There are, in some of Paul’s letters, some things that are…well, the only words I can say for it is astonishing
and astounding
. We spend a lot of time in these epistles explaining the problems, or expounding from those scriptures where Paul exhorts the church to do these things and do the other things, and where he addresses theological concepts, and we have had to spend lots of times with the technical problems.
What I want to look at today is not those portions of the Scriptures, but what I call the unswept corners
of Paul’s epistles—where there are some things said that are not explained, that are not really a part of a technical discussion or an advancing of a doctrine. They are things that are said that are dropped on the ears of people who are new in the faith, when the faith was new.