John Dekker's Day

10:06AM - Evangelism in the Church and the Home #6: For whom was the New Testament written?

The New Testament is written to Christians. It contains 27 books, of which nine (Romans – 2 Thessalonians) are explicitly written to churches, and five (1 Timothy – Philemon, 3 John) are explicitly directed towards Christian individuals. Luke and Acts are written to Theophilus, whom I think we can also regard as a believer – Luke 1:4 indicates that the gospel is being written so that Theophilus may know "the certainty of the things he had been taught".

2 John is written to the "elect lady" (which may be refer to a church); James is written to the "twelve tribes in the Dispersion", which probably refers to Jewish Christians; 1 & 2 Peter and Jude are similarly directed to to believers generally; and Revelation is written to the seven churches in Asia (Revelation 1:4).

(John's Gospel might be an exception to this, and stands as a special case. I plan to look at it in my next post in this series.)

So what does all this mean? It gives us an indication of what preaching to Christians involves. For one thing, it obviously means explaining the gospel. But it also means giving solemn warnings, and from time to time addressing unbelievers. So Romans 2:1 reads, Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. And in Galatians 1:6 Paul exclaims, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel! Being in the Church doesn't make you safe.

Hebrews is a good example of this. It is written to believers: "holy brothers, who share in a heavenly calling" (3:1). The author notes that while an unproductive field is burned, in the case of his readers he "feels sure of better things – things that belong to salvation" (6:9) But Hebrews also contains warnings – Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. (3:12)

You can be a professing Christian, who shares in the heavenly calling, and still not be born again. And even if you are elect, you are still sternly told to persevere in the faith.