📖 New Testament Survey — Unit 7: Romans, Corinthians, Galatians: Liberty and the Functional Church

I. Three Letters, One Apostle, One Theme

If you wanted to understand the soul of the apostle Paul, you needed to read three of his letters in order: Romans, then 1 and 2 Corinthians, then Galatians. These three constellations of Paul's writing answer three of the largest questions a Christian ever asks. Romans answers, How can a sinner be made right with a holy God? The Corinthians answer, How can a divided, struggling, often-failing church learn to function? Galatians answers, How can a Christian, once made free, stay free? Three letters. Three questions. One Apostle. One theme that ties them all together: liberty — liberty from the guilt of sin in Romans, liberty in the Body of Christ in Corinthians, liberty through grace in Galatians.

The apostle Paul was the closest the New Testament comes to a systematic theologian. Peter writes from his heart. John writes from his memory. James writes from the pulpit. But Paul writes from his mind — a Pharisee's trained mind on fire with grace. The three letters we will survey in this unit are his three most argument-driven works, and they sit together in the Pauline letter cluster like the three legs of a stool. Pull any one of them out and the Christian life loses its balance.

II. Romans — The Gospel from Top to Bottom

Paul wrote Romans from the city of Corinth in or about AD 57, on the eve of his planned trip to Jerusalem with the offering and his hoped-for journey thereafter to Spain (Romans 15:23–28). He addressed it to a church he had never visited — a congregation he intended to meet for the first time on his way west. He wanted them to know him by his gospel before they knew him by his face. So he sat down and wrote out the most complete summary of the Christian gospel ever put on paper.

Romans falls cleanly into three sections that follow the great verbs of salvation. Chapters 1–8 deal with justification — how a sinner is declared righteous in the courtroom of heaven. Paul begins by demonstrating that the whole human race — Gentile pagans (chapter 1), self-righteous moralists (chapter 2), and religious Jews (chapter 3) — stands guilty before God. "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Then comes the gospel: "Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24). Romans 5 traces the parallel between Adam and Christ; Romans 6 explains union with Christ in His death and resurrection; Romans 7 wrestles with the indwelling struggle of the believer; Romans 8 crescendos into the great chapter of the Spirit and the unshakable love of God — "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" (Romans 8:35). Chapters 9–11 wrestle with the place of Israel in God's redemptive plan; chapters 12–16 turn to practical Christian living. Body, mind, gifts, government, conscience, the weak and the strong, the goal of unity — Paul lands the soaring theology of Romans 1–11 on the ground of how a Christian lives the next morning.

The key verse of Romans hangs over the whole letter: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek" (Romans 1:16). Romans has changed more lives than any other book in the Bible. Augustine, on a garden bench in Milan in AD 386, heard a child singing "Take up and read," picked up the book of Romans, read chapter 13:13–14, and was converted on the spot. Martin Luther, lecturing on Romans 1:17 in Wittenberg in the early 1500s, came to see that "the just shall live by faith" — and the Protestant Reformation was born. John Wesley, on Aldersgate Street in London on May 24, 1738, heard Luther's preface to Romans read aloud and felt his heart strangely warmed. The fire of every great spiritual awakening since the apostles has been lit from the same pages.

III. 1 Corinthians — The Functional Church

If Romans is Paul's most systematic letter, the Corinthian letters are his most pastoral. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians from Ephesus in or about AD 55. He had founded the Corinthian church on his second missionary journey (Acts 18). He had stayed in the city eighteen months, working as a tentmaker by day and preaching by night. Corinth was a great commercial port — wealthy, multicultural, sexually permissive, intellectually proud. After Paul left, the church he had planted began to fall apart. The congregation split into competing factions. A man in the church was living openly in incest. Believers were taking each other to pagan courts. There was confusion over marriage, food, gender roles, head coverings, the Lord's Supper, spiritual gifts, and the resurrection. The Corinthian church was a beautiful disaster, and Paul wrote to put it back together.

