How the New Testament Works
What were they reading?
As Watermark Church, we have been studying the Apostle Paul’s letter to another church that existed in Rome two thousand years ago. We study this letter as a community in order to understand what it was that they were going through and what God was doing in their midst. This is how many churches worldwide spend their time on Sunday mornings, gathering, singing songs and hymns, and reading the Apostles' words to the early churches. Engaging in these types of weekly gatherings is a vital part of the Christian life.
We are so familiar with this concept that we rarely stop and ask questions that should be obvious to us. Questions like: “If we are reading Pauls letter to the Romans, what were the Romans reading?” What is it, exactly, that they were doing in the early church? What does it mean when Paul mentions that ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…’ (2 Tim 3:16-17)?”
What is this all scripture that Paul is going on about when the church in Rome didn’t even have the book of Romans?
This is an important question to me, one that I believe the answers to can shed a lot of light on why we read the Bible and what we are attempting to get out of it. But to answer this question, we need to back up much further and look at the bible as a whole and ask ourselves:
How are we to understand and interact with this book?"
Many modern Christians assume that the entire Bible works the same. We read the Old Testament and find rules to follow for Jewish people. Many Christians, then, make the same associations with the New Testament. They see the Old Testament as commands for Jewish people, and the New Testament as commands for Christians. But that is not at all how the New Testament was ever intended to be used.
The New Testament (NT) is, in fact, very different from the Old Testament (OT) both in form and function. The NT is not a book of laws; it has no prophets, no lands to conquer, no wars fought, etc. It is a fundamentally different kind of book. The New Testament is a collection of letters and writings, collected and bound together by the early church around three and a half centuries after Jesus walked the earth. The very first mention of what we call the canon of the New Testament comes to us from a church father named Athanasius, from a letter written on Easter morning in the year 376. In this letter, Athanasius mentions the books of the NT as we have them now. A little while later, Augustine confirmed these books and assumes that the canon of the NT is closed.
Until this point, the central readings of the early church may or may not have had access to the Epistles of Paul and the other Apostles that make up the vast majority of our NT, but we can say certain things with great confidence about their gatherings and many of these things come from the early church fathers. One of those church fathers, named Justin Martyr, born in the year 100, tells us this:
“On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.” (Justin Martyr, First Apology, p67)
“The Memoirs of the Apostles” refers to the gospels; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and possibly John.
“The Writings of the Prophets” refers to the Hebrew scriptures, the OT.
So the main focus of the early church was on who Jesus was, his teachings, and his actions and interactions with the world around him. Reading the Hebrew Scriptures was then done with a new purpose: to locate how Jesus changed our understanding by reading the Old Testament anew through the lens of Jesus. With this new lens, we can see how, where we used to venerate and emulate the actions of men like Joshua, we now realize that Jesus is very different; instead of his enemies dying for God, God dies for his enemies.
A Framework for NT Reading
So with all this in mind, I want to propose a simple understanding of how the New Testament, the Christian scriptures, work.
The first four books are the story of Jesus.
They should be the primary communal reading of the text:
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
These books contain the story, and the story should be revisited and retold regularly. The annual calendar of the church ought to keep the life and teachings of Jesus central.
The fifth book passes the torch.
The Book of Acts tells us the story of the first generation of Christians and how they took up Jesus’ mission after the ascension.
It is designed to mirror the book of Luke, but focusing on the body of Christ instead of the person of Christ. The book of Acts tells us how the life and teachings of Jesus inspired his followers to head out into the world and carry on his “ministry of reconciliation” (II Cor 5:18-20). It also the story of the formation of the church, and it tells us how the kingdom of God opened up to everyone, not just Israel. The book of Acts should be revisited annually and is a great book for small house-church gatherings to read together as they continue the ministry they are reading about in the book.
The Pauline Epistles (next 13 books) are books of discernment.
They are the writings of Paul, each one is written to a different church, and they ask the question, “what does it look like to be Christlike, in Rome, in Corinth, in Galatia, in Ephesus, in Philippi, in Colossae, and in Thessaloniki… etc?”
