Basics of the New Testament - Lesson 5

Now that we’ve covered the foundational teachings of the Gospels, and we’ve looked at the historical spread of the church in the Book of Acts, it’s time to move into the third section of the New Testament, which is the instructional part. And these are letters. Paul wrote 13 letters, and there’s another set of letters we call the General Epistles. Epistle just means letter. They’re general because they’re not addressed to any specific church. So we’re going to move into that area right now. In case you’re wondering, the Epistles of Paul’s come first, and they’re arranged by length. So Romans is the longest, and 1 and 2 Corinthians, down to Philemon. And then the Pastorals, because they’re a unit, come at the end together, even though 1 Timothy is longer than Philemon. But anyway, it’s an ordering of length. So in this time, we’re going to look at the first four of Paul’s letters. And we’re going to start with the Book of Romans.

Now, in terms of our theology and what we believe, Romans is just hands down the most important letter that Paul wrote. So much of what we believe comes out of the Book of Romans, because what Paul is trying to do is that he’s wanting to introduce himself to the church in Rome, because he wants to plan a missionary journey, move his center of operations to Rome, so he can go west of Rome. And so they need to know what he believes. And so what we have in the Book of Romans is a very systematic laying out of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that’s one reason we use this so much for our theology.

Now, there’s a very standard way in which people arrange the outline of Romans. I’m not going to follow that standard arrangement. If you go to the class page, you can download this traditional outline. It’s a good outline. But I’ve been talking so much about Christianity being about entering into and living within a relationship with Jesus Christ. And so I want to kind of use that as an overall structure as we look at the Book of Romans. And so we’re going to start in the first four chapters, and we’re going to see what Paul says about entering into a relationship with Jesus. So he introduces himself, and then we get to what are called the theme verses. And these are incredibly important verses.

Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel.” It’s interesting to kind of stop and say, “What are all the reasons we could be ashamed?” Well, we’re totally countercultural. We butt up against culture all the time, and some people are ashamed. Paul’s not ashamed, because it is the power of God. None of these other systems of belief convey the power of God to save sinners. But the Gospel is the power of God. It brings salvation to everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, who believes. Not people who are trying to earn favor with God, but rather believe that Jesus did on the cross for us what we could not do for ourselves, provide forgiveness of sins and access to a relationship with God. And then he repeats what he means by everyone. He says, “First to the Jew, then to the Gentile, for in the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed.” How do you get right with God? Well, that’s what Paul’s Gospel is all about, being right with God. And then he adds, “A righteousness that is by faith,” (not by works; nothing you do to earn it). “It’s by believing. From first to last, just as it is written,” (then he quotes this famous verse from the Old Testament, “the righteous shall live by faith.” Not by works, but by faith.) So Paul lays out in these theme verses what he’s going to unpack at least through chapter 8 in the letter to Romans.

So we have the theme verses. And then what he does to unpack that he starts with the universal unrighteousness of all people. “Apart from Christ, no one is righteous, no not one.” So in 1:18 to 3:20, Paul is going to unpack that apart from Christ, no one is righteous. And as one author likes to say it, “People can do good things, but that doesn’t make them good people.” Because the standard of what is good is not me or you. The standard is Christ. And so compared to Christ, we all fall so abysmally short that we can see why, apart from Christ, no one is righteous, no one is right with God. So he lays the groundwork that there’s “Salvation in no other name,” as he says elsewhere.

And then starting in chapter 3, verse 21 through the end of the chapter 4, he’s going to argue the point that righteousness comes about by faith, and faith in Christ. And you get to the very heart of the Gospel in chapter 3. And in verse 21, he says, “But now apart from the Law”—and it was apart from the Old Testament, or apart from a law way of thinking, thinking if you do certain external things, you can be right with God— “the righteousness of God has been made known to which the Law,” (capital L, that means the first five books of Old Testament), “and the prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There’s no difference between Jew and Gentile.” You remember, there’s this incredible antithepe, at least on the Jews’ part, between Jews and Gentiles. And Paul’s saying, “No, no, no, there’s no difference between us and everyone else.” “For all”—famous verse— “For all Jew and Gentile alike have sinned, and as a result are falling short of God’s glory, the glory that God intended us to have. And all are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came in Christ Jesus.”

So that’s the actual heart of the Gospel, that if you want to be right with God, you cannot earn your way, you cannot do certain things, you cannot follow the Law, the Old Testament, or a law way of thinking, but rather you have to believe, as I’ve said, that Christ did for us on the cross what we could not do for ourselves. He provided forgiveness for our sins and the ability to enter into and to live in a relationship with God. And that only comes through Jesus. As we saw in the other lesson, Jesus says in the Book of John, “I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” So this is a very important essence of Paul’s Gospel. And then he goes into chapter 4, and he uses primarily Abraham as an example of what faith really is.