The structure of 1 Corinthians follows Paul's responses to two kinds of input. Chapters 1–6 respond to what Paul had heard about the church "by the household of Chloe" (1 Corinthians 1:11) — divisions, immorality, lawsuits. Chapters 7–16 respond to a letter the Corinthians had sent him with their own questions — "now concerning the things of which you wrote to me" (1 Corinthians 7:1). What follows is the single most practical Christian-living manual in the New Testament. Marriage and singleness (chapter 7). Food sacrificed to idols and Christian liberty (chapters 8–10). Worship and the Lord's Supper (chapter 11). Spiritual gifts and the Body of Christ (chapter 12). Love as the supreme gift, in the most famous chapter Paul ever wrote (chapter 13). The proper use of tongues and prophecy in the assembly (chapter 14). And then, towering over all of it, the great resurrection chapter — "Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?" (1 Corinthians 15:12). The key verse holds it all together: "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify" (1 Corinthians 10:23). Liberty must serve love. That is the functional church.

IV. 2 Corinthians — The Pastor's Heart

Paul wrote 2 Corinthians from Macedonia, perhaps a year after the first letter, in or about AD 56. Between the two letters Paul had passed through what he calls in chapter 1 a trial in Asia that pressed him "out of measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life" (2 Corinthians 1:8). He had also been wounded by the Corinthian church itself — by their suspicion, their criticism of his ministry, and the appearance among them of false apostles claiming to be more spiritual than he was. If 1 Corinthians is Paul's instruction manual, 2 Corinthians is Paul's open heart. It is the most personal letter he ever wrote.

The letter has three movements. Chapters 1–7 defend Paul's apostolic ministry and his pastoral integrity. Chapters 8–9 organize the great relief offering for the impoverished saints in Jerusalem — the most extended teaching on Christian giving in the New Testament. "God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7) sits in this section. Chapters 10–13 turn fierce, as Paul defends his apostleship against the so-called "super-apostles" who had infiltrated the church. The signature confession of the letter — and arguably the most beautiful sentence Paul ever wrote about Christian weakness — is in chapter 12. Paul, after recounting a vision of being caught up to the third heaven, says he was given "a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure" (12:7). Three times he begged the Lord to take it away. The Lord's reply became Paul's pastoral motto for the rest of his life: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (12:9). The functional church is not the strong church. The functional church is the weak church carried by the strong Christ.

V. Galatians — Liberty in the Gospel

Galatians is the shortest of these three letter clusters, and the hottest. It is Paul's charter of Christian liberty. Paul wrote it to the churches of Galatia in central Asia Minor — churches he had founded on his first missionary journey (Acts 13–14) — after he heard that traveling Jewish teachers known as Judaizers had moved into the region behind him. They were telling Paul's converts that faith in Christ was a fine start, but to be truly saved they also needed to be circumcised and keep the Mosaic law. Paul exploded. There is no salutation of thanksgiving in Galatians as there is in every other Paul letter. He skips the kindnesses and goes straight for the throat. "I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel" (Galatians 1:6).

The letter has three sections. Chapters 1–2 defend the divine origin of Paul's gospel — it came to him not from men but by direct revelation of Jesus Christ. Chapters 3–4 argue from Scripture itself, from Abraham to Habakkuk, that the just have always lived by faith, never by works of the law. Chapters 5–6 apply the doctrine to the Christian life: liberty is not a license to sin; it is the freedom to walk in the Spirit and produce the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). The key verse of Galatians is one verse from Paul's own pen that has been quoted by every revival preacher since the Reformation: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).

VI. Law and Grace — The Heart of Galatians

The story is told of an old Native American believer who attended a Sunday school class in Oakland, California in the 1920s. The young people were arguing about law and grace, and could not seem to come to a clear understanding. Finally one of them turned to him and said, "Friend, can you help us?" The old man stood up and said: "Let me try. When my pastor brought me from Arizona we took a train, and we got off at Barstow at the most beautiful train station I have ever seen. I walked all around the station, and at one end I saw a sign that said, 'Do not spit here.' I looked at that sign, and looked down at the ground, and saw that many had spit there, and before I had even finished thinking, I had spit there myself. Isn't that strange — when the sign says 'Do not spit'? Then we came to Oakland, and I went to the home of the lady who invited me to dinner today. I have never been in a finer home. Beautiful carpets, fine furniture, a grand piano. I looked all around the rooms for a sign that said, 'Do not spit here.' I could not find one. I thought, what a pity in such a beautiful home that they do not have a sign — people will spit all over it. But I looked all over those carpets, and nobody had spit there. What a queer thing! Where the sign was, people spit. Where there was no sign, nobody spit. Now I understand. The sign is the law. Inside the home is grace. They love their beautiful home. They want to keep it clean. They do not need a sign to tell them so."

