Transcript Introducing Paul - First Presbyterian Church LaGrange

Adult Education: Fall 2009
Introducing Paul
Reading Someone Else’s Mail
When people get their hands on
religion one of the first things they do
is turn it into an instrument for
controlling others—keeping them in
their place. Paul’s letter to Galatia
helped them and helps us to recover
the original freedom of Christian
faith. We learn here that freedom is
a delicate and subtle gift, easily
perverted and often squandered.
Galatians
• Paul has learned that agitators have arrived in Galatia and
were urging his converts to be circumcised and to follow the
law of Moses.
•The agitators have included criticism of Paul and his
legitimacy as a leader.
•Paul narrates his conversion and emphasizes that he has
received the Gospel by direct revelation from Christ, not the
Judean church leaders.
•Paul has further visited Jerusalem and received the blessing
of the original apostles.
•The letter’s central thesis is that people are justified by faith
without works of the law.
•It is receiving the Holy Spirit and not submission to religious
law that makes the Galatians sons of Abraham.
•Paul concludes with final instructions for life in the
community.
I and 2 Thessalonians
How we conceive the future sculpts the
present, gives contour and tone to
nearly every action and thought
through the day. If our sense of future
is weak, we live listlessly. Paul’s
letters to the believers at Thessalonica
correct debilitating misconceptions
about the future coming of Jesus.
These letters prod us to live forward in
taut, joyful expectancy for what God
will do next in Jesus.
First Thessalonians
•Written to Christians facing adversity to quicken
their enthusiasm for the coming of Christ.
•Paul presents himself as a model
•He exhorts them to live a God-pleasing life, living
quietly pursuing brotherly love, and refraining from
sexual immorality.
•He deals with questions of Thessalonians wondering
about the fate of believers who have died before
Christ comes again.
•Paul’s answer is that the returned Lord will raise first
deceased believers and then living believers.
•The exact time of all this is unknown, but believers
should live expectantly.
Second Thessalonians
•Paul begins by noting the Thessalonians suffering and says that
God will repay those who afflict them.
•He moves on to calm any alarm the Thessalonians have that the
‘Day of the Lord’ has already come.
•Paul reasons that the ‘Day’ will not appear until rebellion
comes and the man of lawlessness is revealed.
•He urges them to remain steadfast to the traditions they have
received.
•Paul asks for prayers for himself and co-workers.
Anyone thinking that joining a church is a
good way to meet all the best people ought
to study Paul’s Corinthian correspondence.
However much trouble the Corinthians
were to each other and to Paul, they prove
to be a cornucopia of blessings to us, for
they triggered some of Paul’s most
profound and vigorous writing.
I Corinthians
•Early in the letter, Paul says that the cross abolishes all
divisions and partisanship within the church.
•There are a variety of unseemly behaviors going on in the
Corinthian church, including sexual irregularities,
participation in pagan meals, the question of women and head
coverings, and disputes over individual spiritual gifts.
•Against those who deny the possibility of resurrection Paul
asserts that resurrection is essential to Christian belief
•Paul gives instructions concerning the money collection for
famine relief in Jerusalem.
II Corinthians
•Paul begins by explaining that he has not traveled to Corinth
because he doesn’t want an unpleasant visit or more
confrontation with the people there.
•He gives instructions for how the person who opposed him is
to be restored to the congregation’s fellowship.
•Paul pleads the purity of his motives. He expresses
confidence that he is a minister of the glorious new covenant,
superior to the old covenant.
•Referring to the punishing circumstances that oppose Paul’s
ministry, he says that he presses on in persuasion and
reconciliation as an ambassador for Christ.
•Paul gives a uniquely Christian view of personal weakness,
which ironically display God’s power.
•Paul explains his plan for a third visit to Corinth.
Philippians is Paul’s happiest letter.
Happiness isn’t something learned out of a
book. Something more like apprenticeship is
required, being around someone who out of
years of devoted discipline shows us, by his or
her entire behavior, what it is. When we read
what Paul wrote to the Christian believers in
Philippi, we find ourselves in the company of
just such a master. Paul writes, ironically,
from a jail cell. His work is under attack by
competitors. Paul is tired. But circumstances
are incidental compared to the life of Jesus
that Paul experiences from the inside. Christlife once and for all came and spilled out into
the lives of those who receive him and then
continues to spill out all over the place. It is
this “spilling out” quality of Christ’s life
that accounts for the happiness of Christians,
for joy is life in excess, the overflow of what
cannot be contained within any one person.
Philippians
•Written from prison, Philippians is filled with thanksgiving,
joy, and encouragement.
