Amongst many most encouraging letters from radio listeners, I [Anthony Buzzard] received this from a Roman Catholic professor and author:
“I think it is relevant for me to say that I am a professor of theology and of
New Testament at a Roman Catholic institution…and that I think that your
publication Focus on the Kingdom is theologically important, however much it
may be neglected by the sector that I represent. You address radically
important issues in Christian theology which are entirely appropriate because, in fact, the theological exercise is only adolescent and in need of further
guidance. I think you are doing a good work that I hope will eventually have an
impact on my own church tradition. There is much work to be done before we can,
collectively, think clearly and I am glad that your magazine’s honesty about
these things is so unflinching.”
Words like this can embolden us all to communicate by all available means what
we are finding in Scripture. They strengthen my conviction that the central
truths of the Abrahamic Faith (the land/seed promise made to Abraham as the
basis of the Covenant confirmed in Jesus’ Kingdom Gospel teaching and in his
death and resurrection) do in fact reflect the “faith once delivered to the
saints” which the brother of Jesus urges us, at all costs, to recapture (Jude
3). From email, internet and radio contact, as well as from the exciting new
students who arrive at Atlanta Bible College, I am collecting more and more
“case histories” of men and women who are excited and radically changed by
learning for the first time in their lives that the Gospel in the New Testament
is centered on the Kingdom of God; indeed that Jesus was the prototype preacher
and herald of the Gospel, and that he never dreamed that he was God.
His understanding of himself was that he was the Messiah, the Son of God. The
“Gospel of Jesus the Messiah” means the Gospel as it came from the lips of Jesus
(i.e., a subjective genitive: Jesus is the author of the Gospel), not just a
Gospel about how Jesus died and rose from the dead. Mark opened with “the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah,” and then began to describe the preaching of John and the preaching
of Jesus. This is the non-negotiable foundation of the Gospel. John and Jesus
were united in their concept of the Gospel as the Gospel of the Kingdom (Matthew 3:2; 4:17, 23).
If these premises are sound, the whole of church history is fundamentally
changed. What is known as “orthodoxy” is in fact not that at all, but simply
one of various belief options which competed with others in the early centuries
AD and won out, setting the pace and the pattern for centuries to come. The
dominant party won out, not because it was true to the Scriptures, but because
it managed to muster more clout, especially as aided by the Roman state. Numerous scholars know that the faith fell away from New Testament
standards of truth, starting in the second century, and that things have never
been the same since. Dissenters like ourselves, and many who went before us,
have challenged the status quo, and we must, if we are going to be any use to
the Messiah and the world, continue to do this. “He who is ashamed of me and my
words, I will be ashamed of him when I come back” (Mark 8:38). So said Jesus,
and he also observed that salt that has lost its savor is of no value.
For some two thousand years the notion has prevailed in Christendom that the
NT’s central, saving figure is really a preexisting, pre-historical, pre-human,
pre-earthly person, the second member of an eternal Triune Godhead. It is
admitted on all hands that this concept of God as three is nowhere directly stated in the Bible. The Oxford Companion to the Bible says, with a rather
annoying British understatement, that the Trinity “cannot be easily detected
within the confines of the canon.” But the prevailing opinion continues to
maintain that an eternal “God the Son” is nevertheless clearly in Scripture by
implication and is by all means to be embraced with conviction. Failure to do
so, many say, will result in being burned for ever and ever.
Now this is a challenging theological world to live in! Michael Servetus paid
with his life-blood for daring to question this false Trinitarian
proposition. Calvin, the reformer, who also read the Sermon on the Mount,
authorized Servetus’ judicial murder in 1553. But then John Calvin was fiercely
unsympathetic to those “pestilent Anabaptists” (as he called them) who
believed that the dead are actually dead until the resurrection. Calvin also
accused the trained disciples and Apostles of Messiah of completely misunderstanding
what the Kingdom of God is. Calvin, you will remember, in his commentary on
Acts 1:6, “Is this the time to restore the Kingdom to Israel?” declared that in
asking this question the Messiah’s students committed “more errors than there
are words in that question” — some 11 errors!