That is Galatians in one parable. The law says do not. Grace says I am loved. The law commands from the outside. Grace transforms from the inside. The law shows the sinner what he is. Grace shows the sinner what he is becoming. A duck hunter caught out in a Georgia brush fire knew the only way to survive was to light another small fire around himself and stand inside the burned-over ground while the wall of flame swept over the spot where the fire had already passed. "Fire does not pass where fire has already passed." Calvary is the burned-over ground. The wrath of God has already passed over the spot where the Lord Jesus stood, and the believer who stands in Christ does not have to fear the brush fire of judgment, because the fire has already gone through. That is grace.

VII. The Body of Christ — The Heart of 1 Corinthians 12

1 Corinthians 12 was the most important chapter in the New Testament for understanding how a local church is supposed to work. Paul takes the human body as his picture. The body has many members — eyes, ears, hands, feet — and each member has a different function, but every one of them is necessary, and every one of them belongs. "There should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it" (1 Corinthians 12:25–26).

The chapter teaches three things every congregation needs to learn. (1) Diversity is not a problem; it is the design. The eye is not better than the foot; the hand is not better than the ear; the church is meant to be a body of many gifts and many backgrounds, not a row of identical pews. (2) Every member matters. The most hidden member — the one who serves quietly, who prays, who comforts, who gives without recognition — is in Paul's word more abundant honor than the visible parts (12:23). (3) Love is the only nervous system that holds the body together. Take Paul's body metaphor in chapter 12 and add chapter 13 — the love chapter — and you have the functional church. "And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:2). Without love, the body falls apart. With love, the body becomes the dwelling place of Christ.

VIII. The Resurrection Chapter

And over all the practical chaos of Corinth, Paul throws one chapter that anchors everything: 1 Corinthians 15. Some at Corinth had begun to deny the bodily resurrection of the dead. Paul answers with the longest sustained argument on the resurrection in the New Testament. He starts with the historical fact: Christ died, was buried, rose on the third day, appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve, then to over five hundred at once, most of whom were still alive when Paul was writing — go ask them (15:5–6). Then he draws the line: "If Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins" (15:17). But He is risen. And because He is, the believer has a coming resurrection. The chapter climaxes with Paul shouting to the cemetery in the language of Hosea: "O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?" (15:55).

1 Corinthians 15 is the verse the Christian funeral was made for. A believer does not bury a corpse; a believer plants a seed. "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body" (15:44). The functional church does not give up at the graveside. It plants and waits, because the resurrection of Jesus has guaranteed that no grave that holds a believer holds him long.

IX. Three Letters, One Liberty

Consider what the connecting thread is that runs through these three Pauline letter clusters. It comes down to one word: liberty. Romans gives the believer liberty from condemnation — the chains of guilt fall off when the soul stands in Romans 8. The Corinthians give the believer liberty in the Body — the freedom to be different, to serve in love, to use one's particular gift, to belong without conformity. Galatians gives the believer liberty through grace — the freedom from the treadmill of trying to earn what Christ has already purchased. Three letters. One liberty. One Christ.

And so the apostle who once stood breathing threats and murder against the disciples in Damascus, who lay blinded on the road, who was carried by the hand into the house of Judas on the Street called Straight, became the apostle of liberty for the rest of the world. "Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage" (Galatians 5:1). Press on, my friend, into the rest of the New Testament with the same Lord who freed Paul on the Damascus Road, who freed Augustine in the garden of Milan, who freed Luther in the lecture hall of Wittenberg, who freed Wesley on Aldersgate Street, and who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Stand fast in His liberty. Amen.

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