You’ve Been Reading Paul’s Letters WRONG Your Entire Life

[0:00] I used to read Paul's letters like a Christian fortune cookie machine. Open to a random page, find an inspiring verse, apply it to my life, and done. But then I discovered something that completely shattered the way that I was reading the Bible for the better. Turns out that Paul's letters aren't just an inspiring grabag collection of verses. After all, they're actually real correspondents, someone's personal letters that we're basically reading over their shoulder. And since that's not how most of us think of them, then it turns out we've mostly been reading the letters completely backwards from how we're supposed to understand them. Imagine if someone took your text messages to your spouse about a specific fight that you had, removed all the context, and then tried to create life principles based on isolated sentences. That's exactly what we've been doing to Paul and Peter and James and John and the other letter authors of the New

[0:48] Testament. But since we're starting off this new series in Ephesians, I'm going to stick to Paul for the most of this video. And frankly, there's a good reason why his letters make up twothirds of our New Testament. And it's really, really important for us to know that Paul wrote these letters to specific communities facing specific crises. And if we don't know what those crises were, we're going to completely misconceive what Paul was trying to say. It's like listening to one side of a phone conversation and trying to figure out what the other person said without having any real clue as to what pieces might be fitting together here. So, before we dive into Ephesians together, I need to teach you what Paul's letters actually are, the four layers of context that most of us have been missing, and how to read them the way that Paul probably intended for them to be read. Because once you see this, if I'm

[1:35] successful, you will never see the New Testament the same way again. So, let's lay down something of a foundation. What are Paul's letters actually? Because if we get this wrong, it turns out that everything else also sort of falls apart. First, they are real correspondences to specific communities. Now, Ephesians is an interesting exception, but we'll get into that later. Paul's letters are actual correspondents sent to real people facing real problems. When Paul writes to the Galatians, he's writing to specific church communities in modern-day Turkey who are being told that they need to be circumcised to be part of God's family, and he's writing to address that issue. When he writes to the Corinthians, he's responding to reports about a man sleeping with his stepmother and fights over whose favorite preacher is better. These letters weren't written just to be some timeless theological treatise or to form together some kind of like a systematic

[2:23] theological textbook. They were written to solve immediate pastoral crises. Paul is functioning like a pastoral guide responding to urgent phone calls from his churches. Pastor Paul, we have a problem. What do we do? This one thing, if we understand it, will help us to get past all of the ways in which we misapply Paul's letters. At least it'll do most of the work for us. But there's more. Another thing for you to know is that they were actually collaborative efforts. It might shock you to learn that Paul rarely wrote alone. Actually, in fact, if you were to accompany me to the first chapter of First Thessalonians and look right there at the beginning, plain as day in inspired scripture, it says Paul, Sylvanas, and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace. This is a polite greeting from co-authors, active collaborators in crafting a piece of content of some kind. And you can see

[3:12] this kind of reverberating throughout the letter where you get we give thanks to God always for all of you constantly mentioning you in our prayers. You know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake and you became imitators of us. And candidly it just keeps going but you get the idea. Paul would work directly with his missionary team to discuss and outline the letter's content. They would draw from what scholars call preformed material. sermons Paul had preached, arguments that he'd been developing, notes he'd compiled on little wax tablets and parchments over months of ministry. Then a professional scribe, whose handwriting was extremely small, which was very valuable because all of the writing materials were extremely expensive, would prepare multiple drafts, incorporating corrections and additions from Paul and his team over weeks or even months. And in fact, even the scribe could add personal touches.

[3:59] There's a really famous example actually in Romans chapter 16 if we scroll down a bit to verse 22. I Terteus who wrote this letter greet you in the Lord. So Paul didn't write this. I mean it's his content he came up with it but Terteus is the one who actually sat down to write the letter by his hands. Bottom line simple thing for you to know is that these letters were team efforts rather than just solitary compositions. And then another thing for you to know about this particular kind of mail. It was extremely expensive and carefully crafted and we're supposed to view them not as oneoff sat down and scribbled something off and fired it off. These are also highly crafted, very complicated literary works. The average ancient letter in the first century and around that time was about 87 words long and they were usually only fired off

