Centuries ago the most common way of communication were letters and word of mouth. Today letters are still very important. We write them differently in a machine that we call a computer. They are now called Emails. Amazing how popular emails are.
The Apostle Paul was one of the founders of Christianity, yet he never met Jesus. When he discovered the Christian beliefs he thought them to be lies and a threat to Jewish teachings and beliefs. Paul, prior to his convertion was an eager persecutor of the early Christians, hunting them down and imprisoning them.
In Jerusalem the Christian communities had to be very careful not to offend the Jewish authorities. Sharing meals with Gentile Christians was very dangerous for the old Jewish laws forbid it.
Paul had an encounter of the Jesus kind that converted him into Christianity. Paul once applauded by the Jewish Jerusalem authorities for persecuting the Christians now was regarded by them as renegade. The Apostle Paul was arrested, put in prison, whipped with the Jewish lash of 39 times in five different occasions, beaten numerous times, stoned and many other calamities followed him because of his convertion to Christianity.
The Apostle Paul was legally a Roman citizen, and had legal rights that other Jewish-born Christians did not have. After arriving in Rome in the year 60AD he was imprisoned at Caesarea for two years. He was kept under house arrest for those two years waiting trial. He appealed to the emperor. During his waiting for trial time he wrote letters to the Christian communities.
In the New Testament the order of these letters is based not on their date but on their length. His letters are not dated and evidence of the time they were written is not always present. If you read the Bible, "New Testament", you will find that the shortest letter Paul wrote was Philemon. These are letters that the church had and chose to include in its new scripture. He may have written other letters of course but these are the ones in the Bible.
The names of these letters are: Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Romans, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon,
The apostle Paul wrote these letters to the Gentiles. He was defending four teachings against the leadership of the Jewish Christian church in Jerusalem. First, he asserts that the old Jewish law is not necessary for salvation. He knew that the pursuit of perfection by use of those laws was doomed to failure. He preached that salvation can only be obtained by the grace of God and only through faith. Second, Paul insisted that the most important spiritual gifts were teaching, preaching and love. Those are the ones that build up the church.
According to Paul, the law of love, is the will of God, which we know is Jesus Christ.
Third, salvation is in Jesus Christ alone. Gods fullness dwells in the Son and that he is the Lord. All authority has been given to the Son by the Father. Gods Spirit, is united with God in Jesus Christ. Paul teaches that there is only one Lord, one true faith, one baptism, and one church.
Fourth, the gospel promise that believers in Christ will be resurrected from the dead with new, spiritual bodies, to live in the kingdom of God under the eternal rule of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the day of the Lord the kingdom will come for it has not come yet but is coming soon. Paul
warns those who hope to be saved must stay alert in faith. His message of salvation in short is
about Jesus, love, faith, and the resurrection from the dead and it appears over again in the gospel accounts of the New Testament.
The gospels are written for Gentile as well as Jewish Christians, and it reinforces the Apostle Paul preachings. The only way to salvation is through faith in the blood sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ which abolish the old laws. Jesus was and is the sacrifical Lamb. The old laws were there to be use during the period that Jesus was yet born into the world. Once he came and provided his life and blood as payment for our many sins with his death the old laws honoring the blood of lambs, and sacrificial animals as payment for sins became absolete or useless, without power. The Apostle Paul is the champion of Christianity, without him our faith would have been just a flicker and not a flame tha thas spread all over the world. Some quotations found in the Bible are: 'There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.' (Galatians 3:28)
'Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.' Romans 5:1
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