📖 New Testament Survey — Unit 11: General Epistles: Faith Tested in Life

I. The Other Letters

Here is an arresting fact about the New Testament. After Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts, the next twenty-one books are all letters. Of those twenty-one, the apostle Paul wrote thirteen. The other eight were written by men who, with one exception, walked with Jesus on the dusty roads of Galilee before Paul ever heard the name of Christ. These are the General Epistles — Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, and Jude. They are called general because most of them are not addressed to a single congregation but to scattered believers across the Roman Empire. They are the church's family letters from her oldest brothers in the faith.

Something gives these eight letters a particular flavor that the Pauline letters do not have. Paul's letters mostly start with doctrine and end with duty. The General Epistles flip the emphasis. They begin with daily life, the trial in front of you this morning, the brother in front of you in the pew, the false teacher in front of you on the platform, the suffering in front of you in the world — and they argue from the life back to the doctrine. Paul writes from the study. The General Epistle writers write from the marketplace. Paul writes about salvation. The General Epistle writers write about how the saved live. The two halves complete each other. Paul gives you the theology. James, Peter, John, and Jude give you the test. Faith without the test is just sentiment. The test without the faith is just exhaustion. The General Epistles are where the two meet.

II. Hebrews — The Supremacy of Christ

Hebrews stands alone among the General Epistles. It is the longest. It is the most theological. And it is the most mysterious — no one has ever known for certain who wrote it. Authorship guesses across two thousand years have included Paul, Apollos, Barnabas, Priscilla, Luke, and Clement of Rome. The book itself does not say. What it does say, with hammering force from the first verse to the last, is that Jesus Christ is supreme. Supreme over the prophets. Supreme over the angels. Supreme over Moses. Supreme over the Levitical priesthood. Supreme over the sacrifices of bulls and goats. Supreme over the old covenant entirely. Henrietta Mears used to say that if you put a single English word on the cover of Hebrews, the word should be better. Christ is better. The word appears thirteen times across the letter, and it is the spine of every argument.

Hebrews can be organized around the three offices of the Messiah that the Old Testament had always assigned to the Anointed One. Prophet. Priest. King. Each office in the Old Testament was filled by a man. None of those men ever held more than one office at a time. King Saul tried to be a priest, and God removed him. King Uzziah tried to enter the temple, and God struck him with leprosy. The three offices were kept separate by divine command. But in Christ Jesus, all three meet in one person. And Hebrews unfolds each office in turn.

As Prophet (Hebrews 1). "God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son" (Hebrews 1:1–2). The prophets brought a partial word; the Son is the complete Word. Moses got a glimpse from the back side of the mountain; the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being. Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up; the Son sits enthroned at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. Every prophet who ever stood between God and Israel was a flickering candle pointing to the rising of the Sun.

As Priest (Hebrews 4–10). The high priest of Israel could go into the Holy of Holies once a year, with the blood of an animal, for himself first and then for the people. Christ Jesus is a better priest. He went in once for all. He went in with His own blood. He went in not into a tabernacle made with hands but into heaven itself. He sympathizes with our weakness because He has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. He is a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek — the only Old Testament figure who was both king and priest at once, the foreshadow of the Christ to come.

And the priesthood of Christ is connected to sacrifice. There is a peculiar grave in Arizona behind which lies a tragic story. Years ago, a tribe of Native Americans gathered for a great council. They felt the weight of their sin and believed that blood must be shed for forgiveness. They could not bring themselves to sacrifice their own children, but they decided to sacrifice four orphans from the tribe — the only ones with no parents to plead for them. The orphans were killed and buried in a single grave. The tribe believed that the death of those four little ones had bought their forgiveness. They had read in the dust of human conscience the same line that the book of Hebrews would later write in ink: "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness" (Hebrews 9:22). What they did not know was that the blood of God's own Lamb had already been shed on a Roman cross, and that no orphan needed to die in any village ever again. The whole point of Hebrews is that the cross of Christ closes the door on every other altar.

