Letters - by Jeremy Duke
Have you ever thought about how Christians base so much of their conduct on a bunch of small letters written by only a handful of people? How many sermons have you heard based on text from the New Testament letters? How many have you heard based on the rest of the bible?
Certainly my upbringing in the Christian faith has been mainly based in understanding the New Testament: the gospels and the letters. Out of the 27 books in the New Testament, 13 are the letters. They are a small percentage of our bible, but are given much weight.
There is certainly value in the letters: it teaches us of how the apostles took the central message of Jesus and thought through how that should affect our lives. But why did God choose this as the way his word would be written? Can’t we just have a textbook that will tell us how to apply God’s word in our time and situation? Why would God only give us one side of the conversation - we don’t have any letters from churches back to the apostles to help us understand the context!
It is important to see the New Testament letters for what they are: one side of a conversation, based on the context of the Hebrew bible and the gospel accounts, written to a particular cultural and historical context to help followers of Jesus live their lives with Jesus as their king. The letters are valuable guides to see how others worked this out, but we still have to work this out in our own lives. This requires an understanding of the whole bible, Wisdom from God, understanding context, personal meditation and many conversations with fellow Christians :-)
Check out these bible project videos to learn more