[4:46] when there was missionritical information that needed to be passed from one person to another person in another city. Paul's letter to the Romans is 7,100 words long, nearly 80 times longer than typical correspondence would be. As I said earlier, writing materials were incredibly expensive in the ancient world. Papyrus specifically cost a fortune. Ink was very precious. Professional scribes charged by the line. So Paul didn't just, you know, casually sit down and scroll out 7100 words. their carefully architected literary masterpieces that likely went through lots of rounds of revision before it got into its final form to be handed to Phoebe to go sent off and be read to the Romans. Yes, some sections feel spontaneous or dictated and that's actually probably rhetorical that's probably meant to convey something in the way that it's been written, but the

[5:35] overall structure reveals very intentional craftsmanship. It's almost as if Paul is creating a new form of written theology using the letter format to deliver what are essentially carefully arranged philosophical and theological arguments. And one of the more wild things is the fourth main feature of the fact that they're letters is that they were actually designed to be read aloud. And that done in the context of a group, not by individuals. In fact, you could say that they were designed to be performed. Letter carriers again like Phoebe who delivered Romans would read the entire letter to the assembled community in one sitting. And then these carriers often served as interpreters clarifying any unclear points and answering questions. Think about that. Romans, Ephesians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Colossians, all of these were meant to be heard as a single

[6:23] continuous speech like a symphony. It has movements, themes that develop and a climactic conclusion. When you sit down and you read Romans in your quiet time, taking a verse here and a verse there, you're actually experiencing it in a way that Paul never intended, like watching a five-minute clip out of a movie you've never seen or haven't seen in years and don't remember the context. This is why Paul's letters can feel so dense and complex. They're not intended to be interacted with like collection of inspirational quotes. They're sophisticated rhetorical speeches designed to persuade entire communities to think and act differently in light of the fact that Jesus is king. So, now that we've unpacked a little bit of what Paul's letters actually are, hopefully we can start to realize why our typical approach of verse hunting, ripping things, screaming, still bleeding out of their context, doesn't actually serve us when we're trying to understand what the

[7:11] content of the letters actually is. We're treating whole symphonies like collections of individual notes. And no matter how beautiful that individual note might be, it's not going to mean what it means unless you place it in the context of the entire movement of the symphony. So, now that we know what Paul's letters actually are, it's time to understand what we call the four layers of context that again, most people completely miss or at best only know one or two of them. These layers are a little bit like putting on new glasses. Suddenly, everything comes into focus. The first layer of context is pretty easy. It's the biblical narrative context. It's important for us to recognize Paul didn't see himself as starting a new religion or doing something in a vacuum without any context and backstory. He saw himself as fulfilling God's ancient plan that began with Abraham. And God promised Abraham that through his family, all of the

[8:01] families of the earth would be blessed. This mission narrowed down through Israel, focused through David's royal line, and then ultimately culminated in Jesus as Israel's Messiah. Paul understood his role as fulfilling the message of Isaiah 66, bringing in the Gentiles as an offering to God. He's expanding the kingdom of priests to include all of humanity. And this is why Paul is working so hard to tear down the ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender barriers in the early church. He believes that Jesus is the exalted human image, the cosmic king who's uniting all of creation under his own rule. And every letter Paul writes is serving this massive cosmic mission he believes he's running. So when he writes to the Romans about unity between Jewish and Gentile believers, he's not just solving some small local community problem. He's

[8:49] trying to participate in God's entire plan to restore the cosmos through a diverse people unified as a new humanity in Jesus Christ as their king, their savior, their lord, and their guide. In short, there's a continuation of the story that was running from the very beginning through Torah and the entire Old Testament and then even the events of the Gospels themselves, which were written down later, but happened chronologically before Paul's letters. He's stepping into a story that's been in motion for thousands of years. And he recognizes that and we need to recognize it too when we go to pick up a letter of his. The second layer of context is the cultural context. Specifically, the fact that it's taking place in the Roman Empire. Paul's letters and all the letters and really all the New Testament documents were written in the shadow of Rome's imperial boot pressed down on the