As King (Hebrews 7, 12). Melchizedek's name in Hebrew means king of righteousness. He was king of Salem, which means peace — so he was also king of peace. King of righteousness and king of peace, both at once. That is the pattern Christ fulfills. Every other king in human history failed somewhere. David was a man after God's own heart and also a great sinner. Solomon began his rule asking God for wisdom and ended his life as a wise fool with seven hundred wives. Pharaoh, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon — kingdoms rise and crumble. Hebrews tells the persecuted Hebrew Christians that "we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken" (Hebrews 12:28). The shaking will come. The kingdoms of this world will shake until they fall. The one kingdom left standing will be His.

III. The Hall of Faith

Hebrews 11 is called the Hall of Faith — the gallery in which the writer of Hebrews hangs portrait after portrait of Old Testament believers and tells you what they had in common. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). The chapter is a procession. By faith Abel. By faith Enoch. By faith Noah. By faith Abraham. By faith Sarah. By faith Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses. By faith Rahab. By faith Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. Some of them conquered kingdoms. Some of them were sawn in two. Some of them stopped the mouths of lions. Some of them wandered in deserts and mountains, in caves and dens of the earth — destitute, afflicted, tormented. Faith does not guarantee that the lion's mouth will close. Some of the heroes were thrown to the lions. Faith guarantees that whatever happens, God is faithful, and the believer's life is hidden in Christ.

And the chapter does not end at chapter 11. The argument runs straight into chapter 12. "Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" (Hebrews 12:1–2). The Hall of Faith is the bleachers. The believer is on the track. The witnesses in the bleachers are the ones who have already run the race and finished it well. They are not watching to judge. They are watching to cheer. And the believer on the track is running toward only one face — "looking unto Jesus."

IV. James — Faith Tested in Life

James was the half-brother of the Lord Jesus. He had grown up in the same house, at the same table, under the same Galilean roof. He did not believe in his elder brother during the years of His public ministry (John 7:5). It took the resurrection — when the risen Christ appeared specifically to James (1 Corinthians 15:7) — to convince him. After that conversion, James became the leading pastor of the Jerusalem church for the next thirty years, presiding over the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15. He was martyred in AD 62, thrown from the pinnacle of the temple by his enemies and beaten to death because he refused to deny that his elder brother was the Christ. The man who wrote the letter of James knew exactly what testing was.

His letter is the most Jewish book in the New Testament. It reads almost like a New Testament book of Proverbs. It organizes around five trials of the believer's life that James names in his five chapters. Chapter 1 — the trial of suffering. Chapter 2 — the trial of partiality. Chapter 3 — the trial of the tongue. Chapter 4 — the trial of worldliness. Chapter 5 — the trial of impatience. Each trial is a different way the world tests whether the believer's faith is real.

The opening verse of the letter is one of the most counterintuitive sentences in the Bible. "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience" (James 1:2–3). Count it all joy. Not endure it. Not survive it. Not get through it. Count it all joy, because the trial is producing something in you that nothing else can produce. James tells the believer that there are three varieties of trials in the Christian life. First, reap-what-you-sow trials — the consequences of our own bad choices (Galatians 6:7). Second, spiritual trials — the fiery testing that comes simply because we belong to Christ (1 Peter 4:12). Third, mysterious trials — the trials that have no explanation we can name, the kind Job suffered. All three produce patience if we let them. All three produce bitterness if we don't.

The Steinway piano company has built its instruments the same way for nearly two hundred years. Eighteen layers of maple are bent around an iron press to form the rim of the grand. Five coats of lacquer are applied and hand-rubbed by craftsmen until the surface glows. And then the finished piano is taken to a room in the factory called the Pounder Room. There, a mechanical hammer strikes each key ten thousand times in succession. Twelve thousand parts, two hundred craftsmen, and ten thousand poundings — that is what makes a Steinway. The trial of the keys does not break the piano; it certifies the piano. James writes to the suffering believer the same thing the factory writes on the side of every Steinway grand: this pounding is making something beautiful out of you.

Down the coast of California, at Pebble Beach, the Pacific Ocean has been hurling waves against the cliffs for tens of thousands of years. The constant pounding tosses the stones together and grinds them against the cliffs, and the result is the polished, rounded, gleaming pebbles that tourists pick up and carry home. Just down the shore there is a sheltered cove that the waves cannot reach. The stones in the cove have been protected from the pounding all their lives. And they are rough and unwanted, never picked up by anyone. The believer who has been pounded by the trials is the believer the Lord picks up. The believer who has avoided every storm is the believer who never shines.

