On 10th March 2010 the Truth Finders Bible study group gathered for a 3 Hour electrifying session by Dr. Dhinakaran Richard. He gave a birds eye view of the 13 epistles written by Paul. The burden of Paul for writing each letter and the contextual inferences for each epistle were explained in detail by him.
First he took us all through the 13 books explaining the main theme behind each book. Paul's style is manly, bold, heroic, aggressive, and warlike; yet at times tender, delicate, gentle, and winning. It is involved, irregular, and rugged, but always forcible and expressive and always filled with Love.
The Chronological order of the books are given here
Galatians - Paul's first letter. The Galatians easily turned towards another Gospel. So Paul wrote this epistle1 Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians - Paul writes these letters to the church to establish them in the faith and hope of the coming of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The church was so much confused about the second coming of Jesus. Paul also explains about the incidents that will happen in the last days.
1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians : The Corinthian church were gifted and they concentrated much on supernatural things and they neglected the basic foundation of Christian faith. So Paul writes the letters to remind them of the gospel.
Romans : The Jewish converts were thinking that they were superior to the Gentile converts. So Paul writes the wonderful book of Romans and explains them about Law and Grace.
The first six letters were written by Paul to establish the church in the Gospel of Christ and to teach the believers to come back to the original gospel and not to be led astray by another gospel.
The Prison Letters
Ephesians - Paul goes one step further and explains in detail on how to live a Christian life on a day to day basis
Colossians and Philemon - These two letters were written together. One was a letter to the church and the second one was a personal letter
Philippians - The key to a unified church
In all these letters, Paul reminds the recipients that he is in chains. Even when he was in prison Paul had written epistles.
Pastoral Letters
The final three letters are Pastoral letters written by Paul. He gives the principles and policies that a leader should follow in guiding the church. He writes these letters to his co workers Timothy and Titus.
The timeline of these letters is given below in this picture.
I sincerely acknowledge the influence and mentoring of Dr. Jeff Reed who teaches me to do the biblical theological work on Pauline letters, arranging them in chronological order. I email his ppt slide, which will help us understand how Paul used his letters as teaching tools to establish the churches.
ReplyDeleteIn his early letters, six of them, Paul established the churches in the gospel; In his middle letters, 4 of them, he established the churches in unity in the vision and mission of the churches; and in the later latters, he established the churches with matured and qualified leaders and strong households.
Thessalonian letters: There were four, but interlinked theological questions that (1) they misunderstood the gospel, particularly the second coming of Jesus would be imminent and the resurrection of the dead was already over, and or no resurrection at all. ( 2) So, they sold their property and depended on the church, rich benefactors for their daily food. (3). Some of them became busybodies, involved in political activism around their benefactors. 4. And they had some sort of sexual immorality.
ReplyDeletePaul sent Timothy back to Thessalonica, though he personally tried to go a couple of times, to establish (one of the key words) the church in the gospel – to walk in accordance to the pattern/tradition/teachings he had handed over to them.
Since the earliest date of the church, the second coming of Jesus Christ is one of the creamy cakes (besides, Trinity, and divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ) for the false teachers.
Let us beware if any preacher goes beyond the Scriptural, to his/her mystical interpretation, allegorical meaning and personal revelations on the Parousia (Second Coming) and Eschatology (End-Time things).