[9:38] neck of the Jewish people. Picture a society shaped like a stark pyramid. about 3% of the population sitting right at the top holding almost all the wealth and power as the governing class while 85% lived in the working poor slaves or what historians would call the expendables. Widows, orphans, beggars with no social safety net like we enjoy in the United States. This was an honor and shame culture. Your value as a person was determined externally by your peers, family, wealth, education, your social status. The Greek word daxa, which we translate as glory, fundamentally meant that your perceived honor or social rank. The concept of like a self-esteem based on how you felt about yourself, would have been completely foreign, darn near an oxymoron in their view. You only have

[10:26] esteem if others esteem you. Doesn't matter what you think about yourself, which rings really strange to our modern ears. But if we don't know that we're doing that when we open up the New Testament and we read it, then we're going to import that unconsciously. And then that'll be a lens between us and the scriptures that actually muddies the waters. But anyway, back to Rome. Rome maintained its peace. Peace though we might call it through conquest, through subjugation, through intimidation. People would just disappear in the middle of the night if they didn't pay Rome's taxes or if they were not convincingly loyal enough to Rome as a nation, as an empire, or to Caesar. and crucifixion was their brutal deterrent designed to terrorize conquered peoples into submission to the Roman way. Caesar or Kaisar as his name may have been pronounced was worshiped as Lord and Savior throughout the empire. That Jesus

[11:15] uses these words charges them with a great amount of political weight in a way that we wouldn't have necessarily gathered because we associate those words primarily with him. But in that context, they had an existing meaning that was Roman and pagan in nature. And it's into this context a that Jesus steps and then b that Paul proclaims that a crucified Jewish rabbi is the true king and lord over all the earth and all the peoples in it. The gospel of the kingdom creates alternate empires. A community where slave owners and slaves, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, male and female, all call each other brother and sister and treat each other as equals before God. This was revolutionary. And in that context it was viewed as treasonous. The more we understand the Roman context and the historical context

[12:03] into which that stuff was written and even things like the Makabian revolt in the intertestamental period leading up to the birth of Jesus, all of these things lend more and more background knowledge to what's taking place in the letters as Paul is sitting down to write them. The third layer of context we need to keep in mind is the situational context. The specific crises that Paul's writing to address. This is an opportunity for us to become something like biblical detectives. Paul is responding to specific situations that are often not explicitly stated. We have to do something that the scholars call mirror reading. We're trying to reconstruct what was happening from Paul's responses. For example, in Galatians, Paul is stunned by a different gospel that is being preached. From the context of how he goes on to define his terms and what we know from other historical resources, we can deduce that some messianic Jewish

[12:51] missionaries were insisting that Gentiles must be circumcised in order to be part of God's family. Paul's vigorous defense of his own apostolic authority tells us that in this context, his authority was being questioned. People were being told that Paul doesn't know what he's talking about and he needed to write to address that. In Corinthians, Paul is addressing well, frankly, multiple crises, a lot of things happening at once. divisions based on preferred preachers and teachers and orators, sexual immorality, theological misunderstandings about the resurrection, conflicts over food sacrificed to idols. Paul is frequently quoting the Corinthians own statements back to them, which can make his arguments seem confusing if you miss the implicit conversation because guess what? Greek doesn't have quotation marks. Yay. So, we have a hard time figuring out sometimes where Paul is

[13:38] actually quoting his own opponents back to them and what is the purpose of it. And we don't always know because we don't have their correspondence. For example, did you know that the books that we in our Bible, the letters I should say, that we call first and 2 Corinthians were actually 2 and fourth Corinthians? And if we do a little bit of mirror reading and we go to 1 Corinthians 5, we can start to see how this is the case and how it is that we know. 1 Corinthians 5:9 says, "I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people." Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idoltors since then you would need to go out of the world. But look at the point. He says, "I wrote to you in my letter." That's interesting. If this was the actual first letter to the Corinthians, then you would assume that he hadn't written to them before. But actually, there's a past correspondence and then

[14:26] they responded back to him and now he's responding to that response. That's pretty remarkable. Similarly, if we swing over to 2 Corinthians chapter 2 and we look at verses 3 and 4, where he says, "This is the very thing I wrote you, so that when I came, I would not have sorrow from those who ought to make me rejoice, having confidence in you all that my joy was the joy of you all. For out of much affliction and anguish of heart, I wrote to you with many tears, not so that you would be made sorrowful, but that you might know the love which I have especially for you." And then just a few chapters later in chapter 7 where he says this down in I believe it's verse 8. Yeah. For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it for I see that that letter caused you sorrow though only for a while. Now this doesn't really describe first Corinthians. So it's likely that there was another iteration of communication happening

