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THE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN EPISTLES.

Hebrews, James, 1 Peter and Jude are a group of inspired Jewish-Christian writings differing in important respects from Paul's Epistles. This is a difference, not a conflict. All present the same Christ, salvation and morality. The difference is one of extension of development. The Jewish-Christian writings deal with the elementary and foundational things of the Gospel, while to Paul were given the revelations concerning the church, her place in  the counsels of God, and the calling and hope of the believer as vitally united to Christ in the one body.

The other characteristic difference is that while Paul has in view the body of true believers, who are therefore assuredly saved, the Judea-Christian writers view the church as a professing body in which, during this age, the wheat and tares are mingled (Mt.13.24-30).

Their writings, therefore, abound in warnings calculated to arouse and alarm the mere professor. A word of caution however - the persons warned are neither mere hypocrites, nor mere formalists. 

As far as they are concerned their experiences are perfectly genuine. It's said of them they had been "enlightened," (Heb, 6:4-9) and the same word is used in Heb. 10.32, translated "illuminated".

They are said to have "tasted" of the heavenly gift, and again a word importing reality is used, for it occurs in Heb.2.9 of the death of Christ. The true point of the divine solicitude is expressed in vs 1 & 2. It is that they shall go on. They have made a real beginning, but it is not said they have faith, and it is said (vs.9) that "things that accompany salvation" are "better." This fear lest beginners will 'come short" is the theme of Heb.3:7-4.  The men in Mt.7: 21-23 are not conscious hypocrites - they are utterly surprised at their exclusion. Characteristic contrasts are, Heb. 6:46 with Rom.8:29-39; 2 Pet. 1.10 with Phil. 1:6. In this respect these Epistles group with Mt.13-23, Ac.2-9. The two Epistles of Peter, however, are less Jewish and more truly catholic than the other Jewish­ Christian writings. He addresses, in his first Epistle, neither Jews as such, nor even Christian Jews of Jerusalem or Judea, but of the dispersion, while Second Peter is not distinctively Jewish at all.