1878 25 Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians were not addressed to assemblies. Why? It is not only a chronological mark, though it be the last ones which do not speak of churches, which were addressed in the midst of his active ministry and moving among them.
When, as a wise master-builder, he had laid the foundation, he was still the immediate responsible caretaker of those he had founded. This public ministry was closed when he wrote to the Romans. He had never been there. It was not the case of a church he had founded. It is, before he went, an elaborate treatise on justification, and the position of the Jews as a people in reference to the "no difference" principle.
To the Philippians, though to a church he had founded, the epistle was a thanks ending for their love, showing also what walking in the Spirit really is, and its power. It is the experience of the individual in the power of the Spirit of God. It was no ordering of a church, but individual walk, and he a debtor to them for their care of him. It was therefore necessarily to the saints, not to the church, though their church order is specifically recognised.
We have still Ephesians and Colossians, the former the mystery, and, as supposed, a kind of circular, and of universal character, a thesis for all that could enter into it; and the latter (Colossians) life as it stood in the believer connected with the Head, whose fulness is largely brought out, as the doctrine of the body is unfolded in the Ephesians. The Holy Ghost shines out in Ephesians, life in Colossians, the last developed here, as contrasting in Ephesians between the old and the new man.
Philemon has a character of its own; it is to an individual, and the church in his house is added.
Thus it is Romans, and the three written in captivity in Rome, which are not to churches. It is another character of ministry. If this thought be just, we get two very distinct sets of epistles of Paul, his church ones, and his general or treatise ones, the personal ones being apart from both.