[15:14] between Paul and the church in Corinth. I should say the churches in Corinth between 1 and 2. So, it's like there's the first letter and then there's they respond back and then he responds back with first Corinthians. They respond back again. He writes a severe letter is what it's called in some instance or the letter of tears being very very focused on them and their problems and wanting to help them know that he loves them and he's terrified for their fate if they don't repent from all the nonsense they're doing. They write back to respond and then second Corinthians is apparently a response to that response. And all of this is on the pages of scripture. So, it can be tremendously interesting to go and do a little bit of the actual digging and see what's happening here. But it's important for us to know that Paul is in the middle of a whole conversation where not only do we not have anything that his interlocutors are saying, we don't have everything that he has been saying either. Paul frequently quotes the

[16:01] Corinthians own statements back to them, which can make his arguments seem confusing if you miss that implicit conversation. In Romans, Paul is writing to house churches that are fractured along ethnic lines. We know from other historical records that Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome and when they returned years later, they found Gentile dominated church communities. Paul identifies these groups as the powerful and the weak with the powerful Gentiles looking down on the weak Jewish believers who still observed the Torah practices. And he's strategically looking for a way to help them to unify as one community in Christ. Now, Ephesians is an interesting exception to that rule because there doesn't actually seem to be an occasion for writing it. The other letters, like we said, are what are called occasional documents. And there's a few really good reasons for us to believe, hey, this Ephesians letter was actually meant to be a more

[16:49] general letter to be spread around or handed out from church community to church community so that a broader message could reach all of the believers in that area. This is what's called an encyclical. And there's we don't have a ton of time to go into everything about this, but there's a few things we can look at as far as the clues to give us this idea why it would be this way. First things first, there aren't any personal references. If you sit down and you read like Romans, you get to chapter 16 and he greets this whole laundry list of people at the end of that letter saying, "Say hi to so- and so and hi to so- and so and hi to so- and so." Ephesians has no such list. And again, if you look at the actual issues, he's not dealing with specific issues that the people in Corinth were dealing with the people in Ephesus or the people in Cesaria Philippi. It's a much more general approach to theological issues that might deal with problems that everyone in the area was dealing with,

[17:36] but there's not a specific urgent matter he's writing to help correct. Another thing is that the oldest manuscript evidence that we have for Ephesians actually does not include the phrase in Ephesus at the very beginning. We're saying to the saints in Ephesus. So, the original letter didn't really have a geographic or like citywide designation. It's just to the saints. So, that's yet another interesting layer here. But that's our third layer of context, bringing us to the fourth, which is what we might call the literary context. Each letter on its own was designed to have a coherent line of thought that's meant to be followed continuously from beginning to end. Paul uses all sorts of logical connectors like therefore and for this reason to signal transitions between movements of thought. The opening paragraph often serves as something of a little symphony introducing the key

[18:22] themes and the vocabulary that will be developed throughout the rest of the entire letter. In Ephesians, Paul more or less immediately introduces the concept of the mystery or as Tim Mackey translates it, the open secret. The thing that was hidden in ages past but now has been revealed and is being expounded upon. And this mystery he talks about essentially becomes the central theme of the entire letter. We will get into that when we get into Ephesians proper. But Paul is frequently tracing repeated words, repeated ideas all throughout his letters. And these recurring themes are really intended to create unity and help readers follow his developing argument. And by the way, that literary context is also steeped in the Old Testament, which does the same thing. So when you read Ephesians, you're going to notice how Paul just keeps returning to concepts like in the heavenly places and according to his purpose and in him. These aren't random repetitions. They're structural elements

[19:11] holding the letter together. So if we can understand these four layers, that'll transform how we read not just Paul's letters, but really all letters. Instead of hunting for little isolated verses, we're going to be able to see how Paul's entire theological approach serves his pastoral mission to specific communities facing real challenges in the Roman world after thousands of years of the history of God and his people in that world. So, how do we actually like open up and read one of these things? Cuz I don't know about you, but when I've opened up and gotten about three chapters into some of Paul's letters, every once in a while, I'll get lost in all the according to and therefore he's listing. and I want to sit down and try to get a bigger picture and figure out what's happening. So, here's five essential skills that are going to transform your ability to understand Paul's letters when you sit down to read them. Step one, let's isolate paragraphs

