“When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. … You received from us how you ought to walk and to please God. … For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 2:13; 4:1, 2).
The earliest collection of New Testament documents was the 13 Epistles, or Letters, of the apostle Paul. The early Christians immediately regarded these letters as God’s Word, like the writings of the prophets (2 Peter 3:15–16).
The apostle Paul grew up as Saul of Tarsus in Cilicia (Acts 9:11). His father was a Diaspora Jew and a freedman in Roman society (16:37–38; 22:25–29). Paul was apprenticed as a tentmaker (18:3) but also studied the Scriptures as a Pharisee at Jerusalem under Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder (22:3). Gamaliel was the grandson of Rabbi Hillel, who was known for his progressive attitudes toward proselytes and for founding a key school of Jewish thought, Beth Hillel.
Paul zealously defended his Jewish faith by arresting Christians and supporting their execution, since he regarded them as false teachers (7:58; 8:1–3; 26:9–11). In AD 36, Jesus confronted Paul while he traveled to Damascus to arrest Christians there (9:1–9). Jesus turned Paul’s heart. Paul was baptized and immediately began to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah (9:10–22). Retreating from persecution, Paul spent some years east of Damascus in the Arabian Desert before returning to Damascus and to Antioch as a teacher (11:25–26; Galatians 1:17–18). In AD 47, the Holy Spirit directed the congregation at Antioch to send Paul out as a missionary (Acts 13:1–3), a calling he fulfilled until AD 68, when the Roman emperor Nero ordered Paul’s execution. Paul’s letters were written during his missionary journeys and while he was in prison for proclaiming Christ. He typically had the help of a scribe (see TLSB notes, Romans 16:22; Galatians 6:11); friends hand-delivered the letters (see TLSB note, Titus 3:13).
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Paul’s aim in writing is delicately but clearly stated in the letter itself. His letter was to prepare for his visit to Rome, but Rome was not the ultimate goal of his travels. It could not be, for Paul had made it his ambition as apostle to the Gentiles “to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named,” lest he build on another man’s foundation (Romans 15:20). The apostle’s task was to lay foundations, not to build on foundations already laid by others (1 Corinthians 3:10). …
Paul planned to spend some time in Rome and to proclaim the Gospel there, to enrich and to be enriched by his association with the Roman Christians (Romans 1:11–13). But he was looking beyond Rome to Spain (15:24, 28); Paul hoped to be sped on his way there by the Romans (15:24). … Paul evidently hoped that Rome would become his missionary base in the West, what Syrian Antioch had been for him in the East. The Letter to the Romans, the most elaborate and most systematic exposition of the Gospel as Paul proclaimed it, is written in the interests of Paul’s missionary work, testifying to the harmony between theology and practice in the great apostle’s mind.
In 1 Corinthians Paul writes to a congregation he established during his second missionary journey while visiting and teaching at the local synagogue (Acts 18:1–11). Paul devoted a year and a half to planting the congregation at this key city before returning to the congregation at Antioch that sent him out on mission trips. It was several years later—after Paul’s third missionary journey—that he learned about serious divisions in the Corinthian congregation, which prompted his letters to them. …
Paul had in an earlier letter prepared the Corinthian Church for Timothy’s coming visit. That visit was designed by Paul to reinforce and to carry further the work that his letter was designed to do, namely, to bring the Corinthians back from their flight out of Christian reality and into an intoxicated and enthusiastic individualism, back to the cross, back to where Paul stood. … Paul anticipated that Timothy’s task would not be a pleasant one and that his reception would be less than amiable (16:10, 11). Timothy’s stay was brief, and since Corinthians doesn’t mention it, we know nothing of its results except what we can infer from the events that followed.
The surpassing value of 2 Corinthians is the opportunity it gives us to view the great care—through both Law and Gospel—that Paul and his colleagues provided to a wayward congregation. We read about the sharpness of his rebuke by which he prodded the congregation toward repentance and the soothing comfort he poured out to them as they welcomed the Lord’s Word. …
The Second Letter to the Corinthians is certainly one of the most difficult of Paul’s letters—which is not to say that it was difficult or obscure for its first readers; they lived in the situation that we must laboriously reconstruct. Since the hints given by the letter itself are not always full enough to permit a complete and accurate reconstruction of the situation, the letter is for us difficult, an angel to be wrestled with if we would receive a blessing. But the blessing is a rich one and worth the wrestling.
After the conquests of Alexander the Great, Celts came raiding out of central Europe (c 287 BC) and settled in the region. These Celts or Galatians (“people of Gaul”) sided with the Romans against the Hellenists so that the great basin became the Roman province of Galatia in 25 BC. When the apostle Paul and Barnabus entered the great basin in c AD 47, they found Jewish synagogues in Greek speaking cities in a region named for Celts but ruled by the Romans. Is it any wonder that the inhabitants of the region found aspects of Paul’s message confusing as the book of Acts and the letter to the Galatians describe? …
Paul probably heard of the activity of the Judaizers and of their incipient success while he was still at Antioch on the Orontes. Since he could not go to Galatia in person, as he might have wished (Galatians 4:20), to meet the attack and to combat the danger, he met it by writing the Letter to the Galatians, which may be dated AD 51–53.
