JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He
was buried, that He was raised on the third day according the Scriptures" (1 Co 15:3-4). Paul did
not originate this Gospel; it was "received."
In 1 Thessalonians, one of his earliest epistles, Paul said, ". . . we preached the gospel of
God to you" (1 Th 2:9). This is the same gospel he defined to the Corinthian believers. He then
added, ". . . when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it
not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God" (1 Th 2:13). Here is a claim
from a New Testament book that the message proclaimed by Paul in the New Testament is
(1) the word of God, and (2) that it produced an effect upon those who believed it. This
confidence in the authority of the message led Paul to write a second letter to the believers at
Thessalonica and warn them:
"If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him.
Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed. Yet do not regard
him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother" (3:14).
Paul adjured the Thessalonian community to read his letter "to all the brothers" (5:27).
He directed a letter to be circulated to other communities beyond the original destination
(Col 4:16). This leads to the assumption that Paul would have considered any given letter as
generally authoritative since he preached, as he affirmed, the same gospel to all (1 Co 4:17).
Even in the case where he does not have a specific command from the Lord and thus his
command is secondary to the "word of the Lord" (7:12ff; 9:17ff.), it is nevertheless a command
that may stand alongside the command of the crucified and risen Lord. Paul acts as one whose
apostolate is from God and thus clearly hears the word of God and teaches it with such
confidence and conviction that rejecting his message is tantamount to rejecting Christ Himself
(Mk. 8:38) and can only result in damnation (Gal 1:8).
This does not mean that all apostolic writings which were authoritative and thus
canonical must have been preserved. It seems that at least three of the Pauline letters did not
become a part of the canon (1 Co 5:9; 2 Co 2:4; Col 4:16). There have been some persuasive
arguments in recent years to show that 2 Corinthians 6:14-17:1 corresponds to the letter Paul
referred to in 1 Corinthians 5:9 and that 2 Corinthians 10-13 may represent the "painful" letter
mentioned in 2 Corinthians 2:4. It is possible, however, that a writing that was authoritative was
either superseded or simply not included in a collection. It is clear that the gospel writers, in their
authoritative account of Jesus, did not include all the tradition available to them. John, in his
gospel, hyperbolically affirms that a "world" of material was not included (Jn 21:25).64
It is clear then, that from the very outset of his writing Paul considered his own letters as
the authoritative word of God.
The epistles of Paul early became a part of the canon as Peter testifies to it as a body of
literature to be received "as the other Scriptures" (2 Pe 3:15-16).