[20:00] and identify those logical connectors. Paul's letters follow, like we said, logical progressions. And he signals these transitions with specific words. So, we're going to look for connectors like therefore, for this reason, but, however, so then, and because of this, we can think of these like road signs. They tell you where the next turn is in Paul's argument. If it's possible, try reading the raw text without modern paragraph breaks or paricopies. If you don't know what a paricopy is, it's these little sections titles right here. These are not in the actual original scriptures, and neither are any of these verse breakdowns. And of course, they also weren't written in English. But it's important for you to know that what's happening when you see those paricopies and those verse markers is that our Bible publishers have made some interpretive decisions about where paragraphs and lines of thought begin and end. Most of the time they're spot

[20:48] on. But sometimes you'll catch transitions that they might have missed. So when you see therefore or for this reason, stop and ask, "What is this therefore?" Therefore, anybody who's ever been in any Bible study or any like seminary class has just groaned because that was a joke they probably heard in their first class in their first year. But here we are. What's this therefore? Turns out Paul is building on what he just said. So like here in Romans 12:1 when he says, "Therefore I urge you brothers and sisters by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship." That therefore connects to 11 chapters of theological foundation that he's already been laying. Paul spent chapters 1 through 11 establishing God's mercy. And now he's saying because of everything I just explained, here's how you should live in response. And if you

[21:35] really want some fun, you should go to yallverion.com and you can start to see, click read online, and it should take us to this same area of the Bible. Let's go to Romans 12 for laughs. You can see, therefore, I urge y'all, it'll put all the plural 's in green and render them as y'all. So, it'll read something like, therefore, I urge y'all siblings by the mercies of God to present y'all's bodies as a living sacrifice. That's interesting. your collective bodies as a living sacrifice. Not you individual person with your body as a living sacrifice, but all of us together. Interesting. Holy, acceptable to God, which is y'all's proper sacred service. Y'all must not be conformed to this world. Instead, y'all are to be transformed by the renovation of y'all's mind, so that y'all may test and approve what the will of God is, that which is good, pleasing, and perfect. It'll blow

[22:22] your mind how frequently the community is in view, not you, Mr. individual person opening up the Bible and reading it like a devotional grab bag. But that's noteworthy. Another thing that's noteworthy is to pay special attention to what we might call the opening paragraphs. Again, Paul's opening paragraphs at the beginning of his letters are like musical overtures. They're designed to introduce key themes and vocabulary that are going to be developed throughout the entire letter. These openings often contain what scholars call lead words or word groups that are going to reoccur and connect across multiple paragraphs throughout the length of the letter. So, sticking with the y'all version for a moment for some laughs. Let's actually just go and look really quick at Ephesians 1:es 3 through about 14, which is all one sentence in the Greek, which is nuts. But he pretty quickly gets to this concept of the mystery, which as we will discover later is God's plan to unite

[23:12] all things in Christ. He mentions the heavenly places a couple of times. What are some other things that we would see? Uh, according to his purpose, right? Frankly, according to lots of things shows up frequently in this letter. These aren't simply decorative Bibley sounding phrases. They're intended to be structural elements that are going to appear throughout the letter. So, don't rush through these openings right here. They're dense with meaning because Paul is trying to establish a foundation for everything that follows. My sincerest advice to you as it relates to these things is to read them multiple times. Let the vocabulary really sink in. These are words that are intended to become your road map for understanding the rest of the letter entirely. Step three, and we've already alluded to it a few times, is repeat. Look at the repeated words. Trace repeated words and ideas throughout that letter. You'll start to notice patterns if you keep an eye on things. In the words of the late great

[24:01] Dr. Michael Heiser, if it's weird, it's probably important. And there are some phrases that Paul repeats that just sound weird. So when Paul uses a word or a phrase in chapter 1 and it catches your ear, watch for it to reappear in chapters 2 and three and beyond. In Ephesians, Paul keeps returning to this idea of God's purpose or plan. He mentions the heavenly places overall about six times. He repeatedly talks about the mystery being revealed. These repetitions are intended to create a web of meaning that again holds the letter together and unites everything thematically. Take notes as you read. Create a little chart tracking key words and concepts. Doesn't have to be fancy. Pencil and paper is fine, but you're going to start to see how Paul builds his argument layer by layer, each section, adding depth to the themes that he's already laid out. Step four, use multiple translations to try to catch

