"Gospel"
"1. The Glad Tidings of the Kingdom of God announced by Jesus Christ to the world. The body of religious doctrine taught by Jesus Christ and his Apostles. The Christian religion, the Christian revelation.
2. Identified by Protestants with their own system of belief as opposed to the perverted system of belief imputed by them to their adversaries; also applied by Puritans and modern evangelicals as the doctrine of salvation solely through trust in the merit of Christ’s sacrifice."
The first definition represents the clear language of Jesus as reported in Matthew, Mark and Luke. The second definition is a drastic reduction of the Gospel to one of its components, the death of Jesus. The foundation of the Gospel as well as its all-encompassing scope is defined by Jesus as "the Gospel about the Kingdom of God" (Luke 4:43). Jesus presents the propagation of this Gospel as the reason for his whole saving mission: "I am under divine compulsion to preach the Gospel about Kingdom of God…That is the reason why I was commissioned" (Luke 4:43). There are 13 chapters of Matthew (3-15), 7 chapters of Mark (1-7), 5 chapters of Luke (4-8), totaling 25 chapters, recording the Gospel preaching as Jesus carried it out, in which there is not a single mention of the sacrificial death or resurrection of Jesus. Jesus "preached the Gospel" and sent others to preach it, with no inclusion of facts about his death and resurrection (which were added later). This must prove that the Christian Gospel of salvation is not a message solely about trusting the merit of Christ’s sacrifice. There is a more fundamental element in the Gospel, and it is called by Jesus (and the gospel-writers) "the Gospel about the Kingdom of God." Jesus opened his ministry by commanding belief in and commitment to that Gospel of the Kingdom as the basis of saving faith (Mark 1:14, 15). In the parable of the sower he makes repentance and belief in the Gospel of the Kingdom the essential requisite for true discipleship: "When anyone hears the word [Gospel] about the Kingdom [Matt. 13:19] the Devil comes and snatches away the word which has been sown in his heart, so that he cannot believe it and be saved" (Luke 8:12; see Mark 4:11, 12). The linkage between believing the Gospel of the Kingdom and salvation is unmistakable. This is merely a confirmation of the basis of saving faith taught from the start by Jesus when he commanded: "The Kingdom of God is at hand: Repent and believe the Gospel [of the Kingdom]" (Mark 1:14, 15). "Believe the Gospel of the Kingdom" is Jesus’ first and most fundamental command (along with his insistence on belief in the One God of his Jewish heritage — Mark 12:29ff.).
Even when Jesus did introduce the facts about his sacrificial death for sin and his resurrection to his disciples, who had already been preaching the Gospel (about the Kingdom), the disciples did not grasp those facts. As late as Luke 18:31-34, when Jesus made a third declaration of his impending death and resurrection, the apostles did not understand what was meant. The facts before us show that there are no less than 17 chapters in Matthew (3-19), 9 chapters of Mark (1-9), 14 chapters of Luke (4-17) — a total of 40 chapters — reporting the Gospel preaching of Jesus and his disciples, in which there is at first no announcement of Jesus’ death and resurrection and later no comprehension of it. This data must demonstrate to the open-minded that defining the Gospel as "trust in the meritorious death of Jesus" (definition 2, above) is inadequate as a reflection of the Bible. The biblical facts demand a definition of the Gospel which contains as its most fundamental, permanent element the "news about the Kingdom of God," and secondly the companion facts about the death and resurrection of Jesus. The definitions given above therefore describe perfectly the biblical and unbiblical definition of the Gospel. The first (1, above) describes the facts of the gospels exactly: The Gospel demands an intelligent understanding and belief in the Good News (Gospel) about the Kingdom of God (including the information about Jesus’ saving death and resurrection). The second definition (2, above) is true of the reduced version of the Gospel presented by evangelicals: Their Gospel has been shrunk to the matter of Jesus’ death and resurrection alone, without inclusion of the full content of the Gospel as it firstly and originally came from Jesus as the arch-evangelist. Since the Gospel is synonymous with the Christian faith, with Christianity itself, any loss of the content of the Gospel implies an attack on Jesus and his saving work. The loss of the Kingdom of God as the first element in the Gospel as Jesus preached it is a matter for urgent attention amongst all Bible lovers. The absence of the primary Kingdom of God component in the Gospel as currently preached is demonstrated by the total absence in current preaching and evangelical writing of the phrase "Gospel of the Kingdom" to describe the content of the essential facts to be put to the potential convert.