I propose that we dissenters marshal our case against the Trinitarian cause,
which features in Christian book after Christian book, in tract after tract,
and systematic theology text after systematic theology text. We are up against
a huge industry and propaganda, and, I think, a colossal ecclesiastical muddle,
defended by astonishing verbal complexities. Our task is to witness on behalf
of “the only one who is truly God” (John 17:3). Jesus identified that God- Yehovah as
his Father. I propose that we urge Bible readers to go back to the beginning as
Jesus did, to explain who he is. “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets Jesus
expounded to them in all the Scriptures all the things concerning himself”
(Luke 24:27).
It is impossible to imagine, if one has read Deuteronomy 18:15-18, that the
Messiah was going to be God Himself. That text, a favorite of Peter’s and
Stephen’s (Acts 3:22, 7:37), expressly states that the Messiah will not be God.
The Savior is to originate in the family of Israel, a prophet like
Moses arising from among the Israelites. How appallingly confusing, and misleading, if God- Yehovah were then to eventually send a Messiah who was actually God
Himself, existing consciously from eternity. This would be to overthrow the
sacred testimony of Deuteronomy 18:15-18 and many other equally unambiguous Old
Testament promises.
The Messiah, so the Jews were informed by their holy writings - and this is
their belief today - was to be “the seed of Eve,” “the star arising in Israel,”
the son of Abraham and the seed of David. The record of his origin dated back
to early times (Micah 5:2, NASV). He was to be born in Bethlehem, and he was to
be superior to Moses. In the OT’s most celebrated divine utterance (Psalm 110:1,
very prominent in the NT), the Messiah was to be “my lord” (adoni). Adoni in
all of its 195 appearances is never a reference to the Deity. God- Yehovah did not speak
to God, but to His human agent. Jesus loved that psalm (Matthew 22:41-46) and
used it to settle all disputes.
If, after all, the Messiah was an uncreated eternal being, how, on this
evidence, could Israel, or anyone else, have recognized the Messiah when he
came, if in fact he claimed to be God Himself? No Jew would have countenanced
the notion that God was going to be the son of David or of Eve! What in
post-biblical times became the “orthodox,” required view of the Son of God
implies a tricky curveball thrown at Israel. It contradicts the plain
expectations about who the Savior was to be, as described in the pages of their
Holy Scripture.
It also contradicts the earliest pages of the New Testament. Matthew has, in
fact, not presented us with an uncreated, eternal Son. Matthew could not
possibly therefore have believed in the Trinity.
If we begin at the beginning of the New Testament, we can make our case with
success. Matthew has given us a detailed account of the origins of the Messiah.
He is first said to be the descendant of Abraham and David (1:1), just as we
would expect from the OT promises. But more than this, in Matthew 1:18, Matthew
addressed the specifics of the “origin” of Jesus the Messiah. “Now the genesis[1]
[origin, creation, origination, beginning] of Jesus was like this: When his
mother, Mary, was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she found
that she was pregnant through the action of the holy spirit.”
What could be clearer? Matthew speaks of the genesis of the Messiah, not just
his birth. Admittedly, birth in the Bible, and outside, means that a new person
enters into life, but genesis points to how that life originated. Matthew 1:20:
“Do not be afraid, Joseph, to take your wife home, for what was begotten in her
(to en autee genneethen) is from the Holy Spirit.” Note the slightly clouded
translation in our versions, “conceived.” Mary certainly did conceive, but what
the text emphasizes is the activity of the Father begetting, generating,
initiating the life of a new person. We have already had that same verb “beget”
40 times in Matthew 1 (“so and so begat so and so”). It would be a grave
contradiction of this matchless narrative to import into it the idea that in
fact a previously existing Son of God was transmuted or transformed, or indeed
transformed himself, into a new person or fetus. That whole idea is more akin
to reincarnation. It is reminiscent of the very pagan idea that “the gods have
come down to us in the likeness of men” (Acts 14:11) or of Nicodemus’ naïve
question about entering from outside into the womb of one’s mother. What
Matthew has described is the beginning, the origin, the creation, indeed, of a
new personality in the womb of his mother. The miracle is local and historical.
And that person is the Son of God. At that moment of history the Son of God
comes into being. There is no suggestion that he is exchanging one form of
existence for another.