[24:48] those implicit conversations. Again, very frustratingly, ancient Greek did not have quotation marks. When Paul quotes his audience or responds to their statements, the translators have to make interpretive decisions about where to put the quotation marks, and different translations will make different choices. First Corinthians is actually an excellent example. Paul is quoting the Corinthians own slogans and own ideas and own socioultural millu back to them. Some translations mark these as quotes and others don't. My cheeky answer when people ask me what my favorite Bible translation is is the one you're going to actually sit down and read. But it's always good to compare from different ends of the spectrum like the NASB. And really, if you want to have a ton of fun, we've done this before on the channel many times. The real golden nuggets are when you get into the interlinear Bible. Super fun. That's a big word, so let's write it

[25:36] again. Like Romans 12 is the chapter and then linear. And I always love going to Bible Hub. It gives you lots of stuff to work with. But you can see, hey, here's the Strongs concordance number. I don't love Strongs, but that's a separate issue. The transliterated Greek word, the actual Greek for the word, the translation into English, and then all of the grammatical stuff going on with the word itself. This one's a verb. It's a present indicative active, and it's in first person singular. And you get to see all of that stuff. It's super fun. But of course, if we don't actually see the quotation marks and we're stuck trying to figure out and make these interpretive decisions, Paul's arguments can sometimes seem to contradict themselves. He's not being inconsistent. He's responding to things his audience said that we can't hear. And multiple translations and even getting into the interlinear Greek sometimes can help you catch those invisible conversations back

[26:24] and forth. But the fifth step, and really one of the most important interpretive hermeneutical, hermeneutical is a big word, sorry. It means just interpreting the Bible using some principles. How do we actually principally go and study this thing? What what are the rules that we're using to try to make sense of the passage? But one of the great hermeneutical principles is these letters are for us and for our benefit, but they were not written to us. This is crucial for us to understand. Paul's letters were written for our instruction, but they weren't written directly to you and me. We are not first century Christians in Ephesus or Corinth or Rome. We live in a very different culture facing very different challenges. Our goal shouldn't be to just copy and paste Paul's specific instructions to that group of people into our modern context. Our goal should be to learn how Paul applied the gospel

[27:11] to his cultural context so we can learn the rules and the way that he thinks for how to apply it to ours. It's something of an improv play of spiritguided improvisation. When Paul tells slaves to obey their masters, he's not endorsing slavery for all time. is showing how the gospel transforms relationships within the existing social structure while simultaneously undermining that structures foundations when it's proven to be sinful and unjust. In Paul's letter to Phileiman, he calls Onesimus no longer just a slave but a beloved brother. And that was revolutionary at the time. So the letters teach us the method, the principles, and really the heart behind Paul's applications. Then we can take those same principles and apply them to our contemporary challenges with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the wisdom of the church community. So when you read Paul's letters this way as complete literary

[28:00] works addressing specific situations with universal principles, they become far more than collections of just inspiring verses. They become master classes and models for us to employ and replicate and assess for how to live out the gospel in any culture in any century. So here's ultimately what I want you to understand as we wrap up and it's a very important sort of correlary or extrapolation of that previous point. Paul's letters are not comprehensive instruction manuals for Christian living. They are not exhaustive explanations of how living as though Jesus is king is going to show up in every possible context. They're just not. What they give us is something that I frankly think is more valuable. It's a model. It's a way of thinking that is itself true to the way that Jesus lived. Paul and the other apostles took this Jesus-shaped approach and applied it to

[28:48] their specific context to solve their particular problems. Some of their problems match ours. We still deal with divisions in the church, especially divisions over nonsense. We still struggle with how to live as citizens of God's kingdom while participating in earthly government structures of varying degrees of justness and basic human decency. Even in our day and age, applying the gospel to Christians living in the American South, the American Northeast, the American Midwest, and the coasts are all different contexts. To say nothing about our neighbors down in Mexico, or our friends across the pond, or the many Christians alive in Africa, or the Middle East, for goodness sake, or Asia, all of these have different needs and different ways of contextualizing the gospel to that specific circumstance. We still face tons of questions about how the gospel is transforming our relationships across