We now move into the next section, which is chapters 5 to 8. And most people put 5 to 8 with the previous section, but we’re shifting a bit into the idea of: how do you live in a relationship with God? And so, I want to put 5 and 8 as a separate section. And it’s very theological, though, but that’s true of Paul everywhere. His theology sections have ethical implications. His ethical teachings are based on theology. And so, we want to be careful of not separating theology and ethics too much. But anyway, we’re moving a bit into the topic of: how do you live in relationship with God once you know that you’ve been justified by your faith?

Well, he starts in chapter 5, and he says, “Since you’ve been justified by faith and not by doing certain things, then we are at peace with God.” So we have this wonderful chapter on how we live in a relationship with God because we are at peace with him because we’ve been justified by him. 

You then move into chapter 6, and chapter 6 is about the role of ongoing sin in the life of the believer. Now, Paul is not talking about a sin here or a sin there. He’s talking about people who think it’s okay to sin. “Hey, I’ve been justified by faith. I am in a relationship with God, and so I can live any way I want, and it doesn’t matter.” In fact, the line that Paul uses is, “Should we continue to sin so that God’s grace can abound? Should we keep sinning?” We’re doing God a favor by sinning because then he keeps forgiving us, and we get to show everyone how gracious he is. But it’s ongoing sin and people thinking it’s okay to live in ongoing sin—a real issue in the modern church for sure.

When Paul asks that question, “Should we continue in sin so that we can demonstrate God’s grace,” he responds with the strongest negation there is in Greek. It’s “me genoito” in Greek. Of all the different translations, I actually like the King James the best here. They say, “God forbid.” I mean, can you say “No” any more strongly in English than “God forbid?” No, it’s not okay to think it’s okay to live in sin and think at the same time you’re living in relationship with God. So again, this is not occasional sin or even repeated sin that you repent of. This is people who think it’s okay to keep sinning and it’s not a big deal. And Paul says, absolutely, absolutely not. And he uses baptism as an example. It’s one of the main passages on baptism in the Bible. And in the first century, there’s really no question that baptism was by immersion. And so when you’re put down, and by the way, in the New Testament, conversion of baptism happened basically at the same time. If you were converted, you were baptized right away, one singular event. So what Paul is saying by using baptism here is that when you go down under the water, not only is that illustrating that you’ve been cleansed, but it also illustrates that you have died to your own life. And just as you came out cleansed, so also you came out of the water to a new kind of life in which ongoing sin has no place. So it’s a very powerful passage on the role of sin in the life of a believer.

Chapter 7 then deals with freedom from the condemnation of the law. There is no condemnation because we have been forgiven by our faith through the work of Christ on the cross. 

And then chapter 8. Chapter 8 is a wonderful chapter because it’s all about the Holy Spirit and the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives and helping us. And you get to the end of chapter 8, and Paul wants to summarize in the essence of what he’s been saying, at least from 3:21 all the way through the end of chapter 8. And it makes the point that God is for us. He wants us to win, in essence. He wants us to flourish. He wants us to live in relationship with him. And Paul concludes, starting at verse 37, “In all these things” (and everything that happens in life), “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us, for I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither heighth nor depth” (he’s trying to find a way to say everything), “neither heighth nor depth, neither anything else in all Creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” So wonderful summation of that part of Romans.

We then get into chapter 9 through 11, and people view these chapters a little differently. Some people see them as somewhat parenthetical. Other people argue that it’s really the culmination of what Paul has been saying. I don’t think it’s a culmination, but I think it’s an issue that has been all the way through Romans, and that is the relationship of Jew and Gentile. Specifically, if the Jews are God’s special people, why did they reject the Messiah? It’s an interesting, not only theological, but practical question. And so in chapter 9, you have an amazing chapter on the sovereignty of God, that God is sovereign, that God is king, and that God does whatever he wants. And there’s a question that’s raised in chapter 9 about God’s fairness. And Paul’s rebuke is really strong, that we cannot question God’s justice. One of my buddies in school said, “Justice is what God does.” In other words, God doesn’t exist under some other framework of, “This is just,” and God has to behave himself, all right? How can he choose some people and not choose others? The point is, if God does it, it’s just. That’s what justice is, and we just have to accept it. So it’s a very difficult, but a very powerful chapter on the sovereignty of God, the fact that God is king.

And then in chapter 10, he’s talking about the Jewish rejection of the Messiah, and how that pushed the Gospel by God’s…it wasn’t a mistake. This was the plan all along, that when the Jews would reject the Messiah, then the Gospel could be spread to the Gentiles. And then in chapter 11, Paul goes into a discussion of the current relationship of Jew and Gentile. So 9 to 11 is kind of a, not parenthetical, but it’s a unit all in of itself.