Gnostics are not keen on history and fact, and so the story was changed in the
second century by gnostically-minded Christians. Gnostics were the ones who
sought to make Jesus less of a Jewish figure and more of a universal member of
the Pantheon. This is the age-old ecumenical tendency: Let’s make Jesus a
universal religious figure! Would he not then be more attractive to a greater
diversity of people? What good would a Jewish Messianic Jesus be? (So the
argument went.) The Gnostic twist showed good promotion techniques, maybe, but
it was fundamentally false to the true, original Messiah. It promoted the
ever-present danger of “another Jesus.”
So, then, a “larger-than-life” fictional, legendary dimension was added to the
portrait of Jesus, superimposed on the biblical text, to the effect that the
Son had not in fact been given existence in his mother’s womb but had
engineered his own “conception” in Mary. A false halo was added to Jesus. He suffered
the fate of other religious leaders like the Buddha. He was divinized. He was
really not a human being after all but a visitor from another world. The remark
of a Roman Catholic priest on TV was entirely explicable based on the
new, revised story: “God came to Mary one day and said ‘Mary, will you please
be my mother?’”
With this amazing alteration in the identity of Jesus, “the historical Jesus
completely disappeared” (Martin Werner, The Formation of Dogma, p. 298). The
same author, who was professor of Systematic Theology at Bern, Switzerland,
observed that early Catholicism was really a new Hellenistic mystery religion
with “Jesus” at its center.
Luke’s account of the beginning of the Son of God is equally clear. Neither he
nor Matthew could possibly have been Trinitarians or even Binitarians, and
would have been automatically disqualified from pastorship in the main
denominations today. Thus Luke in his brilliant and succinct account of the
visitation of Mary by Gabriel: “Holy Spirit will come over you [Mary], and the
power of the Most High will overshadow you, and for that reason precisely the
one being begotten will be called Son of God.” “For that reason…” There is a
clear causal connection between the Sonship of Jesus and his miraculous
begetting. Jesus is the Son of God, not because of any prior existence in
eternity (Trinitarianism) or from just before the Creation of the world
(Arianism), but because he is the new creation in Mary and in history, under
the direct influence of the Father through the Holy Spirit. This, surely, is the
coming into being of the last Adam. This is God’s- Yehovah's ultimate Son, who arises as a
blood descendant of David, as the prophecies demand for the Messiah. When the
Solomon line was cursed in Jehoiakin (Jer. 22:28: “Is this man Coniah
[Jehoiakin] a despised broken idol? Why are they cast out, he and his seed,
into a land which they do not know? Oh earth, earth, earth, hear the word of
God…Write this man down as childless, for none of his seed will prosper sitting
on the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah”), Jehoiakin’s natural
descendants were disqualified from sitting on the royal throne of Israel.
Another Davidide was apparently “borrowed” from the line from David through
Nathan (Luke 3:27-31), and thus the blood line from David to Jesus was
established. Jesus was related to David through his mother and legally so
through his father.[2] His real Father, of course, was God- Yehovah, who undertook the New
Creation of the Last Adam, and he worked within an Israelite maiden. Paul
confirms that this is the proper order of events when he says that the “first
Adam was of the earth, earthy; the second Adam is to be the lord from heaven.”
But “the spiritual man was not first” (see I Corinthians 15:45-47).
As early as the beginning of the second century, this story was being turned on
its head: 2 Clement: “Christ- the Messiah, the one who saves us, being first spirit became
flesh.” “That,” observes Harnack, “is the fundamental theological and
philosophical creed on which the whole Trinitarian and Christological
speculations [note the word!] of the Church of the succeeding centuries are
built, and it is thus the root of the orthodox system of dogmatics” (History of
Dogma, Vol. 1, p. 328).
What we are proposing about Matthew’s and Luke’s understanding of who Jesus is
has been powerfully affirmed by the celebrated Roman Catholic scholar, the late
Raymond Brown, in his detailed work on the Birth of the Messiah (Doubleday,
1979).
Raymond Brown and Preexistence
He shows conclusively that neither Matthew nor Luke believed that the Son of
God had existed literally before his birth. Thus these writers could not have
been “orthodox” in the modern sense. For them the creation/begetting/coming
into existence of the Son was by miracle in Mary. They promote a Jesus alien to
the Trinitarian Jesus of post-biblical Christianity.
The idea that Jesus merely changed form from spirit to flesh at his birth is
foreign to the whole NT. “Incarnation” is in fact more like transmigration or
reincarnation. If the Son was alive before his begetting, he was not really born
at all. Birth implies the coming into existence of a new person. Jesus, the Son
of God, was not in transit between two worlds or forms of existence. His
beginning was in about 2/33 B.C.
