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The wonder of the letters

After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter to Laodicea.

You can’t escape noticing that the letters of the New Testament are real letters to real people in real places.  The greetings and the place names all point to this.  Even in those letters which seem more general (such as Hebrews and 1 John), it seems likely that the writers have specific people and situations in mind.

This gives us some challenges.  For one thing, it means that when we read the letters we need to try to figure out exactly what situations were being addressed.  As one writer put it, this is like listening to a friend in the room who’s on the phone to someone else, and trying to deduce from the conversation what the other person is saying.  That’s why it’s a good practice, when reading a letter, to try to read right through it to spot the clues. 

A further challenge is that we are in different situations, two thousand years later.  How does what was said to those people all those years ago relate to us?  Isn’t it just time-bound, relevant to them in the Roman Empire but of limited value now?  The answer, of course, is that the Apostles address local situations with eternal, divine truths.  

This is something we do all the time.  For instance, you might be on Brighton Beach on 21 June, when the sun is at its highest.  A particular place, a particular time.  Yet a wise friend might say, “Stick some sun cream on, or you will burn”.  A universal principle for a particular place.  The letters work like this.  That is why they are in our Bibles.

It’s actually wonderful that God’s Word has come to us this way, even though it requires a bit more work on our part.  God could have given us His plans for the local church in a universal list of teachings and do’s and don’ts.  But instead He has given us real letters.

So it is that when Paul writes to the Christians in Colossae he’s writing to people being unsettled by new teaching.  When he writes to the Philippians he’s addressing a church with strained relationships, discouragement, anxiety and external hostility.   When he writes to Corinth, he’s addressing a church with more problems than we have time to list!  Several of Paul’s letters are written not from an office but from prison.

Many pastors have found balm for their souls in Paul’s second letter to Timothy, not just because it reminds them of their job, but because God’s instructions are given in the context of struggle and difficulty.

I find the fact that God’s Word is in letters so encouraging – for it shows that God meets us in the mess of real life.  How easy it is to slip into thinking that the Christian life is only for the other person, who has their life sorted!

The letters are the antidote.  They show us that living for Jesus in the muck of life is actually possible.