Week Twenty-three
Why?
It’s been almost six months that our small group has been meeting. We had never been together in this way before and so it has taken time to get to know one another, build relationships, and to trust each other with our questions and the reality that faith is not always easy. We have come a long way in six months!
Last night questions about who Paul was arose. Why do people put so much emphasis on him and what he wrote? Shouldn’t we just care about what Jesus said and did? Basically, the question was ‘why do all these letters after the gospels and Acts matter?’
If Paul were alive today, I think he would be appalled at the attention he gets. He always pointed to Jesus. He lived and died to make sure that everyone he ever came into contact with knew about Jesus. Although he suffered more than we can imagine, his biggest concern was not his suffering. It was whether or not God would be glorified and Jesus known somehow, even if he suffered. The fate worse than death was living a life that would not profess Jesus in everything. Re-read Philippians 3:7-14 to get a sense for how he felt about his own life.
What he, and the other apostles wrote is critical to how we follow God as believers in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension, and giving of the Holy Spirit. It was necessary for these apostles to instruct Jesus believing Jews as well as the Gentiles in what Jesus’ life and death means to us as people. If we did not have the instructions from Romans through Revelation, we would either be living as Jews who don’t believe Jesus died, was resurrected, and ascended to heaven or we would be living like those who believe in other gods. Either way, we would be captive to endless sacrificial systems that demand distortions to our bodies, our minds, and our relationships. We would bow down to created things instead of to the Creator of all things. We would constantly be attempting to be good enough for today’s portion and provision instead of relying on the God who has endless abundance and resources for us. Who knows how we would behave when life does not go our way?
Perhaps we get more than a glimpse of that answer when we see those around us who do not yet know Jesus. We understand all to well when our lives collide with theirs and sin invades between the two - when evil rises up and steals dignity leaving injustice behind to rot lives, families, communities, and even nations. But is that really only those who do not yet believe that make such marks on humanity? Are not-yet-believers the only ones who live that way? Perhaps we too quickly and easily separate into categories of us and them without thinking of our own frailties and propensity to sin.
We need these letters in the New Testament (Testament means covenant) to guide us in how to live as people in a new covenant; to guide us in a completely different way of living than anyone else. A covenant that relies on the most generous gift of love that anyone could ever imagine. We need these letters so we have a model of what it means to be in communities of people who live in Christ together, not to harm one another, but to do good for each other’s sake. We need these letters to see what life in the one and only resurrected God truly means. It changes everything! And everything is a lot to change! We need these letters. They are “God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).
You can write a comment below, or reach me, Melissa, at mrightmire@crnaz.com . Thank you for traveling with me on this journey through the New Testament.
Below are the readings for week 23:
June 5, 2025 Philem NIV, Ps 119:145–160 NIV
June 6, 2025 Heb 1–3 NIV, Ps 119:161–176 NIV
June 7, 2025 Heb 4:1–7:10 NIV, Ps 120–121 NIV
June 8, 2025 Heb 7:11–8:13 NIV, Ps 122 NIV
June 9, 2025 Heb 9:1–10:18 NIV, Ps 123–124 NIV
June 10, 2025 Heb 10:19–39 NIV, Ps 125–126 NIV
June 11, 2025 Heb 11:1–12:3 NIV, Ps 127–128 NIV