“Matthew and Luke press [the question of Jesus’ identity] back to Jesus’
conception. In the commentary I shall stress that Matthew and Luke show no
knowledge of preexistence; seemingly for them the conception was the becoming
(begetting) of God’s Son. The harmonization whereby a preexistent Word takes on
flesh...is attested only in the [later] NT period” (p. 31).
“The fact that Matthew can speak of Jesus as ‘begotten’ (passive of gennan)
suggests that for him the conception through the agency of the holy spirit is
the becoming of God’s Son. [In Matthew’s and Luke’s “conception Christology”]
God’s creative action in the conception of Jesus begets Jesus as God’s
Son...There is no suggestion of an incarnation whereby a figure who was previously
with God takes on flesh. For preexistence Christology [Incarnation], the
conception of Jesus is the beginning of an earthly career but not the begetting
of God’s Son. [Later] the virginal conception was no longer seen as the
begetting of God’s Son, but as the incarnation of God’s Son, and that became
orthodox Christian doctrine. This thought process is probably already at work
at the beginning of the second century in Ignatius of Antioch (Hoben, Virgin
Birth, 20-21); Aristides, Apology 15:1; Justin, Apology 1:21 and 33; Melito of
Sardis, Discourse on Faith 4” (pp.140, 141, 142).
“Just as one should not confuse the conception Christology found in Matthew and
Luke’s infancy narratives with the preexistence Christology of John’s
prologue[3]...[one cannot speak of] an incarnation in Matthew and Luke. Also
one should not read ‘God with us’ in a Nicene sense, as if it were identifying
Jesus with God. For Matthew Jesus is the expression of God’s presence with His
people. Matthew is not one of the NT works which begins to call Jesus ‘God.’
And of course no NT work achieves the clarity of the council of Nicea in
calling him ‘true God of true God’” (p. 150).
“It is the virginal conception that serves now as the begetting of God’s Son”
(p. 181).
Luke 1:35: ’Will be called’ — calling brings to expression what one is, so
that it means no less than ‘he will be’ (cp. Matthew 5:9: ‘will be called Sons of
God’ and Luke 6:5: ‘you will be sons of the Most High’)” (pp. 289, 290, 291).
“The combination of spirit and power is very Lukan, occurring in Luke 1:17,
4:14, Acts 1:8, 6:5, 8, 10:38). Not knowing the rules of parallelism in
biblical poetry which make it clear that ‘power from the Most High’ is
synonymous with ‘Holy Spirit’ some patristic and medieval theologians thought
that the reference in 1:35, b, c, were respectively to the Third and Second Persons
of the Trinity, so that ‘power’ was the Second Person descending to take flesh
in Mary’s womb. As we shall see, there is no evidence that Luke thought of the
incarnation of a preexistent.”
Luke 1:35: “‘Therefore’ - Of the nine times dio kai occurs in the NT, three are
in Luke/Acts. It involves a certain causality and Lyonnet (L’annonciation,
61.6) points out that this has embarrassed many orthodox theologians since in
preexistence [orthodox] Christology a conception by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s
womb does not bring about the existence of God’s Son. Luke is seemingly unaware
of such a Christology; conception is causally related to divine Sonship for
him.
“‘Will be called Son of God’ - It is tantamount to saying ‘he will be.’ And so
I cannot follow those theologians who try to avoid the causal connotation in
the ‘therefore’ which begins this line, by arguing that for Luke the conception
of the child does not bring the Son of God into being, but only enables us to
call Him ‘Son of God’ who already was Son of God.”
“However, there is no evidence that Luke had a theology of incarnation or
preexistence; rather for Luke (1:35) divine Sonship seems to have been brought
about through the virginal conception ...Jesus was conceived and born, and that
is solidarity enough with the human race” (p. 432).
“First, in orthodox Christian belief, Jesus would be God’s Son no matter how he
was conceived, since his is an eternal Sonship not dependent upon the
incarnation...In Matthew and Luke the virginal conception was connected with an
articulation of the divine Sonship of Jesus” (p.529). “Both narratives develop
the Christological insight that Jesus was the Son of God from the first moment
of his conception” (p. 561).
