We’re closing in on reading the entire New Testament in thirteen weeks. Finish strong, and continue to cultivate this discipline in your life. You will certainly never regret time in God’s Word. As we look at this week’s reading you’ll note that you’ll be blazing through four different epistles and get a third of the way through another one.
What is striking when you read through these shorter New Testament books is that these are letters written to real congregations and people. One thing to pay attention to as you read the epistle is to keep a keen eye out for what issue(s) Paul is addressing. Then remember, none of this is in a vacuum. There are current events and cultural influences which must be address and combatted and that is exactly what Paul––a master builder (1 Cor. 3:10)––sets out to do, time and time again. As he mentions in Philippians 3:1, it is “no problemo” to write the same things repeatedly.
God, in giving us His Word, wants us to learn and grow via distance learning. We are now 2,000 years removed from the writing of these letters, but still they exhort us, reprove us, and spur us onward in knowing Christ. Never forget that the whole goal of the Bible is that you would know Christ. Not just know about Christ, or know things about Christ. But know Him. Christ is the Sun of the Solar System of Christianity. Every revolves around Him. In Philippians 3:7-11 we have, what I like to call “the Mt. Everest of Paul’s writing.” For Paul, this is what it is all about: “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