•Paul tells how imprisonment has advanced the gospel by
encouraging others to speak for the Lord boldly.
•Paul exhorts the Philippians to live a life worthy of the
gospel in the face of opposition, following Christ’s example
in humility.
•Paul further urges obedience in a corrupt environment.
•He outlines plans for a future visit to Philippi.
•He warns against those who insist on circumcision.
•Paul draws to a close with comments on unity among
certain women and godly virtues.
In Colossians Paul is unswervingly confident in
the conviction that Christ occupies the center
of creation and salvation without peers. Paul
argues from a position of rooted humility. He
writes with the energies of most considerate
love. He exhibits again what Christians have
come to appreciate so much in Paul—the
wedding of a brilliant and uncompromising
intellect with a heart that is warmly and
wonderfully kind.
Colossians
•Written from prison, this letter was part of two circular
epistles sent to Lycus valley churches that Paul had yet to visit.
•In this letter Paul is countering Jewish teachers who are
propagating Judaism using language and ideas indigenous to
the Lycus Valley.
•Early Paul sets forth a majestic Christ hymn which moves to
the heart of his letter.
•The hymn proclaims the sufficiency, supremacy of Christ over
all other spiritual powers.
•Paul wants his readers to ignore the deceptive philosophy of
observance of Jewish practices.
•Christians have died and been raised with Christ and
constitute a new Israel and new humanity.
•Paul gives instructions for the Christian household, husbands
and wives, parents and children, and slaves and masters.
Philemon
•A personal extraordinarily diplomatic letter occasioned
by the flight of Onesimus, a runaway slave.
•It consists of an impassioned plea on the basis of love for
Philemon to receive back his slave—now a Christian
convert--without recriminations.
Ephesians
•Written from Rome, reminiscent of Colossians, and possibly
intended to circulate, Ephesians doesn’t counter heresy but
provides instructions.
•The central idea is that God’s mysterious will has been set
forth in Christ, who will bring harmony to a chaotic universe.
•Paul asserts that because salvation is by grace through faith,
Jews and Gentiles are eligible to be members of the Christ’s
Church.
•Paul pleads for unity anchored in the oneness of faith.
•Paul provides instructions how believers are to live in a pagan
world.
•Paul also outlines how Christian households are to be set up
based on mutual love and respect between husbands and
wives, parents and children, and slaves and masters.
•Paul follows with an exhortation to put on the armor of God.
The letter to the Romans is a piece of
exuberant and passionate thinking. This
is the glorious life of the mind enlisted
in the service of God. Paul takes the wellwitnessed and devoutly believed fact of
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
and thinks through its implications.
How does it happen that in the death
and resurrection of Jesus, world history
took a new direction, and at the same
moment of life of every man, woman, and
child on the planet was eternally
affected? What is God up to? What does
it mean that Jesus “saves”? What’s behind
all this, and where is it Going? Romans
has become the premier document of
Christian theology.
Romans
•Written from Corinth around AD 55-56, Romans pleads for
unity between Jewish and Gentile converts, advocates for the
collection for the Jerusalem poor, and sets forth Paul’s mature
theology as a way of giving the Romans an introductory look at
one who wishes to gain material support for a planned trip to
Spain.
•Paul demonstrates that God’s anger at human sin applies to
Gentile sin and uniquely Jewish sin alike—belonging to one
group or the other gives no advantage.
•It is faith that apprehends righteousness.
•Using the example of Abraham, Paul argues that justification
(being made righteousness in God’s eyes) is not achieved by
works but received through faith.
•All those in Christ are liberated from the old age of sin and
death and are empowered by baptism to live lives in complete
service to God.
•Paul states that the purpose of God’s law is to mark out sin as
sin. It lacks any power to bring about redemption.
•Paul asserts that Israel’s fate is ultimately to come to faith
upon the Messiah’s return.
•The second half of Romans outlines the character of Christian
ethics, including a blueprint for life in a Christian community
giving sacrificial service and the exercise of spiritual gifts and
offices.
•Paul returns to some of the divisive issues of food and
fellowship.
I Timothy
•A personal letter to a younger minister, I Timothy
encourages Timothy to fight the good fight and warns
about false teachers.
II Timothy
•A personal letter to a younger minister, II Timothy is a
second encouragement for the young minister to be strong
and a competent workman for the Gospel.
Titus
•Paul warns Titus of the rebellious people of the
circumcision group in Crete.
•Paul sets forth that the coming of salvation means
that all believers are to live holy lives as they await
Jesus glorious appearing.