The mountain chains of western Asia Minor reach for the Aegean Sea. Where the Ayden range points finger-like toward the island of Samos and the Cayster River flows into the Sea, Ionian Greek colonists founded the prosperous port city of Ephesus (near modern Selcuk).
In Roman times, the city continued to flourish and was regarded as the greatest commercial harbor along the coast facing Greece. No one can be sure when Jewish merchants first reached the city, but they established a prosperous community and a synagogue.
Paul prepared the way for his ministry in Ephesus by his visit there when returning from Corinth to Israel at the close of the second missionary journey (Acts 18:19–21). The men of the Ephesian synagogue were so much moved by his words that they asked him to stay on. He promised to return to Ephesus and left Aquila and Priscilla there. As this couple’s contact with Apollos shows (18:24–26), they did not remain silent concerning the faith that was in them. The learned and eloquent Apollos became a full-fledged witness to the Christ through them (18:26–28) and thus further prepared the way for Paul. …
In the first century AD, the Captivity Letters tell of a visitor who traveled from Paul’s churches in the East to see Paul in Rome. His name was Epaphroditus, who came from Philippi in Macedonia, the first church Paul founded in Europe (Acts 16:6–40). Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke had arrived in Philippi early in the second missionary journey (AD 49–51). Philippi was a Roman “colony,” that is, a settlement of Roman soldiers, enjoying Roman citizenship. …
The coming of Epaphroditus was a link in the golden chain of Philippi’s gracious generosity. Still suffering persecution (Philippians 1:29; 4:19), the men and women of Philippi had nevertheless gathered a gift for Paul, probably under the direction of their “overseers and deacons,” whom Paul singles out in the salutation of his Letter to the Philippians (and only in this letter, 1:1). They had sent the gift to Paul by the hand of one of their number, Epaphroditus, and had instructed him to remain in Rome with Paul as a minister to his need (2:25). Epaphroditus had delivered the gift and had performed his task of ministry with such self-forgetting devotion that “he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life” to complete the service of the Philippian Christians to their apostle (2:30). In this letter, Paul writes to thank the Philippians as well as advise them on some matters. …
In the first century AD, Colossae was the chief city of the Lycos Valley, famous for its purple-dyed wool. Paul passed near this region on his missionary trips, but we are never told whether he visited the Lycos Valley or Colossae in particular. Nevertheless, the Early Church has left us his Letter to the Colossians, which shares many characteristics with his Letter to the Ephesians. …
The Church at Colossae was threatened by a new teaching that was in many ways strikingly similar to the Gospel that Epaphras had preached there. Both the new teaching and the Gospel originally preached in Colossae proclaimed a non-national, universal religion. Both recognized the great gulf that exists between God and natural man. And both proffered a redemption that would bridge that gulf. But the new teaching was in the last analysis an utter distortion of the Gospel that Epaphras had proclaimed. Epaphras sensed the difference, but could not, perhaps, analyze and define it well enough to be able to oppose it vigorously and effectively. He therefore appealed to Paul, wise in the ways of Greek and Jew alike, keen in insight, and ready to do battle for the truth.
The Letters to the Thessalonians are part of that history of the growth of the Word of the Lord which we commonly designate as Paul’s second missionary journey (AD 49–51). … The heart of the second missionary journey was the apostle’s 18-month ministry in the great commercial center of Corinth. …
While Paul was working at Corinth, the Church at Thessalonica remained in his thoughts and his prayers. … Would they stand fast under the persecution which had come upon them? Would they misunderstand his departure and his continued absence from them? … Paul’s anxieties and fears were well founded. … When he could no longer endure the suspense, he sacrificed the aid and companionship of Timothy … and sent him to Thessalonica, both to strengthen the faith of the church and to learn firsthand how they fared (3:1–5). …
When Timothy returned from Thessalonica to Paul at Corinth with the good news of the Thessalonians’ faith and love and fidelity to Paul (3:6), it meant for Paul the release from a long and agonizing tension. He threw himself with new vigor into his work at Corinth (Acts 18:5), and he wrote the letter which we call First Thessalonians. This letter is Paul’s response to Timothy’s report, a long thanksgiving for the good news that Timothy had brought.