V. James — The Working Faith

The most controversial chapter in the letter is James 2 — the famous passage that sounds at first like it contradicts Paul. "What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?... Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead" (James 2:14, 17). For five hundred years, theologians have wrestled with how James 2 fits with Paul's Ephesians 2:8–9 ("by grace you have been saved through faith… not of works"). The question settles in one sentence: Paul says we are not saved by works; James says we are not saved by a faith that does not work. Same gospel. Two angles. The faith that saves is never alone — it always brings the works with it, the way the rising sun is never separated from the heat that rises with it.

There was once a man in a small American village who sold firewood to his neighbors and consistently cheated them — always cutting the four-foot logs a few inches short. One day the rumor went around that the woodchopper had been converted at a revival meeting. Nobody in the village believed it. They all said he was beyond reach. Then one of the men quietly slipped out of the grocery store while the conversation was going on, walked over to the woodchopper's lot, and measured the wood the man had just cut. He came running back into the store and burst through the door shouting, "It's so! He has been!" The men said, "How do you know?" And he said, "Because the wood he cut yesterday is a full four feet long." That is James 2. The proof of the conversion was not the testimony at the revival. The proof was the length of the logs the next morning. Faith without works is dead.

James 3 turns to the trial of the tongue, and he is merciless. The tongue is a fire. The tongue is a world of iniquity. The tongue is set on fire by hell. The tongue is a small rudder that turns a great ship. The tongue is a tiny spark that burns down a forest. Out of the same mouth come blessing and cursing — "My brethren, these things ought not to be so" (James 3:10). James does not believe there is any spiritual achievement in a Christian who cannot bridle his speech. "If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless" (James 1:26). The tongue is the truest revealer of the heart, because what is in the heart in abundance always overflows out of the mouth without permission.

VI. 1 Peter — Living Stones, Living Hope

The apostle Peter wrote his first letter from Rome, which he calls "Babylon" (1 Peter 5:13) — the code name the early church used for the city of the Caesars. He wrote it during the great persecution that broke out under Nero in the mid-60s, when Christians were being arrested, burned alive in Nero's gardens, and torn apart by wild beasts in the arena. Peter's whole letter is a pastoral arm thrown around scattered believers across Asia Minor who are reading by candlelight wondering whether they will be the next ones rounded up. The key word of 1 Peter is suffering. The word appears more often in 1 Peter than in any other New Testament book per chapter.

Three images dominate the letter. The new birth into a living hope (1 Peter 1:3–9) — the believer has been begotten again to an inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled, and does not fade away, reserved in heaven. The royal priesthood and the holy nation (1 Peter 2:5–9) — the church is now what Israel was meant to be, a kingdom of priests offering spiritual sacrifices through Christ Jesus the chief cornerstone. The fiery trial (1 Peter 4:12–13) — "Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings." Peter writes to a church on fire from the outside, and he tells them to expect it, to rejoice in it, and to know that the glory will exceed the suffering.

Consider the central image of 1 Peter 2 — living stones. Peter, who had been renamed by Jesus from Simon to Cephas, the rock, now writes that every believer is a rock too. The church is not a building of dead stones cut once and stacked. The church is a building of living stones, each one fitted into the wall by the Master Mason, growing into a holy temple in the Lord. "You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood" (1 Peter 2:5). The fiery trial of chapter 4 is not an attack on the building. The fiery trial is the kiln in which the living stones are baked hard.

VII. 2 Peter — Last Days and False Teachers

2 Peter is the second of the two letters and was written a year or two after the first, very near the end of Peter's life. The apostle knows he will be martyred soon. He tells the church, "I know that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me" (2 Peter 1:14) — a reference to Jesus' prophecy in John 21 that Peter would be crucified. Like Paul writing 2 Timothy from the dungeon, Peter writes 2 Peter from the shadow of the executioner.

