Please Read the Letter

I should have known better. Perhaps I did!

Alison Krauss & Robert Plant told me so in the very least. Their song as named in the title of this post goes from verse into chorus with the lyrics, “Please read the letter, I wrote it in my sleep, with help and consultation from angels in the deep. Please read the letter that I wrote.”

Of course, the song itself has their harmonies delivering the plea, rather that my quote in a blog, so I recommend a listen if you’ve never heard their duets.

Back to the topic at hand, moving through my hermeneutics textbook, we’ve gone from Old Testament into New Testament, through the gospels and into Paul’s epistles and the similar letters. A great takeaway is to remember that these are specific correspondence letters written from his pastoral encounter with the various audiences and churches, from the Ephesians, to Corinthians, et al.

That they serve as the inspired, inerrant word of God is such a blessing to us in revealing His truth and promoting our relationship with Christ.

Part of that blessing does tether us to the context of how these letters were written to a specific people, at a specific place, in a specific time, regarding one or several specific issues.

The advice I’ve taken from improving my interpretation is to avoid going too abruptly to the chosen verse or phrase in favor of giving over the time necessary to read the respective letter.

Imagine you receive a letter from someone you have a personal relationship with. You don’t jump 2/3rds of the way through the contents as if it were a treatise or textbook. In fact, because it’s so personally-directed, a wholesome intake of the entire body of the letter naturally suits the reader/recipient so that the most cogent points may land in their fullness. How Paul frames his epistles often tells us the pertinence of the writing and explains the circumstance, both temporal and topical.

A good frame houses the picture, and often together they are seen as a whole rather than an arbitrary structure to place an image within.

A personal example can be taken from serving in a congregation last year in the laity. Walking in the process to seek out fruitful prospective leaders for His bride, the pastoral epistles drew increasing focus from me to best understand and confirm the character of a servant. What accumulated was a season of disagreement that these epistles mattered (if not the authority of the Bible altogether for the sake of preferences and tradition [but that’s a whole other Oprah]), but what convicted me throughout was to remember that, in the case of Titus for example, Paul was writing to Titus, not to me. Instructions given over to Titus were for the situation the two pastors were contending with in the growing new church of the late 1st century AD. Setting aside the fact that in his will, a consensus to even put the Word on the highest footing was elusive in this episode, God worked His will for the order I believe He wanted. He wanted disciples, and so I know at last I followed Christ, taking up a cross in the process.

That’s why each epistle deserves to be read in its fullness. Though it was Paul writing to Titus, or Timothy, or a church, it is the Word of God written to us as Christ followers so that we may know His fullest grace extended to us by faith in Christ Jesus.

Coming into a bible study early this year, that happened to be on the letter to Titus, I was reminded that the weapon of the word is to convict my own heart to be of the characteristic spoken of in these letters in the context they launch from. So yes, they speak to discernment, it speaks to the approach to promoting doctrine, and yes, even instructions to Titus related to rebukes and standards are present. But I appreciate that the context doesn’t make it my weapon to wield in a legalist’s inquisition, but a weapon to counteract sin in my life that the pastoral epistles may have their intended effect. The whole letter then makes this plain where a jump to one verse absent the spirit of the context might short circuit the purpose.

Let’s encourage the habit to read the whole letter as often as possible alongside the reference of the target scripture so that the fullness of meaning may reach our heart and impart the complete blessing!