Galatians was probably his first letter, written about the time of the Jerusalem council (Acts 15), at the end of his first mission tour. It has been called the “Magna Carta” of Christianity, in that it laid down a clear statement of the freedom we have in Christ, through justification by grace through faith, in contrast to justification by works of the law. Paul made it absolutely clear that any other “gospel,” even a modification of His message of grace, was completely anathema (Gal 1:8-9).

The other three of these letters (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians) were written much later and from prison. They spoke to maturing Christians about growing in their faith, learning to apply grace in all of life. To the Ephesians, Paul wrote of the great truth, the unity of the church, that is neither Jewish nor Gentile—the mystery now revealed. The church at Ephesus had a storied history of teaching under Paul’s influence for over two years and also that of Apollos.

The letter to the Philippians challenged Christians who were living well, to grow in their knowledge of Christ, not just in breadth only, but also in depth. It was a joyful correspondence for Paul, as evidenced by his frequent references to joy and rejoicing. Indeed the growing Christian has a great deal to be joyful about, and increasingly so as we grow in our knowledge of Christ.

Colossians is a letter dealing with the superiority of Christ over the prevailing drift toward a Gnostic perversion of the gospel message of grace. In Him, we are complete and don’t need to pursue any other worldview or religious mysteries or insights. We have everything we need in Him, for the fullness of Deity dwells perfectly in Him in bodily form.

Finally, we close with pointing out that Paul’s letters are authoritative for the Christian life, as the apostle Peter recognized when he wrote of the message of salvation about which, “… Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Pet 3:15–16).