They are compiled in order from longest to shortest (for some reason), with Philemon, the last and shortest book, acting as the perfect example of Paul's theology being lived out through Paul’s appeal for Philemon to look at his slave, Onesimus, no longer as a slave, but as his sibling, his brother, because of the work of Jesus.
But something interesting is that they don’t all have the same advice, nor does Paul give them the same instructions. Sometimes Paul encourages marriage, other times he does not. Sometimes Paul sends women to lead, and other times he seems to say, “but not in that city.” Each letter is contextual, a different city, sometimes under a different emperor, each city with it’s own religions and cultures. And so what is Christlike in one city, might not be so in another.
The General Epistles are similar (next 8 books), but more personal
They are mostly addressed to specific individuals in Christian communities, offering guidance, encouragement, and theological insights.
When the church reads the Epistles (both Pauline and General), we should have a certain posture that is different from our posture when we read the Gospels. The Epistles are ancient church mail. They are written not by prophets, but by your brothers and sisters, people like you. They were Christians trying to figure out what the life and teachings of Jesus meant for them, in their own city, in their own time. As we read them, we can see them struggling to find ways to act as the presence of Jesus in their time and place. There are no laws to follow, only paths to discern with the Spirit as our guide. The Christians have freedom in Christ to discern that path, and as we read them, we can glean wisdom and guidance for how to follow the Spirit in our own day, in our own way.
With them, we ask, “What does Christlikeness look like here?”
The final book, Revelation, is a political commentary written in apocalyptic language.
It is a book by and for dissidents meant to address what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God living in the Empire of Rome. It is a beautiful book, a work of subversive art, intended to encourage the Christians to be dissidents and a disruptive presence that offers a new vision of life in the midst of the one that Rome is presenting.
SUMMARY:
The frame that I offer is simple:
We read the Gospels to learn about Jesus. We do this because we want to become Christlike people who carry on his work as his body.
We read the Epistles to learn how the early church discerned the way of Jesus in their context.
We do this because we need to know both, what Christ looks like, and also what it looks like to seek Christlikeness in your time and place.
I offer this framework because we may have the propensity to read Paul as an equal voice to Jesus instead of a follower of Jesus. But in fact, Paul is not writing laws for the church. And what you are reading when you pick up the Bible and read a letter to a church in a city is Paul’s mail, advice, updates, correction, and teaching. Paul is your brother, a fellow Christian. Paul is not a prophet, he is not like Moses, making laws; he is not like David, ruling the church. Paul is your wiser older brother showing you what it looks like to navigate the world as a follower of Jesus. Paul was never intending to write laws that, if you don’t follow, get you hated by God, kicked out of the church, or cast into hell.
Everything after the story of Jesus (the first four books) is the outcome of asking:
“so with what we now know about God, with all that Jesus has shown us, how are we to live?”
I have found that what people often want when they come to church is to be told what to do, and often they want to hear that they are already doing it right.
But that is not what Jesus has offered us. Instead, Jesus has given the Spirit of God, and the body of Christ. And when we gather in his name and ask for guidance, and we come with a humble, submissive, open heart, the Spirit of God will join us there to offer guidance.
We must be wary of either reading Jesus through the lens of Paul or elevating the writings of Paul above the witness of Jesus. If church history has taught us anything, it is that if we elevate the wrong person and hold up anything higher than Jesus, we will lose our mission and center. We follow Jesus with Paul. Brother Paul doesn’t want you to order your life around him, Brother Paul wants you to walk with him towards Jesus. Brother Paul wants you to understand that we have no authority but Jesus. He wants you to understand that Jesus didn’t come to give us a new law, but a new Spirit, the spirit of God who guides us towards Christ in all things.
Discussion Questions
What are some common assumptions or misconceptions about how the entire Bible works as a unified text?
How does understanding the different forms and functions of the Old and New Testaments influence our approach to reading and interpreting Scripture?
Why is it important to distinguish between the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Book of Revelation in terms of their purpose and audience?
How does this understanding impact our application of their teachings today?How can we strike a balance between valuing the teachings and insights of the Apostle Paul while keeping Jesus at the center of our faith? How do we ensure that we are following Jesus with Paul rather than elevating Paul above Jesus?