“Later Christian orthodoxy understood Jesus to have preexisted as God’s Son in
a non-corporeal manner from all eternity...that view [does not correspond to
any Lukan thought]” (p. 90).
Luke and Matthew: “There is more of a connotation of creativity. Mary is not
barren, and in her case the child does not come into existence because God
cooperates with the husband’s generative action...Rather Mary is a virgin who
has not known man, and therefore the child is totally God’s work — a new
creation....I have stressed...that Luke does not think of a preexistent Son of
God...Only in second-century writings do we find the Lukan and Johannine
concepts combined into an incarnation of a preexistent deity (see Ignatius,
Ephesians 7:2, Smyrnians 1:1, combined with Magnesians 8:2, also Aristides,
Apology 15:1, Justin, Apology, 1 21, 33. Melito, Discourse on Faith, 4)” (p.
314).
“Luke had no difficulty in stating that Jesus grew in wisdom and God’s
favor…This saying caused great difficulty for later Christian theologians
raised upon a Nicene Christology of eternal preexistence, for they could not
admit that an incarnate Word could grow in wisdom or grace. Renie lists their
theories on how such a growth could not mean a growth of grace of union or sanctifying
grace, but only the exterior manifestation of a grace already possessed. Today
we would see these as problems of systematic theology rather than of exegesis”
(p. 483).
I think that the backing of a distinguished NT scholar for our view of Jesus is
of great value as we present Jesus to the public. We might add that Paul speaks
of the Son of God who “came into existence from a woman” (Galatians 4:4; Romans 1:3).
Paul uses the word ginomai = to come into being, rather than the ordinary word
“was born” (gennao). In Galatians 4:23, 29 he speaks of the birth of Esau using
the normal word for birth (gennao). Paul appears to be stressing that the birth
of Jesus, the Son of God, was not only his birth but his entrance into existence.
The Seed and the Seeds
It is well established, then, that Jesus is the seed of the woman promised as
the world’s remedy soon after the catastrophic fall of man (Genesis 3:15).
Galatians 3:19 makes Jesus the recipient of the promise. Not only is he the
promised redeemer, but he is “the one to whom the promise was made.” Jesus, in other
words, is the heir to the world-throne and commissioned to supervise a coming
new world order with headquarters in Jerusalem (Jeremiah 23:5, etc.). The Bible is, after all, really about one thing: Who gets the land? What could be more
pertinent to the present chaos in the Middle East?
Christians know how the
story ends. It ends with the Messiah in charge, equipped to bring the wicked to
justice and promote the righteous to positions of influence (Isaiah 32:1; Proverbs 25:5; Daniel 7:18, 22, 27). In the interim, by the way, it is important not to be
misled into thinking that ethnic Israel can expect to dwell in the land
peacefully, while she is in disobedience to the Messiah who has come and is
coming again. Possession of the land was never unconditional. It was for
unbelief that the exile under Nebuchadnezzar occurred. It was through unbelief
that Israel was again expelled from the land in AD 70. And for the same
unbelief she is destined to suffer the great tribulation, “the time of Jacob’s
trouble” (Jeremiah 31). Final repentance of the remnant of ethnic Israel will
enable them to survive into the times of the Kingdom, the 1,000-year rule of the lord Messiah Jesus. So there is indeed a
future for Israel when she accepts her Messiah. [Notice Zechariah 12:10-14] Acceptance of that Messiah
would be immensely easier (as also for Muslims) if the Abrahamic version of who
Jesus is were presented to them. Why should a Muslim or Jew accept a Jesus who is
part of a Triune God?
Jesus’ story, indeed the story of the Bible as a whole, is nothing but a royal,
Davidic, Messianic story. It is spiritual politics from start to finish. The
Devil has really only one trick, and that is to separate Jesus from his
teachings. You can preach “Jesus” endlessly, but is this really Jesus if he is
divorced from his own teachings/Gospel? If we reread the New Testament
with this in mind, we find so much of the writing there dedicated to saying
“you must hold on to the Word, and by Word is meant the Gospel of the Kingdom.”
“Word” in the Bible is not just a synonym for the Bible. It means the saving
Gospel, the heart of the Bible. The “word” is to the Scripture as the “core” is
to the apple or the bull’s eye to the target. Satan is a master of getting rid
of the essential information. Muddle the language, and you have everything confused.
