What is the Gospel? It is interpreted as Good News! So how can the Gospel be such Good News when
our world basically treats it as the bad news?
Our culture treats the Gospel as God’s message of anger over our
behavior and wants nothing to do with it.
So how can an angry God who is so fed up with our bad behavior even be interested
in giving us a message of hope?
The answer
is God is not angry with us at all, in fact, He is very compassionate toward us
and shows us unbound mercy to draw us into a relationship with Him.
Culturally we have been spoon-fed a
distortion about the nature of God, He is not angry, He is deeply invested
in connecting with us on a personal level to demonstrate love, mercy, and
forgiveness. This is the true nature of
God, and it is represented in Jesus Christ.
“The Son reflects the glory of God
and shows exactly what God is like. He holds everything together with his
powerful word. When the Son made people clean from their sins, he sat down at
the right side of God, the Great One in heaven.” Hebrews 1:3 (NCV)
If you were
to analyze the life of Jesus you would not find a life of anger as so many of
His contemporaries had demonstrated, you would find a contented life based on a connection with people, family, and culture which shows He was balanced and
well adjusted.
Jesus is the exact reflection
of what the Father is like, He spoke the truth in love and did not shrink back from the
hard questions or answers. So where did
the distortion about the nature of God come from? It came from people who got it wrong!
The distortion came from the Old Testament where many of the writers saw only bits and pieces
of what God was really like and interpreted it as the whole of God’s
nature. In other words, they pieced together a mosaic of what they thought God
was like, and where there were gaps in that mosaic they filled in the story by
adding their own conjecture.
This is why
it was crucial that Jesus should come and demonstrate what the Father was
actually like, because of so many of the prophets, kings, and judges of the Old
Testament didn’t get an accurate representation, but only a glimpse of what God’s
nature was truly like.
“One man sinned, and so death ruled
all people because of that one man. But now those people who accept God’s full
grace and the great gift of being made right with him will surely have true
life and rule through the one man, Jesus Christ. So as one sin of Adam brought
the punishment of death to all people, one good act that Christ did makes all
people right with God. And that brings true life for all.”
Romans 5:17-18
(NCV)
Here is the
where we are given the Good News, it is the gift of the full grace of God which
made right a wrong that was done through the first man (Adam) which brought
punishment and death upon all people, the right (or rightness) of Jesus
produced one good act which makes everyone right with the Father and brings
with it true-life for everyone.
That is
the Gospel, the extravagant mercies of God revealed in Jesus Christ, this is
removing the distortion and showing us the full picture of God’s true nature.
This is also
where the word righteousness comes into view pertaining to the Gospel where it speaks of the righteousness of Jesus Christ who provided access to the Father. This is God’s righteousness that is through Jesus Christ, not our own will or effort when we receive the gift of that good
act of Jesus from the Father, we are made right because of that gift.
Jesus was completely innocent when He was
murdered to pay the penalty for sin. It
is His innocence that becomes our righteousness in Christ Jesus, that is our tangible
rightness in Him.
That is the Gospel,
Jesus died for the sins of the world to make us right with the Father, He
becomes our salvation. Jesus didn’t die
to bring us salvation, He died to become our salvation, our salvation is a person...the man Jesus Christ.
“Christ had no sin, but God made him
become sin so that in Christ we could become right with God.”
2 Corinthians 5:21 (NCV)
So with this
awareness of the Gospel, why do people still hesitate to come to Jesus? The answer is there are blinders (a veil)
which covers the understanding of most people so they cannot see the gift
offered to them. Our job is to pray that
people would turn to the Lord with an open heart so that the Lord will lift the
blinders so that people can both hear, see, and understand that the Gospel is for
them and that freedom in Christ is theirs.
“But the moment one turns to the
Lord with an open heart, the veil is lifted and they see”.
2 Corinthians 3:16 (TPT)
Just because
we have received the mercies of God we are no better than anyone else, in fact
as the scripture says “there is no difference between us” no matter which culture we are from or what our status is in life, “.. we all have sinned and are
in need of the glory of God.”
Jesus is our
rescuer who saves us and makes us right with Him and the Father.
The Good
News of the Gospel is actually Good News after all.
Be Blessed;
Stephen
Barnett
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