Week 3, Day 1
The Falling Away Begins
The apostles were very important in the early church. Jesus told them that the Holy Spirit would guide them into all the truth (John 14:26; 16:12-13). When Jesus said He’d build His church, He also said the apostles would have special authority in revealing God’s will to this new kingdom (Matthew 16:18-19; 18:18). Nobody else got this kind of authority.
Before Jesus was crucified, He prayed for all His followers to be united (John 17:20-22). So, Paul told the churches to be united (1 Corinthians 1:10-13; Philippians 1:27-28). He wrote a special message about unity to the church in Ephesus, which is sometimes called “The Bible Platform of Unity” (Ephesians 4:1-6). The apostles followed the teachings given to them by the Spirit after Jesus went up to heaven (Acts 1:1-2).
Paul wrote two letters to the church in Corinth to try to fix a lot of their problems. In chapter eleven of the first letter, he said, “And the rest I will set in order when I come” (1 Corinthians 11:34). The word “order” means to make things right or give detailed instructions about what needs to be done (Frederick William Danker, 2000). Paul also wrote to a young preacher named Titus, telling him, “For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that “are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you” (Titus 1:5). “Set in order” comes from a Greek word made of three parts: “epi,” which means “upon,” “dia” meaning “through,” and “orthos” meaning “straight.” Like how an orthodontist straightens teeth, this word means fixing what's crooked or broken. W.E. Vine said about this word, “used in Titus 1:5, in the sense of setting right again what was defective, a commission to Titus, not to add to what the apostle himself had done, but to restore what had fallen into disorder since the apostle had labored in Crete” (Vine, 1985). The apostles had the authority to fix things in the churches.
The apostles wrote letters to Christians and wanted them to read these letters to learn about God’s will (Ephesians 3:3-6). What do the following verses teach about this fact.
2 Peter 3:1-2.
2 Thessalonians 2:15.