The word ‘gospel’ is shorthand for God’s good news to man. It is His promise of salvation. He enters into covenant or contract with those who accept it and pledge their allegiance to it. Because of this, the good news is the power of God to save those who believe. To trust in this saving promise is the key to a contract with God assuring favour with him and uncovering the secret of immortality. To be ignorant of the gospel is to be outside God’s covenant. This is as fatal as being afflicted with a deadly disease and not knowing the cure. The whole gospel is twofold. Like a coin with only one side, a one sided gospel is counterfeit.
THE FIRST ELEMENT
It is through the writings of Apostles that we know Christ. Their word is the plumb-line by which we are to judge any teaching concerning him. There are no surviving records of any writings of Jesus. There is no record that he made any attempts to leave any such thing. Instead he chose certain men to do this on his behalf. In his prayer to the Father, Jesus revealed his intention:
John 17:20 Neither pray I for these (The Apostles) alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
It was Jesus’ intention that we should come to believe on him through the word of his Apostles. Paul was fully aware of this fact and was deeply concerned lest anyone should try and tamper with the message which had been committed to his trust:
“God of God, Light of Light,
lo, he abhors not the virgin’s womb;
very God, begotten not created.”
’O come, all ye faithful’- Popular Carol
Since this is the season during which the majority churches commemorate the ‘incarnation’ of ‘God the Son’, maybe it would be a good time to share a few of my own thoughts regarding this.
For starters, don’t try looking for the title ‘God the Son’ in the Bible. You won’t find it, neither can you expect to discover this version of Jesus anywhere between Genesis and Revelation. He is a product of the thinkers who sprang up after the deaths of the apostles and set about redefining the faith. These men were schooled in Greek philosophy and their aim was to make the Jesus of the gospels fit their preconceived ideas.
The majority church insists that,
a) in order to die for our sins, Jesus had to be ‘God’ and that
b) if he were anyone other than a divine person in the godhead, then God’s sacrifice is in some way diminished.
What follows are a couple of my views on these 2 points:
a) Did Jesus really have to be God Almighty in order to die for our sins?
The demand that God himself had to personally come and die for our sins comes from man, not God. From philosophy, not revelation. Otherwise it would be stated in the Bible. What the Bible does tell us is that God has dealt with sin by sending his Son to be the propitiatory sin-offering. God takes sin so seriously that he was prepared to sacrifice his own beloved Son in order to provide a solution to the problem.
It seems to me that when Jesus referred to himself as possessing ‘divinity’ it was invariably in terms of the indwelling Father, not the incarnate ‘God the Son’. He never speaks of ‘the Son that dwells in me’. Instead, Jesus was indwelt by his God in the same way the ark of the covenant was. In John 17:3, Jesus clearly sets himself in contrast to ‘the only one who is truly God’, the Father (see also John 5:44).
We are so accustomed to seeing the title ‘Christ’ following Jesus’ name that it is easy to make the mistake of reading it as though it was his surname! Joseph and Mary Christ had a baby called Jesus…
Let’s try and see it through fresh eyes.
In this formula the Father is God. Jesus by contrast is not God but the ‘anointed one’ instead. This describes his role.
Anointing entails 2 things:
a) empowerment- which God does not need, since he is already all powerful
b) commission- which God would not need because he is sovereign,
So the title Christ would not be fitting for Jesus, if he was God Almighty.