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Category: Epistles – Is his letter to our church?

Epistles ἐπιστολή or Letters

I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read to all the holy brethren.

Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians 

FEATURED SERIES

JUNE 2024 – 2025 —

1 CORINTHIANS 

First letter after ACTS of the Apostles:

Epistle of Paul to the Romans Church

Letters – Is he writing to me?
The short answer: YES.

In their epistles or 1st century church letters the Apostles and other men sent out by Jesus build up the saints [small – ‘s’] or members of local first century churches.

A Disciple or other witness of JESUS would write it. Messengers then delivered these church letters to many isolated worshipers.

Followers of Jesus Christ receive these letters as a major encouragement to their personal faith. Then leaders read them to worshipers of their church.

Although the Epistles 0r Letters to the Church were originally written to churches of the first century,

Romans through Jude will seem like letters to your 21st century church.

  • What do Peter, Paul, John and others tell us we must do?
  • Is he talking about an issue in your 21st c. church as well?
  • How does the writer’s advice, warning, or encouragement to the 1st c. believers apply to you as well
  • Is the writer of this letter talking about something you need to address in your 21st century ‘christian’ life?

Contemporary Application of the Letters (Epistles)

Most New Testament writers take on specific issues confronting faithful followers of Jesus Christ. These same issues continue to confront believers until the Lord’s coming again in these last days.

Certainly Christ our Lord will come again to those God has chosen for eternal life.

Believers currently suffer more than most of you who know Christ in your local church can imagine.

In other lands Christians continue to suffer by the hand of the ungodly.
Go into all the world

A 21st century Common Era church can see and hear nearly any atrocity of man or artificial imagination of sinful man’s mind, yet ‘christians‘ dare not speak of any absolute truth of the Lord God or talk of JESUS CHRIST.

Will YOU comment on Scripture and share the Gospel?

I invite you to read the inspired word of Scripture written in these LETTTERS TO THE CHURCH.

YES, He IS writing to YOU.

Beloved brother or sister in Christ Jesus,

Will you read this ‘CHURCH LETTER’ and talk of JSUS through your comment, sharing and email to me about this ‘Letter to you?”

Roger@talkofJesus.com

  • The Mirror of Church Hypocrisy – 3

    The Mirror of Church Hypocrisy – 3

    Therefore you have no excuse, O christian…

    Do you suppose, O christian… —that you will escape the judgment of God?

    Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

    But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

    He will render to each one according to his works:

    Dear unfaithful sister in the Lord — dear unrepentant brother in the Lord:

    Do these verses from Romans 2 look vaguely familiar? (I only changed one word: ‘man‘ to ‘christian,’ meaning apostate, former worshiper of Jesus Christ.

    Will YOU be convicted by the letter to the church at Rome? (Yes, we know that these words were written for unbelievers.)

    The world cannot differentiate our hypocrisy from their sins.

    REPENT!

    Romans 1

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    “The righteous shall live by faith.”

    God’s Wrath on Unrighteousness

    18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

    O, dear christian, how we suppress the truth of our sin: HYPOCRISY!

    19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.

    So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

    Do YOU honor God? and thank the Lord?

    OR is your worldly witness worthless to Christ?

    22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

    24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

    26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

    • For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;
    • 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another,
    • men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

    28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

    29 They were filled with all manner of

    • unrighteousness,
    • evil,
    • covetousness,
    • malice.
    • They are full of envy,
    • murder,
    • strife,
    • deceit,
    • maliciousness.
    • They are gossips,
    • 30 slanderers,
    • haters of God,
    • insolent,
    • haughty,
    • boastful,
    • inventors of evil,
    • disobedient to parents,
    • 31 foolish,
    • faithless,
    • heartless,
    • ruthless.

    32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die,

    they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

    Can you tell the truth (even to your self before God)?

    HOW MANY of these SINS invade the lives of your ‘christian’ household and ‘christian family’ EVERY DAY?

    None of these in any way describe Jesus Christ.

    None of these of our sins describe the fruit of our witness before the world that our returning Bridegroom expects of His spotless bride, His Holy Church.

    The earlier quotes from Romans 2 (a mirror on christians for us) are followed by more conviction:

    11 For God shows no partiality.

    22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?

    Romans 3:

    Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,

    “That you may be justified in your words,
    and prevail when you are judged.”

    “None is righteous, no, not one;
    11     no one understands;
    no one seeks for God.
    12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
    no one does good,
    not even one.”
    13 “Their throat is an open grave;
    they use their tongues to deceive.”

    18     “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

    23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

    Romans 6

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    Dead to Sin, Alive to God

    6 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means!

    How can we who died to sin still live in it?

    This is the QUESTION for the mirror of EVERY soul claiming Christ Jesus?

    3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

    4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

    Let us confess our sin and bury it.

    Let us not confess a righteousness not yet worked out by the fruit of grace.

    Let us no more judge the sin we have not buried in Christ and cleansed for our returning Savior and Bridegroom of the Church.

     

  • The Commitment of Christian Marriage

    The Commitment of Christian Marriage

    This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

    Did we miss this? I love a good mystery. Don’t you? Especially at the moment you finally get it – the moment you figure out where the story has been headed all along.

    Paul writes a letter to the church (at Ephesus). It is a letter to you and a letter to me, IF we claim Christ as our Lord… IF we are consumed with the promised return of our Lord. But there’s a mystery here you might overlook if you see Ephesians only as a letter with rules and regulations. It is the mystery of relationship.

    Ephesians 5

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    Walk in Love

    Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.  2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

    Walk in love. We get that, right?

    Walk. Make progress in our faith. Don’t just stay as we were, but become as Christ would want us.

    We are beloved children of the Living God. WOW! We love that. But now, as children we are expected to grow up as a member of the family of God our father. Yet as the rebellious child will often do, we get hung-up on Dad’s rules. (See vs. 5-21)

    Then, it seems (like in all good mysteries) that the author is headed down a different road with just the obvious connection to that ‘sexual immorality’ thing: porneia. We know that marriage should solve all of that. But why is Paul giving marriage so much ink?

    Wives and Husbands

    22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

    25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,

    27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

    28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

    29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body.

    Lets pause for a moment and look at this from a different perspective. Many a sermon has been preached using Ephesians 5:22 as a reason for husbands to have their wives “submit” to their will. I will point out here that MANY a husband is NOT submitted to Jesus Christ as his Lord. For the text says, “as to the Lord.” Therefore, BOTH the husband and the wife who claim Jesus Christ as their Lord MUST be submitted to Christ as Lord.

    Is your Christian marriage submitted to Christ as your Lord?

    Husbands, love your wives. (Don’t get mixed up on this now.) Love here is not sexual love. (That’s OK and expected, but Paul refers to something bigger here.)

    Love, that is: agapaō, is inclusive of the same love expected from all Christians for each other on a most intimate basis.

    Paul adds: as Christ loved the church. (Same word for loved: agapaō). This means that in a sense if you think of Jesus as the Husband and you as the Bride, it’s the love that Jesus has for you IF He were your Husband. It’s the same love that God has for all of us in the sense that ‘adam’ means not only man, but mankind.

    But Paul does not stop there with his example for husbands. He adds: and gave himself up for her.

    What does he mean by, gave himself up?

    Husbands, he means a sacrificial love for your wife. Do you do that? (For you were glad enough to have your wife sacrifice her humility to serve you. Do you sacrifice your being for her?)

    Paul emphasized the sacrifice of the husband even more (in a way that we cannot get around), for he adds to that a purpose: that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

    Sanctify her: a husbands duty. A religious term meaning to to separate her from profane things and dedicate a wife to God. My responsibility as her husband. (And I pray in the Lord that she will submit to it.)

    The prodigal wife has returned from the pig sty. She is filthy. She has had an unloving master who has not cared that she has wasted all of her blessing and inheritance from her father on foolish things. She begs to return home, even as a servant with not even the rights of one of the family of the father.

    How will you welcome this filthy prodigal wife?

    (Need direction in this? Read Luke 15.)

    Sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. 

    Picture the purification of the Bible, a waterfall showering the one sanctified to God until all the filth of the pig sty of the worldly places is gone.

    The water of purification is the word of the Lord.

    Will your wife listen? That is what the Lord wants to know. Will you and she both become sanctified in the Word?

    John 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

    It all goes back to the beginning, to Eden, to God’s intention of the intimacy of the relationships involved of adam.

    31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 

    Paul now refers to the mystery of marriage. The climax, however, is more than you ever expected. (Paul adds that the mystery is profound.) 

    32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

    JESUS + HIS CHURCH = a Marriage made in Heaven.

    As a member of Christ’s body, the church; Christians are Jesus’ Bride.

    Every prepared and purified soul of the church awaits the coming again of our Bridegroom: Christ Jesus, our Lord and Husband betrothed to each of us.

    It is a very great mystery, Jesus Christ + the Church; Husband + wife. We are by His sacrifice one with Him and will be with Him in His heavenly home for all time.

    Paul adds, as our example of that marriage:

    33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

     Why is the witness of Christian marriage so important?

    We are the respect of Christ in this world, until He returns for His faithful Bride.

    Christians must live as Christ and be witness to His love and righteousness.

    Would you (IF you were Jesus) want an unfaithful wife?

    The hypocrisy of failed christian marriages is no mystery to the world.

    WE, by the witness of our divorces are prodigal wives gone off to the pig sty on our own.

    It is because of the hardness of our hearts and not love for Christ Jesus, our Betrothed Bridegroom.

    Will we return to the vows of our faithfulness?

    OR will the Lord return before we purify our church once more?

    They are no longer two, but one.

    Is your marriage one with Christ Jesus our returning Bridegroom?

    For He poured out His sacrifice of love for His Bride on the Cross.

    May we in our Christian marriages once more take up our cross and follow the Bridegroom.

     

     

     

  • Covenant and Truth of Christian Marriage

    Covenant and Truth of Christian Marriage

    Marriage: It should be so simple. Boy meets girl. Boy marries girl. Husband and wife make a promise “until death do us part.” They make a covenant, with witnesses. Confirm it publicly in a ceremony officiated by someone in authority. They speak vows of love (for better, for worse, etc.). They sign a covenant of marriage. They are pronounced husband and wife and go on their way to much celebration of this permanent union of love.

    Simple and so significant.

    “And they live happily ever after,” so the romantic story of love and marriage goes.

    As Christians committed to one another (as is our focus here), the covenant and truth and the love of God, the love of all other Christians, and their pledged love for each other should be reason enough for them to celebrate anniversary after anniversary as one – anniversary after anniversary as one joined as one to Christ Jesus, our Lord.

    … And they live eternally ever after…

    So it should be…

    Yet even Christian husbands and Christian wives struggle with the truths of marriage and the consequences of sin and divorce, just like anyone else.

    So rather than glossing over the Biblical model for marriage (which we will address) and pretending that Christian marriages have it all “for better and for even better” (an unrealistic fairy tale of some ideal Christian preaching), we will address the history of marriage through both the Old Testament and the New and look at some realities in the marriages of Christians through the light of scripture.

    Once upon a time, we could address the issues of marriage without having to define it; but in these post-Christian times it is best that we narrow our focus sharply on the Biblical.

    Marriage: in the Hebrew, multiple uses: – `ownah –  halal – yabam – ba`al – ‘iysh (husband) – ‘ishshah  (wife) 

    I am least of those to define these. There may be more, but study these and their several, related scriptures and you will begin to have an Old Testament understanding of marriage. (Please add your Comment to our site of any insight the Lord gives to you.)

    Marriage: in the Greek, the language of the New Testament:  gameō – and the root word: gamos.

    Again, look at the scriptures and context, which we will examine in more detail next week.

    Hebrews 13:4 

    Let marriage be held in honor among all,

    and let the marriage bed be undefiled,

    for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

    Christian Marriage: To be continued…