While the public knows only that “the Bible is the word of God,” Jesus said, “the seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11).
Jesus counteracts this verbal confusion with his brilliant clarity. He had read
Ezekiel’s parable of the royal cedar tree (Ezekiel 17). He knows himself to be
God’s ally and bearer of God’s Gospel of the Kingdom. Thus he embarks on the
work of spreading the news of the New Order coming. He is the purveyor of the
formula of immortality. All life springs from a seed. Seeds bear fruit. Based
on that fundamental notion about seeds presented also in Genesis 1, Jesus goes
about creating the new creation. He sows the royal family, his own brothers and
sisters, by sowing his seed (Luke 8:5). His name for a Christian is “a Son of
the Kingdom” or a “disciple of the Kingdom” — royal sons or royal students. The
Messiah, having redefined the family as “those who hear the word and do it,”
conveys the secret about how this divine Kingdom life is to be acquired and
propagated:
“The sower went out to sow his seed.” The analogy with reproduction is obvious.
Jesus reproduces himself in others by transmitting the seed message of the
Kingdom (Matthew 13:19), which dwells firstly in him. The seed Message has been
part of his DNA, so to speak, since the moment God created the Son in Mary’s
womb. The Son is marked out by the Father at his baptism at the hands of John,
an important and necessary stage of the Christian career as the public sealing
of our Kingdom confession. The voice of the Father provides the commentary:
“This is my beloved Son. Listen to what he has to say” - not just “Watch him
die and be buried and rise.” “Listen to what he preaches as Gospel. Listen to
his instructions about being reborn for immortality. He who has ears to hear,
let him hear.” It is rather fascinating that Luke reports: “When he said these
things [the parable of the sower] he would customarily raise his voice” (Luke
8:8).
WWJD (“What would Jesus do?”) ought also to read “WWJS — What would Jesus say?”
Jesus provided the script for all evangelism when he commanded: “Preach that the
Kingdom is at hand.”
How strange that the word Kingdom is absent from almost every evangelical tract
that has ever been printed!
Before the massively important parable of the sower, Jesus has redefined the
family. When his parents seek to talk to him, he diverts attention to a much
greater truth. “Who are my mother and father?” Those who hear the word of God,
the Gospel, and do it.
His real affinity is not with Mary and Joseph (who even thought at one stage
that their son had gone out of his mind), but with those who respond to the
Kingdom Message. Jesus, as George Ladd observed, “divides society into the two
antithetical camps, those who hear and understand the Gospel of the Kingdom and
those who do not.” These two camps represent the two races of human beings —
the degenerates and the regenerates. Unless a man begins all over again, unless
he is born from above, born again, “he cannot see or enter the Kingdom of God.”
“If they understood and received the Gospel of the Kingdom [Matthew 13:19] they
would repent and be forgiven” (Mark 4:11, 12). That is the bottom line of all of
Jesus’ theology.
It is interesting to ask audiences: If being born again is absolutely essential for salvation - rebirth under the influence of the Spirit - why is it
that Jesus, according to Matthew, Mark and Luke, did not ever use that phrase
about rebirth? Why do Matthew, Mark and Luke not mention being “born again” in
so many words? The answer must be that it is impossible that Jesus did not
constantly speak of rebirth. The key is that he used different metaphors and
parables (comparisons) to get his point across.
In the synoptics, at the heart of
the New Covenant teaching of Messiah, the immortality program is described in
terms of new birth from seed, namely the seed which is the “word of God” (Luke
8:11) = the “word of the Kingdom” (Matthew 13:19). The Gospel/Word of the Kingdom
is presented by Jesus as the immortality formula, the elixir of life, the key
to indestructible existence. With the seed of new life we are truly living spiritually.
Without having taken in that seed, we are spiritually dead while we live. Two camps: the
regenerate and the degenerate. Jesus is creating the personnel of the Kingdom
by rebirth. He is breeding the new race of immortals. The carrier of this new
life is the teaching of the Messiah, his Gospel of the Kingdom, the words
“which are spirit and life” (John 6:63). As that seed germinates in the mind
(heart) of the listener, a new existence begins. It is an explosive event, attended
by massive excitement. A whole new vista opens up. The heart soars as it
contemplates life forever, the Life of the Coming Age, the Life of the Kingdom.
