01 To or For Whom

To or For Whom Our modern-day confusion is for the most part due to the Church epistles addressed to the Christian being substituted by sections of the Bible written for the believer’s learning. There are seven epistles addressed directly to the Church: Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Thessalonians. The Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments are considered by the organized church body as sufficient testimony for a Christian profession. The four Gospels, and especially the Sermon on the Mount, are frequently given as the essence of Christianity instead of those epistles specifically and directly addressed to the Church. Thus, today there is a flamboyant ignorance among all Christians concerning all that God has made Christ to be unto His people and all that He has made them to be in Him. The believers, not knowing their standing in Christ, their completeness and perfection in Him, are blown about with every wind of doctrine. Many Christians declare and know that they are justified by the grace of God, and yet their actions indicate that they seek to be justified by works.

Only the understanding and acceptance of the great revelation given in the Church epistles will ever deliver a believer from all the new sects, doctrines, theories and schools of thought which have caused deleterious effects in our Christian midst. The seven Church epistles are set in the perfection of their spiritual truth, when we accept them in the order in which we have them in the Bible. In all the manuscripts of the New Testament the order of these seven Church epistles never varies, although the order of the other books of the New Testament varies. This should speak loudly to our spiritual ears.

Three of the Church epistles, Romans, Ephesians and Thessalonians, are distinctively not epistles in content but treatises. These three contain the basic doctrinal teaching to the Church as compared with the other four epistles which are specifically epistolary. The order of these revelations in the Word of God is the treatise of Romans, then the epistles of Corinthians and Galatians. Romans sets forth the great doctrine and teaching to the Church as to how to believe rightly, Corinthians gives reproof to the Church because of wrong believing, and Galatians establishes the correction as to how to get back to right believing. This description of the first three revelations to the Church is equally true of the treatise of Ephesians and the epistles of Philippians and Colossians. The first step of all degradation, when the Word of God is wrongly divided, is practical error. After practicing and developing error sufficiently we make a doctrine of it; finally doctrinal errors manifest themselves in creeds, rules and commandments of men. The Thessalonian treatise stands alone in its teaching of doctrine or right believing. Later we shall describe why Thessalonians stands last even though it may have been written first, and why it has no companion epistles of reproof and correction.

Putting the three Church treatises and four Church epistles together we not only have the "all truth" Jesus Christ said would be given, but we have all the truth concerning the "mystery of God and of Christ," to manifest a life more than abundant, and to be more than a conqueror in every situation.