According to reports that reached Paul at Corinth, … the Christians of Thessalonica were still standing firm under persecution (2 Thessalonians 1:4). But false notions “concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to Him” (2:1) had gained currency in the Church. … The resultant excited, almost hysterical, expectation (2:2) had led some to abandon their regular occupation and to lead an idle and disorderly life in dependence upon the charity of the church (3:6–12). …
Paul’s second letter is his answer to the congregation’s concerns about the return of Christ. It therefore sounds two notes. For those who indulge in overheated fantasies about the end times, there are sobering words that point to the events that must necessarily precede the coming of the Christ in glory (2 Thessalonians 2:1–12). For the despondent and the fearful there is an eloquent and reassuring recognition of the new life that God has worked in them and a comforting emphasis on the certainty of their election by God (1:3–12; 2:13–15). Paul turns the church from both excitement and despondency to that sober and responsible activity which is the hallmark of the genuinely Christian hope. … The hoping church must work for its living in sober industriousness and work for its own health as the Church of God.
Paul, on his way to Macedonia, has left Timothy at Ephesus with instructions to “charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3). Paul does not describe this “different doctrine” systematically, but from his attacks upon it in 1:3–7; 4:1–3, 7; 6:3–5, 20–21 and from the tenor of his instructions for the regulation of the life of the Church, it is clear that Timothy must do battle with a deeply troubling heresy. …
Timothy’s task will be to let the fresh and wholesome winds of “sound doctrine” into the house of God, whose air has been infected by morbid and infectious mists. In opposition to the demonic denial of God the Creator and the rejection of His good gifts, he must present the glorious Gospel of the blessed God “who gives life to all things” (6:13). God still has upon His every creation the mark of His primeval “very good!” (Genesis 1:31), and the creation is even in its fallen state “made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:5). …
In opposition to the rarefied and unreal Christ of speculation, Paul must present “the man Christ Jesus” (2:5), the Christ Jesus who really entered into history under Pontius Pilate (6:13) and died a real death upon the cross for the sins of all people (2:6). He must present this Christ as the whole content of the truth that the Church upholds and guards, the mystery of God “manifested in the flesh” (3:16).
Paul could have little hope of ultimate acquittal from his detractors; he was at the end of his course. And he was virtually alone; only Luke was with him. He longed to see “his beloved child” Timothy once more and bade him come to Rome before the winter made travel by sea impossible (1:4; 4:9, 21). He had to reckon with the possibility that Timothy might not reach Rome in time; and so he put in writing all that he hoped to tell Timothy in person if and when he arrived. …
The letter is … Paul’s “last will and testament,” in which he bids Timothy preserve the apostolic Gospel pure and unchanged, guard it against the increasingly vicious attacks of false teachers, train men to transmit it faithfully, and be ready to take his own share of suffering in the propagation and defense of it. The most personal of the Pastoral Letters is therefore in a sense “official,” too, for Paul cannot separate his person from his office. The man who has been “set apart for the Gospel of God” (Romans 1:1) remains one with that Gospel in life and in death.
The Letter to Titus is quite similar to 1 Timothy in its occasion, purpose, and content. Paul had worked for a while as a missionary on the island of Crete together with Titus, the prudent, able, and tactful Gentile companion who had rendered him such valuable services at the time when the relationship between the Corinthian Church and Paul had been strained to the breaking point (2 Corinthians 2:13; 7:6; 8:6; 12:18). At his departure from Crete, Paul left Titus in charge of consolidating and organizing the newly created Christian communities. …
Paul wrote to Titus to encourage him in this difficult assignment, to aid him in combating the threatening heresy, to advise him in his task of organizing and edifying the churches, and, not least, to give Titus’s presence and work in Crete the sanction and support of his own apostolic authority. This last intention of the letter is evident in the salutation, which dwells on Paul’s apostolate (1:1–3), and in the closing greeting, “Grace be with you all” (3:15, emphasis added), which shows that the letter addressed to Titus is intended for the ear of the churches also.
Epaphras was not Paul’s only visitor from Colossae; there was another visitor of quite another kind, a slave named Onesimus (ironically misnamed, as it turned out; Onesimus means “useful”). Onesimus had run away from his master Philemon, lining his pockets for the journey with his master’s goods, as was the usual practice of runaway slaves (Philemon 18). Somehow he reached Rome, and somehow he came into contact with Paul. Paul converted him and grew very fond of the young slave who now earned the name “useful” in his ready service to Paul (v 11). He would gladly have kept Onesimus with him, and since the master, Philemon, was also a convert of his, he might have made bold to do so. But Paul honored all legitimate ties, including the tie which bound a slave to his master, as hallowed in Christ (Colossians 3:22; Ephesians 6:5). He therefore sent Onesimus back to Colossae with Tychicus, the bearer of his Letter to the Colossians (Colossians 4:7–9), and wrote a letter to Onesimus’s master in which he anticipated for the runaway a kindly and forgiving reception.
Blog post excerpted from Lutheran Bible Companion, Volume 2: Intertestamental Era, New Testament, and Bible Dictionary copyright © 2014 Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved.