How should we read New Testament epistles?

Question 1178

A large part of the New Testament is made up of letters. Paul wrote thirteen of them, and there are further letters from James, Peter, John, Jude and the writer to the Hebrews. These epistles contain some of the richest teaching in all of Scripture, the great expositions of grace, the calls to holy living, the comfort for the suffering and the warnings against error. Yet because they are letters written to particular churches and people in particular situations, they call for a way of reading that takes that nature seriously if we are to hear them rightly.

The word epistle simply means letter, and that is the first thing to hold in mind. These are real letters, sent by real authors to real readers, dealing with real questions and troubles in the churches of the first century. They are at the same time the inspired Word of God, written under the guidance of the Spirit and carrying his authority for every age. Reading them well means honouring both of these truths, the letter to its first readers and the abiding Word to us.

Read Them as Real Letters

Because the epistles are letters, they were written to address particular situations, and we understand them far better when we ask what those situations were. Paul wrote to the Corinthians because their church was torn by divisions, confused about spiritual gifts and tolerating sin in its midst. He wrote to the Galatians because false teachers were turning them away from the gospel of grace to a religion of law. When we know the occasion of a letter, its words come alive, and we see why the writer says what he says.

This is sometimes called listening in on one side of a conversation. We are reading mail written to someone else, and there are moments when the readers knew things we have to work out. When Paul answers a question the Corinthians had asked him, we must reconstruct the question from his answer. A good study Bible or a sound commentary helps here, filling in the background of the city, the church and the circumstances, so that we hear the letter as its first readers would have heard it rather than reading our own situation back into it.

Knowing the occasion also keeps us from misjudging the tone of a letter. Paul writes to the Philippians with warmth and joy because they were dear to him and faithful, while he writes to the Galatians with alarm and even sharpness because the gospel itself was under threat among them. The letter to Philemon is gentle and personal, a private appeal about a runaway servant, while the letter to the Hebrews is a sustained and weighty argument urging wavering believers not to fall back. When we feel the pastoral heart behind each letter, its words land on us as living speech from a shepherd to his flock rather than as a set of timeless propositions cut loose from any setting.

Follow the Flow of the Argument

The epistles are not collections of scattered sayings but carefully reasoned letters that build an argument from start to finish. This means the worst way to read them is to pick out single verses on their own, cut off from what comes before and after. A verse means what it means in its place in the writer’s argument, and tearing it out can give it a sense the author never intended. The famous words about being able to do all things through him who strengthens me are not a promise of unlimited success but Paul’s testimony that he had learned contentment in plenty and in want, and the surrounding verses make that plain.

The remedy is to read whole letters, or at least whole sections, and to trace how the thought develops. Paul’s letter to the Romans, for example, moves in a great sweep from the guilt of all people before God, to justification by faith, to the new life in the Spirit, to the place of Israel, and then to the practical living that flows from it all. When we follow that flow we understand each part in the light of the whole, and we are kept from the errors that come from reading verses in isolation. The little word therefore, which Paul uses so often, is a reminder always to ask what it is there for.

Tell the Timeless From the Time-Bound

One of the questions that arises in reading the epistles is how to tell which instructions apply directly to us and which belonged to the particular circumstances of the first readers. The great doctrines of the faith and the central commands of Christian living are plainly for all believers in every age. The truth that we are saved by grace through faith, the call to love one another, the command to flee sexual immorality and to walk by the Spirit, these are unchanging and bind us as surely as they bound the first readers.

Other matters were tied to the customs and conditions of that time. When Paul tells Timothy to bring his cloak and the books, or asks a household question shaped by the social setting of the first century, we recognise that the lasting principle may need to be carried into our own setting with care. The way to do this is to ask what underlying truth the instruction expresses, and then to apply that truth faithfully in our own circumstances. This calls for humility and for reading Scripture alongside Scripture, letting the clear and repeated teaching of the whole guide us in the harder cases.

Receive Them as the Word of God to You

For all that the epistles were written to others long ago, they were preserved and gathered for the whole church, and they come to us with the full authority of God. Paul himself says that the things he writes are the commands of the Lord, and Peter speaks of Paul’s letters as Scripture. So while we read them first as letters to the Romans or the Ephesians, we read them finally as letters to us, addressed by the same Spirit to the same kind of need. The grace that was preached to the Galatians is the grace we live by, and the holiness urged on the Thessalonians is the holiness to which we are called.

This is the warmth of reading the epistles. They are not dry documents from a distant age but living words from a loving God who knew that his people in every century would face the same temptations, doubts and struggles. When you read of the comfort of God in the opening of Second Corinthians, or the assurance that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ at the close of Romans eight, these were written for you, to steady and to gladden your heart as surely as they did the hearts that first received them.

So, now what?

Make it your practice to read the epistles as whole letters and not as a quarry for isolated verses. Take time to learn the situation each letter addresses, follow the argument from beginning to end, and ask what abiding truth lies in each instruction. This will protect you from many errors and will let the full force of the teaching reach you as it was meant to.

Then receive these letters as God’s own word to your life today. The doctrines they unfold are the foundation of your faith, and the commands they give are the path of obedience for your walk. Read them prayerfully, asking the Spirit who inspired them to apply them to your heart, and you will find that letters written to ancient churches speak directly to your own hopes, fears and duties, calling you on to know Jesus better and to live as one who belongs to him.

“If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 14:37