Starting into chapter 12, we’re full-blown into ethics, of how should we live in light of what we believe to be true. And in Romans, chapter 12, the first two verses are very famous. Paul says, “Therefore,” (again, in light of everything that he’s been teaching), “I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.” Okay, what does that mean practically? It means “do not conform to the patterns of this world.” One translation has, “don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold.” Great translation. “But be transformed. Don’t conform, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.” One of the primary passages on sanctification in all of the Bible.

So he goes on and he talks about the church. He talks about government and how we relate to the government. And he talks about strong and weak Christians. And what he means is a strong Christian understands that they are free from some external rules, because they’re justified by faith, not by works. And there are other people that are…Paul calls them weak. It’s interesting terminology. But these are people that are still burdened down by some of their old traditions, like eating meat offered to idols. It was an act of pagan worship. But since a strong Christian knows that there are no pagan gods, he can eat the meat. A weak person still is bothered by the fact that the meat’s offered to pagan deities and doesn’t want to eat. And there’s other examples like that. So there’s a discussion of weak and strong. Anyway, that’s the book of Romans very, very quickly.

We used to, when I was teaching this in university, I remember the first time I ever taught Romans in a full semester, I got all the way to chapter three. Next year, I got all the way to chapter four. There’s just so much stuff in Romans. I eventually did get to chapter eight. I think that’s as far as I ever got in Romans. I should have paced myself better. But there’s a lot of stuff in Romans. All right. Real briefly, let’s look at three other letters of Paul’s.

The next one is Galatians. So this is a letter that Paul wrote to the church in the area of Galatia, somewhat modern Turkey. We meet characters that we call them Judaizers. And Judaizers were teaching that you had to be a Jew in order to be a Christian. Dating the Book of Galatians is hard, but since in Acts 15, the church fathers made a, the church leaders, made a definite decision that you don’t have to be a Jew. You don’t have to be circumcised and that kind of stuff to be a Christian. I suspect that the Book of Galatians was written after the story of Cornelius, but before the Jerusalem Council in Acts, chapter 15. But basically what Paul does, first of all, he has to defend his apostolic calling because the Judaizers were saying that Paul was just wrong. And then he gets into this discussion that salvation is by faith, not by works. Okay. It is by God’s grace, by God’s mercy. It’s appropriated through faith, not by what we do. And then there’s a practical admonitions. And again, this very, very famous passage in Galatians talks about the fruits of the Spirit. In other words, the fruits are the visible manifestation of the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. And Paul says the fruits of the Spirit, what our lives should show the people that follow Romans 12:1-2, they should show love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. So a famous passage about the fruits of the Spirit.

1 Corinthians, Paul wrote two letters to the Corinthians church. He actually wrote four, but the first and the third we don’t have. So what we call first and second are really second and fourth. But anyway, two basic letters we have to the Corinthian church. If you think your church is dysfunctional, you need to read 1 Corinthians. This is one messed up church. Okay. And so there’s all kinds of situations that Paul is having to deal with. But basically there was a significant lack of sanctification. The Corinthian Christians as a whole hadn’t grown up, and they were still, there was divisions in the church. There was gross immorality, someone living sexually with his stepmother and the church thought it was okay. Just all kinds of immorality going on in the church. So he has to deal with that. There’s a lot of instructions about marriage and divorce. There’s instructions about worship, and there’s instructions about spiritual gifts, specifically speaking in tongues. You remember back in Acts when the Spirit came upon the disciples, they started speaking in languages they hadn’t learned, and that had become a real issue in the Corinthian church. And so you have a lot of instructions on what to deal with tongues.

Second, very quickly. Okay. And 2 Corinthians is—there’s two things in them that you don’t really get elsewhere in the Bible. One is the “intermediate state.” What happens when you die? Now we are an entity. We are not two, three, four parts. We are one. We are body and soul. And together that makes a whole person. That’s biblical theology. At death, they are temporarily separated. And so when you die, what happens? And you have the doctrine of the “intermediate state.” We don’t get our glorified resurrection bodies until final judgment. And so we live for a period of time as spirits, as disembodied spirits. And Paul makes the point, “I really don’t like that idea.” And frankly, I don’t either. But you know, Jesus didn’t check with me before he made his decisions. So at death, our soul and our bodies are separated. Body goes in the ground. The spirit goes into the presence of the Lord immediately. And at the final judgment, we get our glorified bodies and we’re whole again. So Paul talks about that.

And then Paul also talks about giving quite a bit. Now, this is somewhat controversial, what I’m going to say is, but there’s no concept of tithing in the New Testament. People will disagree with that, but it’s not there. If you read the verses in the Old Testament about tithing, it’s all tied into the gift of the land. God has given them the land and they owe a tithe on the land. The policy for giving in the New Testament is to give in accordance with your means, to give cheerfully, joyfully, but to give proportionally to what you have. So rich people are supposed to give more, poor people are to give but are to give less. But anyway, that’s in 2 Corinthians as well. So that’s the first four of Paul’s letters that we’re going to look at.