If one scours Bible Dictionary articles on “regeneration” very occasionally one
hits upon an excellent observation about what Jesus taught on this issue: “The
parable of the Sower implies that the specific life of the Kingdom arises in
the human heart by the sinking in of the Gospel (cp. “Let these sayings sink
down into your ears”), and its producing, as it were, a new root of
personality” (Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, “Regeneration,” p. 216).
The dictionary does not, however, elaborate on what that seed really is. Luke
does. He says, “The seed is the Word of God.” Mark likewise says, “the seed is
the word.” Matthew: “the seed is the word of the Kingdom.” No wonder Jesus
accused the establishment of taking away the key of Knowledge, the Key of the
Kingdom (Luke 11:52; Matthew 23:13).
Rather astonishingly, the head of Moody Bible College writes: “The Gospel of
grace has nothing to do with the Kingdom of God per se” (from correspondence).
A very significant loss of information has occurred because the public has been
taught to say “the word of God is the Bible.” Jesus said the word of God is the
seed - his own Gospel. Many churchgoers speak of “the Word” or “Word of God” as
just a synonym for the Bible. But it is not. The Bible generally calls itself
the Scriptures. It largely reserves, in the NT, the term “word” for the Gospel
as Jesus and the apostles preached it.
Once the essential creative seed of immortality is identified as the Gospel of
the Kingdom, the rest of the New Testament presents itself as commentary on
this central theme. Every exhortation to “abide in the word” or “let the word
of the Messiah abide in you richly” is embedded in the idea that the Kingdom-Gospel
is to govern all our thinking. John’s Gospel is largely a sermon on accepting
“the word” and “words of Jesus.” Peter rejoices in the seed of rebirth as the
“word of the Gospel which was preached to you” (I Peter 1:22-25, where seed,
rebirth, and Gospel are the topic). James speaks of the “word of Truth” as the
tool of rebirth (James 1:18). Paul also observes that Christians are those
“born of the spirit,” that is, those born of the Promise (Galatians 4:28, 29). But
Paul prefers the image of the new creation. Just as the light first shone in
Genesis at creation so the light of the Gospel of the glory of the Messiah shines in
our hearts (2 Corinthians 4:6). Paul is a dogged preacher of the Gospel of the Kingdom
and sums up his whole career as the “heralding of the Kingdom” (Acts 20:25),
where he identifies the Gospel of grace as the Gospel of the Kingdom (see also
Acts 8:12, Philip, and Paul’s relentless emphasis on the Gospel of the Kingdom
in Acts 19:8; 28:23, 31). John echoes his fellow apostles when he points to the
indwelling seed as the key to triumphant Christianity (I John 3:9).
I believe the Abrahamic, Kingdom faith of Jesus must confront the watered-down version of the Gospel now massively widespread. Dispensationalism, either in
its “ultra” form or otherwise, has achieved a separation of Paul from Jesus and
thus a separation of the Gospel from Jesus. Romans 10:8-17 has been mishandled
to give the impression that only the death and resurrection of Jesus counted
for Paul as the Gospel. If that were so, Paul would have abandoned the Gospel
of Jesus. Paul would have disobeyed the Great Commission. Paul would have put
himself under his own curse for subtracting from the Gospel the essential
Kingdom element so important to Jesus as the treasure of saving wisdom and
understanding. But Paul did not depart one iota from the Messiah’s Gospel. He
declared as his resounding conclusion in Romans 10 that “faith comes by hearing
and hearing from Messiah’s word,” i.e., Messiah’s Gospel (v. 17). He observed
in verse 14 that one must hear Jesus preaching to be saved: “How can
they believe in him whom they have not heard [preaching]” (see NASV).
So everything goes back to Jesus, who for some 30 chapters in the Synoptics
preached the Gospel without at that stage any mention of his death and
resurrection. The royal road to immortality and rulership in the Kingdom to
come - as well as peace on earth for the human race begins and ends with
Jesus, who was adamant in his rejection of any notion of coequal Deity - “Why do
you call me good? There is none good but the One God” (Matthew 19:17).
Our task is to announce far and wide (Luke 9:60) the Kingdom of God as Gospel, the message of salvation,
and it is the Kingdom of the One God- Yehovah of Israel to be administered by the human
Messiah, the Son of that Living God.
Edited by Bruce Lyon