The letter has three chapters and one theme per chapter. Chapter 1 — knowing Christ. The believer is to add to faith virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love (2 Peter 1:5–7). Chapter 2 — false teachers. Peter warns that wolves are coming into the flock who will twist the faith for gain. Chapter 3 — the Day of the Lord. Scoffers will mock the second coming, but the Lord "is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). The Day of the Lord will come as a thief, the heavens will pass away with a great noise, the elements will melt with fervent heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. New heavens and a new earth are coming, in which righteousness dwells. The believer's job in the meanwhile is to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ — the last sentence Peter ever wrote before his execution.

VIII. 1 John — The Tests of Eternal Life

The apostle John wrote his three letters near the end of the first century, after he had outlived every other apostle, from his old age in the city of Ephesus where tradition says he died at last quietly in his bed, the only apostle to do so. By then, false teachers — the early Gnostics — were beginning to teach that Christ had not really come in the flesh, that matter was evil, that secret knowledge was the way to salvation. John writes his first letter to draw a hard line. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled" (1 John 1:1) — these are the first words of the letter, and John piles up the verbs of physical sense on purpose. The Word became flesh. The flesh was real. The hands of the apostles touched Him.

1 John is built around three tests by which a person can know whether his profession of Christianity is real. The doctrinal test — does he confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (1 John 4:2)? The moral test — does he walk in the light and not in the darkness (1 John 1:7)? The relational test — does he love the brethren (1 John 3:14)? The three tests run through the letter like three colored threads. They are not three separate doctrines. They are three angles on the one life of Christ in the believer. And the purpose of the letter is named in 1 John 5:13: "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life." John writes so the believer will know — not hope, not guess, not feel, but know — that he has eternal life.

IX. 2 John, 3 John, and Jude

2 John is the shortest book in the New Testament — only thirteen verses long. It is addressed to "the elect lady and her children," probably a particular Christian woman and her family, possibly a coded reference to a particular local church. Its theme is the connection between truth and love. The believer is to walk in love, but love is never to compromise truth. False teachers were going door to door in the first century, and 2 John tells the lady not to receive them into her home, because hospitality to a false teacher gives the false teacher a base of operation.

3 John is fourteen verses long, the second-shortest book in the Bible. It is addressed to a believer named Gaius and contrasts him with a man named Diotrephes "who loves to have the preeminence" (3 John 9). Diotrephes is the New Testament's portrait of the church bully — the man who has to be in charge of everything, who blocks the apostles, who threatens to excommunicate any member who disagrees with him. Gaius is the opposite — a faithful, hospitable, generous believer who welcomes traveling missionaries and supports them on their way. Every local church in every century has both kinds of men in her, and the job of the older members is to encourage the Gaius and gently bring the Diotrephes to repentance.

Jude was another half-brother of the Lord Jesus and the brother of James. His twenty-five-verse letter is the great earnestly-contend letter of the New Testament. "Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). Jude had wanted to write a peaceful letter about the joy of salvation. Apostasy was creeping into the church so fast that he could not. He had to put the salvation letter aside and write the warning letter instead. Jude piles up Old Testament examples of judgment — the unbelieving Israelites in the wilderness, the fallen angels, Sodom and Gomorrah, Cain, Balaam, Korah — and uses them to warn that God has not changed His mind about apostasy. The same God who judged the past will judge the present.

But Jude does not end in judgment. He ends in doxology. "Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen" (Jude 24–25). That is the perfect last sentence before the book of Revelation. Faith has been tested in this unit on every front — by suffering, by partiality, by the tongue, by worldliness, by impatience, by fiery trial, by false teachers, by the love of the world, by the bully in the church, by apostasy itself. And the closing word of the General Epistles is that the Lord is able. Able to keep you from stumbling. Able to present you faultless. Able to bring you home with exceeding joy.

Press on, my friend, into the last two units with the same Lord who is better than the prophets, better than the angels, better than the priesthood, better than every other king who has ever risen and fallen. Press on with the same Lord whose blood closed the Arizona grave and every other altar. Press on with the same faith that does the work, the same tongue that blesses, the same hope that lives, the same Spirit that tests by fire and builds living stones. The General Epistles have been the church's family letters for two thousand years. Read them out loud the way they were read in the first century, by candlelight, with the wind moving outside the door. And then turn the page. There is one more letter coming — a long one, full of trumpets and seals and a great white throne. Amen.

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