All of Paul’s New Testament letters were written to Christians. When it comes to salvation, is his audience significant for interpretation? Absolutely!
For starters, Christian readers do not need to be instructed how to become God’s people! They already are. While Paul’s letters do touch on principles related to salvation, no single context instructs how to present the gospel to non-believers.
If we wish to discover how Paul addressed those outside of Christ or to learn how people responded to the gospel Paul preached, we should consult texts such as: Acts 9:19-22; 13:16-41; 16:14-15,30-34,17:3-4,22-34. Some of these are mere summaries. Others provide dialogue and descriptive details.
Paul’s letters do not provide his Christian readership with insight about presenting the gospel to those outside of Christ. Yet since Paul did write about salvation, what was he doing?
In his letters to Christians Paul appealed to principles or some aspect of salvation to achieve another goal. Sometimes his purpose involved protecting the church against a false teaching (Galatians 5:4). On other occasions he might promote faithful perseverance or warn against dangerous practices (1 Corinthians 10).
Let’s take a look.
Case Study One: Romans 6
In Romans 6 Paul emphasized that a disciple’s lifestyle matters. The Christian should not persist in sin, even though grace exists. How could Paul teach this truth?
Paul chose to utilize a principle about becoming God’s people to prove lifestyle matters. He reminded his readers that in their baptism they had left a life dominated by sin and entered into a new life serving righteousness and God.
Thus no Christian should deliberately persist in a sinful lifestyle claiming grace will cover it. Why? When they obeyed from their heart a form of teaching, namely baptism, not only had they died with Christ to their old life but they were liberated from sin to walk in a new life and to serve righteousness! (Romans 6:3-4,17).
Paul’s goal was not to teach about baptism. Rather, he drew upon what they should know about their conversion to teach that a disciple’s lifestyle matters.
Case Study Two: Ephesians 2
In the first three chapters of Ephesians, Paul laid out God’s plan for working through Christ to achieve his divine purposes. To underscore how God would unite through Christ within the church both the things of heaven and of earth plus Jews and Gentiles, as well as how God would reveal through the church the riches of his grace, Paul drew upon a principle of salvation.
Those far from God and spiritually dead can be made alive with Christ in the heavenly realms by "grace through faith." Whether Paul intended to convey that God grants salvation as a gift when we rely upon Christ or that God gifted us Christ’s faith(fulness) that we might be saved and have bold access (Ephesians 2:8; 3:12) is beyond the scope of this article.
For our purposes, what is clear is Paul used a salvation principle to establish another teaching: God works through Christ to create a unified people, a temple, where God dwells by his Spirit (Ephesians 2:22). Our next case study makes it clear that Ephesians 2:8 does not provide us with an exhaustive message instructing the lost how to be saved.
The point is Paul used a principle about salvation to establish another truth, namely how God achieves his purposes. Paul was not providing disciples with an exhaustive message about what to tell the lost that they might be saved.
Case Study Three: Colossians 2
A pernicious doctrine had confronted the church at Colossae. This new teaching claimed that greater spiritual treasures and wisdom existed than what they had encountered with Christ. How would the apostle respond to such assertions?
After underscoring Christ’s supreme position above all competing powers (Colossians 1:15-20) and that "in him all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form," (Colossians 2:9), Paul made his own assertion. Christians are connected with Christ (Colossians 2:10), thus they benefit from Christ’s position. No need to jump ship for a new philosophy of secret wisdom!
To prove his point, once again Paul drew upon a salvation principle. He would use much of the same salvation language in Ephesians 2.
So how had these disciples become connected with Christ? When they were dead in their sins, God performed a surgery on them which Christ made possible that would make them alive with Christ, raised up with Christ (Colossians 2:10-13). This surgical transformation occurred at their baptism when buried with Christ and raised with him through faith in what God’s power could achieve.
This is not a text designed to teach us about baptism nor trust. Nor does it give us an exhaustive gospel message for the lost. Rather, Paul used baptism and faith to affirm that Christians are joined with Christ and thus have no need for competing philosophical teachings.
No Conflict
Paul underscores that being right with God is not based upon our ability to obey the Law, that is works, but rather upon faith. Paul also taught that faith works (1 Thessalonians 1:3). This does not conflict with James who taught that unless God’s people live out their faith it is worthless.
Failure to recognize to whom Jesus, James and Paul directed their messages as well as the function of their messages will create unnecessary conflict and confusion! Jesus, Paul and James were all in agreement. How God’s people live matters!
In his letters Paul touched on various salvation principles to educate disciples on various points. His messages were directed to God’s saved people, not the lost.
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