Read the Bible with Me!

Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! We've been reading the Bible clear through this year. We are finishing the New Testament, so read along with me. But first, let us pray: 

Father,

When the fullness of time had come, you sent your Word in the One who said, “Whoever sees me, sees the Father.” No revelation can surpass this until Jesus comes again. By your gift, the Church continues to receive unfathomable riches from the inheritance handed on from the Apostles and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit.

Let the Spirit who inspired the writing of today's pages "guide me in the truth and teach me" to follow Jesus ever more closely, until he calls me to follow him to the Kingdom where he lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.

Today's chapters are Colossians 3-4 and 1 Thessalonians 1.

In the second half of Colossians, Paul makes clear that he meant what he wrote in Romans (6:3-6, especially): Baptism "buries" the "old self" and the old lifestyles that went with it. Every aspect of one's life is to be made new, conformed to Jesus Christ. The vices Paul enumerates in 3:5-9 are certainly not limited to the first century!!! As with Ephesians, Paul details how this new life changes relationships in the home, but with special attention to slaves—and a pointed reminder to masters. There is a particular case in the community of Colossae, one we will read about in the Letter to Philemon. But in the open letter to the Church, there is this much; two members of the affected household are mentioned by name: Onesimus and Archippus.

To grasp what is going on when Paul wrote his first letter to the Thessalonians, we have to go back to Acts 17. Paul had been escorted out of Philippi (remember the earthquake in jail incident?), and so left a solidly established community and headed off to the port city of Thessalonica. His apostolic success there stirred up so much trouble that he was trundled out of town before he could even finish giving basic instructions to converts who had only recently "turned aside from idols to serve the living and true God" (1:9). Hounded even out of his next stop, Paul went to Athens—and then to Corinth. It was from Corinth that "Paul, Silvanus [Silas] and Timothy" wrote to the Thessalonian community in what it generally accepted as the first book of the New Testament to be written (though an argument can be for Galatians). 

Another first in First Thessalonians is the first appearance of the typically Pauline triad "faith, hope and love," right in verse 3 of the letter. Notice how Paul ties each of these virtues to an external manifestation: faith/work, love/labor, hope/endurance. These three virtues will appear again in Chapter 5 as part of the "armor" of the Christian (faith and love together as the breastplate, and hope as the helmet). Of course, we already read in 1 Cor 13 that "there are in the end three things that last: faith, hope, and love..."

Start Colossians here and begin 1 Thessalonians here.

For additional background

N.T. Wright's Paul: A Biography is the book I would recommend to someone who wanted to read one (only one) book that combined the life and letters of St Paul. Written by a noted Scripture, this is a flowing narrative that is scripturally enlightening and historically sound. Wright gives the reader a way of following Paul through the Acts of the Apostles and the writing of his letters, making Paul the person that much more approachable, and the letters themselves more readable as a result of having a social and historical context.