[29:36] ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender lines. Hard and fast rules like men and women exist in our separate categories are under attack in our day and age in a way that they weren't in the past. Which means we have to have different ways of embodying that and proving that in an apologetic case that we make to our own context. And the Bible might be helpful. In fact, it's central, but it's not going to give us all of the answers. And we are going to have to do some theology to figure out how to make this case. And good men will come to different conclusions as they try to live as Jesus is king. But it's important to remember that we face some similar things, but we face wildly different challenges. Paul never had to think about social media, artificial intelligence, global capitalism, climate change, the rise of communism and socialism in other parts of the world. He never addressed nuclear weapons, genetic engineering, how to be a faithful Christian in a democracy

[30:23] where your vote matters. how the church in one context of the world in a very different century ought to support Christians in other contexts in that same world. Our job isn't going to be as simple as being able to just find some Bible verse that directly addresses every modern dilemma. Our job is to follow in the apostles lead to take their Jesus-shaped way of thinking and create new approaches for our own context, time, place, problems, and culture. This is why understanding how Paul's letters actually work is so important. If we just read them as little grab bags of isolated verses, we miss the genius of how Paul thinks. We miss his method and we miss the way that he takes the gospel and applies it creatively to specific challenges, which is infinitely more flexible than if he had just given us a rigid set of rules, which is what he was trying to get away from in the first place. Because then we

[31:10] would argue about how to interpret and apply those rules. But when we read these as complete literary works, understanding their context, following their arguments, learning their methods, we gain something incredible. We learn to think like Paul thought. We learn to apply the gospel like Paul applied it. We learn to be creative and contextual and faithful in our own unique circumstances. I've often compared this to something like a fiveact play. We as all the believers in the world in this day and age are improv actors. And we've been hired to put together a good act that fits with the context of a story for which we have already seen the first three acts performed. And there's a fifth act where we have the script already written out. And we know what's coming. We know how the story ends. So act one is the creation, the fall, and the beginning of God's redemptive plan. Act two was God's choosing Israel and

[31:59] working with the Israelite people to finally come to Jesus. Act three was Jesus, the apostles, and the church up until our context. And now here we are. We're in act four, looking ahead to act five, where Jesus as king comes again to reign over the world as he restores and redeems and renews it, destroys all evil and sets up his own eternal kingdom to reign forever and ever and give us again what we were designed to have way back in Genesis 1 and 2, a perfect sinless embodied existence alongside God making the world beautiful and taking it someplace in service to him. So here we are in act four as improv actors. How do we live a life that's faithful to that story and apply the fact that Jesus is king now and will come again to our circumstances to live that out in the way that we change things in our own

[32:46] sphere of influence. And that's the game. So, as we prepare to dive into Ephesians together, I want us to approach it with fresh eyes. Let's not just hunt for verses and memorize things. Let's not look for just timeless principles or theological concepts to just apply directly. Instead, let's sit back and watch Paul work. Let's watch how he takes the gospel of Jesus as the king of the universe and applies it to the specific challenges facing all of the different church communities in the area surrounding Ephesus. Let's learn his method. Let's absorb his way of thinking. Let's let the Holy Spirit teach us through Paul's example how to live as if Jesus is king in our families, in our own workplaces, in our own communities, in our nation, and in our world. The letters in some senses are like the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. They're meant to make us wise. Not just informed because there is

[33:34] a difference, but wise. Wise enough to take the gospel and then apply it faithfully to challenges Paul never faced in contexts he never imagined. That's the adventure we're going to embark on together here. In my view, this is how we honor both Paul's intent and Jesus's kingship right now. This is how we honor the scriptures and the spirit who inspired them and read the New Testament the way the letters were meant to be read. So, that does it for our overview of the letters. The next time we jump into one of these videos together, we're going to look at just the context to the letter to the Ephesians. And we're going to put some of this to work to see what we can learn. And honestly, once we look at the actual context surrounding the letter itself, it's kind of mindblowing when we read what's actually the contents of it. I can't wait to get into that together. But for now, go read some letters and put all this to work. And may God richly bless you as you try to understand his

[34:23] word better.