybe she will get me one.” “Cheerio.” What was it? He was a tractor. Well, how many guessed that? Alright. How many at first thought it was a baby? See what I mean. When you read an epistle, that is what you are reading. And you have to piece together the other side all the time, say, what was happening in Corinth, what was happening in Galatia? And then you build the image. You have to do a little detective work and read between the lines. It's a lot of fun to do and you learn a lot. For example, Paul wrote two letters to Thessalonica and one is a very warm letter and the other is a very cold letter, and you ask why one is warm and the other is cold, what happened to change his whole tone?

You see, that's the kind of clue, you see, that's why I want you to read the books of the Bible as complete books. You can choose texts from Thessalonians, but you won't understand them unless you read them all. Of course, we also have the problem of the cultural gap, that we are two thousand miles and two thousand years away from the background of these letters, and that requires a bit of understanding and translation. We have to find the principles behind the practice and then apply them today. For example, when we study Corinthians, I'll spend a little time talking about women and hats and we have to say: how do we handle that and how do we apply it today?

I don't see a hat in the room, either on men's or women's heads, but are you saying it should be that way or not? Somehow we have to translate the principle to our situation. Let me say two final things about Paul and his letters. Number one, thank God the New Testament churches were not perfect. Not only are we encouraged, but we realize that if they didn't have problems, we wouldn't have a single letter from Paul. It is only because the Corinthian church was so charismatic and so carnal that we have 1 Corinthians 13 about love. We would never have known that if they hadn't all been speaking in tongues.

See, it's because they had problems that Paul had to write and give us a third of the New Testament. So thank God the New Testament churches were not perfect. But here is the final thought: in no other religion is there the use of letters for divine revelation. Why did the God and Father of our Lord Jesus use letters as our scriptures? It is something unheard of in the world. Personal letters from person to person become the Word of God. Now, we are so accustomed to seeing the epistles in the Bible that we take them for granted.

You shouldn't, it's unheard of. Why should God use letters to communicate his Word to us, because when Paul wrote those letters he had no idea they would ever be part of a Bible? Of course, at the end of the New Testament, the second epistle of Peter refers to Paul's letters as “scriptures”, so they began to be, even in the days of the New Testament, but Paul never thought that; he was simply writing a note to Corinth. Why did God use letters to communicate his Word? I think there are two reasons. With this we finish. Number one, it makes the Word of God personal.

The letters are personal. They have an address and the Word of God is addressed to us, and a letter communicates that personal communication. Letters can be very personal, they can be very emotional, they can be heart to heart, and God wanted to use Paul's letters to communicate his Word because they are very personal and our religion will remain personal as long as it remains close to Paul's letters. Pablo. The other thing is that the word of God is practical and the letters are always about practical things. They are related to life, they are related to real life, to real needs: to marriage, to slavery, to children in the home, to daily work; all these things are dealt with in letters; and God wanted us to have his Word in a practical and personal way, so that we would never get into philosophy, into these academic theologians.

You know, there are too many academic intellectuals who study the Christian faith and live in their ivory palaces in university lecture halls and argue about Christianity. That's where all the strange opinions the Bishop of Durham gives us come from. They leave the conference room. God did not want to give us his Word in conferences, but in letters, isn't that good? Maybe you've never thought about that before. I didn't think about it until yesterday and I thought, what a great deal. The glory of studying the Bible is that you constantly see things you never saw before. It's as fresh and interesting at the end of your life as it was at the beginning, and I thought, thank you Lord for giving us cards to show us your truth.

In a letter, the truth becomes personal and practical and that's what you want. You want a faith that is personal and practical and that is why you did not give us sermons. There is not a single lecture by Paul in the New Testament, but we have all these letters to look at, and next time we will look at the letters to the Thessalonians.