There are thirteen letters written by Paul in the canon of Scripture. The introduction of each letter has the same basic structure.
- Identification of Author(s)
- Identification of Recipient(s)
- Greeting
- Thanksgiving
- Prayer
There are letters that leave out the thanksgiving or prayer. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul moves quickly from the greeting to expressing his astonishment at the Galatians following the Judaizers. In his first letter to Timothy, Paul gets down to the business of discussing false teachers immediately after the greeting. Eight of the letters do have the thanksgiving section, including 1 Corinthians.
In the thanksgiving, Paul normally expresses his thanks to God for some quality of the recipients about which he has heard. The dominant theme in these thanksgivings is the demonstrated faith and love of the recipients. Now this observation could itself be a topic for discussion, but that is not the focus of this short essay. It does serve as a contrast to the thanksgiving for the Corinthians. Paul thanks God for them “because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus (NIV).” It makes one wonder whether the church was so wracked with divisions, sexual immorality and immaturity that Paul could not think of anything that they have done to offer thanks to God for. Paul continues this focus on God's hand in their lives through the rest of the introduction. God did the enriching. God will keep them strong to the end. God has called them. God is faithful. It is good to know that even when we are at our worst, God is still faithful.
Comments
I was very interested in your outline of Paul's introductions.
I have just now read them all—what struck me was how much theology Paul slides in along with his greeting. Do you like "efficient" as a word to describe his writing?
Posted by: Shannon on Friday, May 13, 2005
I found it interesting how Paul stressed the sovereignty of God in many of his introductions.
Posted by: CJ Costello on Saturday, May 14, 2005
Gram: I like it that you see the sovereignty of God in all that.
Mom: We just read them all or most of them and I would say, like Shannon, he is efficient, and I would add that if you combine all the paragraphs together, you could just meditate on them as to who God, His attributes.
We also noticed that Paul tells us quite a lot of what God gives us: every spiritual blessing, compassion, comfort, hope, grace, peace, joy.
Posted by: Gram and Mom on Saturday, June 24, 2006