Other ambiguous or vague phrases have been substituted, such as "Gospel of Christ" (Is this "the Gospel about Christ" or "the Gospel which Jesus preached"?), "Gospel of the grace of God," and so on. These other phrases are actually alternative biblical titles for the Gospel and in a context in which the audience already knew that the Gospel was about the Kingdom of God, they lose their ambiguity. However, since the Gospel of the Kingdom has been so long out of circulation, the alternative phrases become confusing, since they tend to confirm the audience in the erroneous belief that the Gospel is about the death and resurrection of Jesus only. If someone should complain that Paul reduced the Gospel to facts about the death and resurrection of Jesus only, our reply would be this:
1) If Paul did not preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, he was in violation of the Great Commission by which Jesus had mandated the preaching to all nations of the exact teachings which he himself had given (Matt. 28:19, 20).
2) According to Luke’s careful reporting, Paul did in fact always preach "the Gospel about the Kingdom of God" (Acts 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31) and did not therefore limit his Gospel to the facts about Jesus’ death and resurrection only.
3) Paul in I Corinthians 15:1-3 declared that Jesus’ death and resurrection were "amongst matters of first importance" in the Gospel. He did not say they constituted the entire Gospel. In the same chapter he assumes that his audience understands the term Kingdom of God, and he uses the term characteristically as the Kingdom which cannot be inherited by a human person in his present constitution ("flesh and blood") but can be entered/inherited only at the future resurrection when Jesus returns to establish the Kingdom of God on earth (I Cor. 15:50-52).
4) Paul identifies the Gospel as the tradition which he had received from others (I Cor.15:3) and as "the word of faith which we are preaching" (Rom. 10:8). It is a Gospel held in common by the apostles and evangelists. As a corroboration of this Gospel, we find in Acts 8:12 that Philip urged belief in the "Gospel concerning the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ." Right to the end of his career, which he summarized in Miletus as the "proclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom" (Acts 20:25), Paul doggedly preached the same Gospel of the Kingdom modeled by Jesus’ evangelism: To become a Christian meant being "persuaded about the Kingdom of God and Jesus" (Acts 28:23, 24; cp. Acts 8:12). And Paul is last seen in Acts carrying out a protracted ministry in Rome as evangelist for the cause of the Kingdom of God, the heart of the Gospel as Jesus had preached it (Acts 28:30, 31). So keen is Luke to show that Paul perfectly followed the master in his public declaration of the Gospel that he reports Paul’s characteristic activity as follows: "Paul welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Messiah, with all openness, unhindered" (Acts 28:30, 31). Of Jesus Luke reports: "Jesus welcomed the multitudes and began speaking to them about the Kingdom of God" (Luke 9:11). Luke had the unique privilege of writing more of the New Testament than any other writer, and he alone reports the progress of the Christian faith both before and after the cross. Luke documents the work of the historical Jesus as preacher of the Gospel about the Kingdom and the continued work of the Risen Jesus as he continued, through the Apostles, to proclaim the same Gospel of the Kingdom.
The Kingdom of God as Password
The greatest question of all "How can I be saved?" receives a distinct answer in the teaching of Jesus. Jesus was on a mission to save the world. But what are the conditions for entry into the realm of salvation? The public has been trapped into a false way of thinking when it is told that the key to salvation is "Believe that you are a sinner; believe that Jesus died for your sins, and trust in Jesus for forgiveness." Based on a few verses taken from Romans this approach may seem plausible. The problem is that the words of Jesus himself about how to be saved are bypassed. Lesson number one in the salvation process is to listen first to Jesus. In Mark 4:11 Jesus revealed the secret: "To you the secret of the Kingdom of God has been given, but to those who are on the outside everything comes by way of parables, so that seeing they may see nothing and hearing they may understand nothing; otherwise they might turn to God and be forgiven."
Matthew records the same teaching: "Satan comes and carries off the word which has been sown in them for fear that they should believe and be saved." The knowledge of the secret of the Kingdom of God is the passport into salvation. Forgiveness according to Jesus is conditioned on an understanding of the "secret of the Kingdom of God." "To you [disciples] the secret of the Kingdom of God has been given," but not to those outside the Christian circle: "Otherwise they might turn to God and be forgiven" (Mark 4:12, NEB).
Preaching, therefore, in the New Testament constantly lays before the audience, not just the facts about the death and resurrection of Jesus, but the indispensable Gospel which tells of the Kingdom of God. Reception of the Gospel of the Kingdom, the heart of Jesus’ saving agenda, is the condition of salvation, according to Jesus. Without this information, the "password" which leads us out of death into life, there is no turning to God and consequently no forgiveness (Mark 4:11, 12). Jesus made this fundamental point constantly: "He who hears my WORD and believes Him who sent me has the Life of the Age to Come, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life" (John 5:24).
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