AFTER the Acts of the Apostles come the Epistles. An epistle is a letter, and the Epistles in the New Testament are letters which were written by the apostles; some of them to particular churches; some of them to all the churches that were then in the world; and some of them to persons who were living at that time.
When Jesus sent the apostles out to teach the people of all nations, he meant that they should do it not only by speaking to them, but also by writing to them. And he gave them the Holy Spirit to tell them both what they should speak and what they should write. What the apostles spoke is forgotten; for they have long since been dead, and so have the persons who heard them. But what they wrote, we can still read in the Epistles.
There are twenty-one epistles. Paul wrote fourteen of them, Peter two, John three, James one, and Jude, or Thaddeus, one. Like the rest of the Bible, the Epistles are the words of God, not of men; and they were meant as much for us as for those to whom they were sent at the time they were written. Whatever they teach we are to believe, remember, and obey.
We are taught in the Epistles that all the people in the world, being born with wicked hearts, have sinned against God; and that they all would be punished for their sin, had not God loved them so much as to send his only Son Jesus to be punished in their place. Yet not all of them are forgiven on this account, but only those who believe in Jesus. And how can we tell who believe in him? for a person may say he believes when he does not. We can tell by the way he acts. If he believes in Jesus, he will love him, and obey his commandments, that is, he will be a Christian.
And we are told in the Epistles how Christians ought to live, and what sort of people they should be. They should be honest, industrious, peaceable, humble, good to the poor, kind to those who are unkind to them; speaking evil of no one; loving and forgiving one another; trying to persuade others to be Christians; thankful for their blessings; patient when they have trouble; full of joy, because they expect to be saved; hating what is wicked; loving what is good; trying always to please God.
But Christians cannot do these things by themselves, because, although they desire to do them, Satan is always tempting them to sin. He is their great enemy, who, we are told, is going about like a roaring lion, seeking to destroy them. Yet they have a friend who is stronger than he. For that same Jesus who came on the earth to die for them, now looks down from heaven and watches over them. He hears their prayers, and helps them to fight against Satan's temptations. But as they are sometimes overcome and fall into sin, he, every day, asks God to forgive them.
He does more than this. Because they have not enough righteousness, or goodness, of their own to make God pleased with them, he gives them his righteousness, and God counts it the same as if it were theirs, and as if they had never sinned. And at the last day God will allow all those persons who have this righteousness to come up to heaven, where Jesus is, and where they will never be tempted to sin any more.
The Epistles tell us that as the end of the world draws near, there will be scoffers, or persons who mock at the Bible as though it were not true. They will say, If Jesus is coming again to judge the world as the Bible says he is, why is he so long in coming? They will not believe the true reason which is, that God is waiting to give wicked men time to repent, because he is not willing that any should perish, but that all should repent of their sins and have everlasting life.
But although God has waited so long, he will not wait always. For we are told that the day of the Lord, that is, the day of Judgment, shall come as a thief comes in the night, when no one will be expecting it. Then the world, with its mighty kingdoms, its splendid cities, and all the great and beautiful things that men have made, will be burned up, but the people who have lived in it, will rise up out of their graves to be judged. And now, since God has told us of this, how careful we who are Christians should be, to live holy lives, so that when the day of the Lord does come, and Jesus descends to the earth again, we may be ready to meet him.
We have read in the Gospels and in the book of Acts, that Jesus is God, and that the Holy. Ghost is God. We are taught this again in the Epistles. We are taught here that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, are three persons who rule over all things. Yet they are not three Gods, but the three together are one God. We cannot understand this any more than we can understand how God never had any beginning, or how he is in every place at one time; but we can believe it, because the Bible tells us that it is so. It is God the Father who made us; it is God the Son who died for us; it is God the Holy Ghost who comes into our hearts and makes us love Jesus, that is, who makes us Christians. We need not be afraid, therefore, of worshipping one more than the other, for they are all of them God. When we pray to Jesus, we pray to God. When we pray to the Holy Ghost, we pray to God. And when we pray to God, we pray to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.