Why doesn't anyone preach the good news about Jesus in its COMPLETE and CORRECT form? I have heard and read too many half-gospels and clearly incorrect versions of it.
Is God preventing me from getting to the saving knowledge? Is something restricting my access to the true gospel?
And most importantly, WHAT IS THE GOSPEL?????
The day is soon over and I have again spent my few hours of free time in this endless process of finding the gospel!!!
Adam, in his foolishness, separated himself from his Creator by disobeying Him, by denying His authority
as God. This is the state we’re born into now, whether we realize it or not, disassociated from God, not knowing Him and so also not knowing where we came from, if anywhere, what we’re here for, if for anything, and where we’re going, if anywhere; man is lost. And Adam’s descendants don’t start out with any advantage in terms of their
own wills vis a vis God. Here we experiment with our own freedom, with our own autonomy from a superior Being, with our own
preference for that autonomy. We need something we don’t have, something that comes with struggle- we need to gain the wisdom to acknowledge God’s existence and of our need for Him, we need the wisdom to acknowledge the supremacy of
His wisdom, of His goodness and trustworthiness and rightful and deserving place as God. God needs to be enthroned again as the God of man or else man remains lost, and incapable of refraining from the sin and the misery that ultimately entangles us when man becomes his own god, when
man’s will reigns in his world.
God, from the beginning, had a plan of salvation for man, already in place and initiated at the Fall. Humankind corporately would have to mature, with His help, before it was ripe to begin its harvest. And so He led a small group of chosen people through a history that involved gradually revealing His will –of revealing
Himself-to them, as they were ready to receive it. And of course they were stubborn, straying away into disobedience more often than not, obeying mechanically and legalistically at best, which was perhaps the most many could do by that time anyway. This is when Jesus came. The world was then ready, just barely, to receive the full revelation of God, the whole light, even as most would continue in darkness at least to begin with.
What did man, more often than not contentious, competitive, struggling to survive, jealous, angry, afraid, covetous, sinful, and maybe road-weary after his centuries-old
sojourn from his Father,
need? He needed to find and to know God directly, personally, the true God whom Jesus came to reveal, in the same way he now knew sin and death which are the consequences of being
estranged from God, who’s the source of justice and life for man. So Jesus came to reveal God, and to reconcile man with Him so they may commune again, a relationship which, itself, constitutes justice and right order for man.
“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” John 17:3
So by word and deed Jesus reveals the Father, because when we’ve seen Jesus we’ve seen the Father, and the ultimate deed He performed was to willingly suffer an excruciatingly humiliating and painful death at the hands of His own creation in order to prove just how much He loves it, in spite of its sin, just how far He, God, would go to demonstrate that love to us. And then He resurrects so that we can witness eternal life for ourselves, and see that this love indeed triumphs over all, over sin and death.
Jesus’ life and death is witness to a
different God, having the purpose of erasing the “distorted image” of God that, according to a teaching I’m familiar with, man conceived of at the Fall, the image of a distant and often angry God, aloof in His superiority, the god
we play whenever we abuse power or authority over others. But our Christian God, hanging on a cross, is a stark contrast to the gods of this world, to the fame and pride and power-hungry, selfish, covetous, values we inherit here. The true God is actually gentle and
humble, amazingly, while He could squash us all like a bug of course. The cross, Christ’s death proclaimed by the church, always stands on the horizon beckoning us, so that, as we finally become jaded with the values of this world we may be able to navigate to this very different God who hung on it, to the true God. And as we do He gives us the grace to believe, and He begins to reveal Himself beyond mere intellectual knowledge. And while that new, direct, knowledge, itself an aspect of faith, remains relatively dim in this world (unless He decides to give us intense “glimpses” of it at times), it’s a supernatural knowledge nonetheless, a dimmer foretaste of the full knowledge or vision to come that produces sheer unbridled peace and happiness within man, the happiness we all desire and were created for. We’re asked to pursue increasingly more of that knowledge here, orienting ourselves with it, aligning ourselves with God’s will, choosing life over death, good over evil, the ultimate good being Himself. This faith/knowledge that opens the door to and establishes communion with God is referred to in the New Covenant prophecy of Jer 31:34:
“No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest”
God came to teach and help man love as He does as He transforms us into His image, and to receive the reward within ourselves of doing so. This is His work of transforming us, a work we only need to cooperate with. It’s referred to in Jer 31:33:
“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Love is how that law is fulfilled. Love itself, the heart of the gospel, the focus of the greatest commandments, the image of God and the direct result of His indwelling of man, is what our justice/righteousness consists of and how God makes us worthy of eternal life. To truly know God
is to love Him, and love of neighbor coincides.
A lot of the biblical language surrounding the atonement involves the use of literary devices IMO, reflecting the truth as best they could using analogies to human conventions and concepts in general. And in any case God could’ve accomplished this atonement any way He wished. But the way He did it, forgiving and turning the cheek throughout His passion and death, gives us a choice to accept His offer- or not- and to do the same in our own lives, loving and forgiving others as He loves and forgives us. Self-sacrificial love now becomes the sacrifice to end all other sacrifices, those sacrifices having never pleased Him anyway because they can’t accomplish what love can:
“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.” Ps 51:15-17
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. Hosea 6:6
“But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy [also translated “compassion”], not sacrifice.'” Matt 9:13
As we come to love, we are
just. Grace is the doorway to faith, and faith the doorway to love, to
God, who is love.
) .
