Hearing the Original Gospel of Jesus and His Kingdom
November 6th, 2009 by Angela
Do you remember playing the game of “Telephone” when you were a child? You would whisper a short sentence to the child seated next to you, who would in turn whisper it to the next child. It was always funny to hear, by the end of the line, how the original sentence had changed by the time it had gone through a dozen little ears and mouths.
So, too, has it been with the Gospel. Today, if one asked someone what the Gospel is, you might hear it defined, “The gospel is the good news of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that provides full and free deliverance from the power and penalty of sin according to the grace of God alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone,” as quoted on a website I found when I googled the question, “What is the Gospel?”
In the game of telephone, sometimes the resulting message comes out similar to the original one, yet somehow changed, adapted or missing some integral part. I am proposing today, that the Church, some of its leaders and its people, have, over time, taken what was the Gospel that Jesus and His Apostles preached, and somehow lost some of its meaning and focus. Over time, in the telling and the sharing of it, the Gospel we commonly hear in 2009, may be omitting a very significant piece that is good and thrilling news!
Strong’s defines Gospel (euaggelion) as “the glad tidings of the kingdom of God soon to be set up, and subsequently also of Jesus the Messiah, the founder of this kingdom. After the death of Christ, the term comprises also the preaching of (concerning) Jesus Christ as having suffered death on the cross to procure eternal salvation for the men in the kingdom of God, but as restored to life and exalted to the right hand of God in heaven, thence to return in majesty to consummate the kingdom of God.”
It is both true and very important that the Gospel message includes that Jesus died and rose for our sins. This is all agreed upon! However, the other part of the Gospel that has gotten left off of the message, is that important word (logos) that Jesus preached: the Kingdom of God. Who has ever heard that the Gospel was about the Kingdom of God, and how we could enter it to have eternal life in the age to come? Next time you hear a minister, TV Evangelist or a friend of yours share the “Gospel” message, listen carefully! Do they mention the coming Kingdom of God?
I am merely suggesting that how we define the message of the Gospel, has been diluted, shortened, and adapted to something not drastically different, but changed enough over time, that it just may be a different word than what Jesus and the early church was preaching and proclaiming.
In Mark 1:14-15, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of God, and said, “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel.” Luke 8:11 says that Jesus “began speaking to them about the Kingdom of God.” Perhaps I am mistaken, but I don’t think Jesus was preaching his death and resurrection at this point in his ministry; but rather preaching the good news of a coming Kingdom where there would be no end to the increase of his government or of peace, where Jesus as Anointed One (Messiah, Christ) would rule on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness. (Isaiah 9). Jesus preached this good news to the afflicted, to the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners, to comfort all who mourn, and let them know that the time of justice and righteousness was near! This was good news, indeed! He taught how we could repent and be saved, to enter into the Kingdom and have eternal life in the age to come. Jesus taught us that we will inherit the earth, see God, receive mercy and be called sons of God. He taught what the Kingdom of God would be like and what to watch for, to prepare us to know when the time of his coming and the consummation of the age would be here.
I challenge you today, to remove the tradition, take away the muddle and distortion from the original message and go back to the words of Jesus (the author and perfector of our faith) and examine carefully what the original Gospel was really about. As Jesus said in Luke 8:8, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” And in verse 10, Jesus said to his disciples, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to the rest it is in parables, in order that seeing, they may not see, and hearing, they may not understand.” In Matthew 13:14-16, Jesus quotes Isaiah 6:9, “And in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled which says, “You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; and you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull, and with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes because they see; and your ears, because they hear.”
Instead of relying on what you’ve always heard, let us go back to Scripture and the words that Jesus spoke and listen to him. I pray that we will see with our eyes, we hear clearly with our ears the words of Jesus today and understand with our hearts the Gospel of the Kingdom of God!
“And this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations and then the end shall come.” Matthew 24:14.
This a great reminder in this day and age when people seem way too ready to reduce important truth to a “nutshell” or formula that sounds or looks good but is woefully lacking.
I am reminded of God’s patience in my own life. I was once heavily influenced by Christians who touted the “4 spiritual laws” as an automatic salvation formula. Nothing about God’s coming kingdom was emphasized.
Later I spent decades among ultra-dispesationalists who used Romans 10: 9 as an automatic formula and dismissed “the kingdom” and Jesus’ teachings in the gospels as being for Israel/ not “addressed to the Christian Church.” Istayed on this bandwagon and wondered why my life was so lacking.
What a relief to be able to begin to see the big picture as God and Jesus intended us to see the whole message!
Everything Jesus said was of the kingdom.
That’s a good start, maybe I should go on.
He received his doctrine not of men but of God.
God was with him as he taught the things concerning heaven.
He didn’t teach things concerning “heaven” – that’s the whole point we’ve been emphasizing. He taught things concerning the coming Kingdom of God on earth.
I agree – the message of the Kingdom is left out of many a gospel message. Perhaps it is because people do not fully understand what the Kingdom is all about.
However, I wouldn’t say that the Kingdom of God is not being preached in churches. If a pastor gives a sermon about one of Jesus’ parables, isn’t he preaching the Kingdom? He is indeed preaching about Kingdom principles. When Jesus talked about the Kingdom – he doesn’t always talk of his future physical reign on earth- he teaches us about the beatitudes, about prayer, about loving our enemies. These are all aspects of God’s Kingdom. The Kingdom is more than a Theocracy – it is God’s rule inside us and on the earth. It is about character changes and forgiveness and storing up treasures in heaven. I think the King’s rule inside us is equally, if not more important than His physical rule on the earth. There are sinners who will experience Jesus rule on earth – but only those who have the King reigning within them will remain in the Kingdom.
Ken,
While I think those Christians were wrong for saying the Kingdom is just a Jewish thing – I don’t think the 4 spiritual laws, or the “formula” of Romans 10:9 are separate from the Gospel of the Kingdom – indeed they speak of how we enter the Kingdom.
I think of the booklets I have seen with the 4 spiritual laws to be tools we may use by God’s permission for the sake of his kingdom
in Christ Jesus.
Like so much of what God gives us, they could be misused. Things can be put to use that is other than what God intends.
Suppose we used the 4 spiritual laws to insist that everyone we come into contact with must adhere by law to those things and be witnesses strictly by only such booklets, and that for the sake of unity, we would all agree to that among ourselves? If we were to do that we would come under the rule of sectarian legalism, and become controlled by religious spirits rather than being kingdom ruled or ruled by the spirit of Christ where there is liberty.
Jesus taught about both heaven and earth. In him both heaven and earth will come into unity.
Here’s something I wanted to tell people about. It’s about the return of Jesus before the Return.
Will we be ready to receive him?
Will we be taken or will we be left?
Will we be found watching or not?
It’s called “Return Before the Return”.
I think you can click on this to get there and then click on the article:
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=42879/*http://groups.yahoo.com/group/psalms24
You might have to type it in the search engine. It’s from a new group and had this connection to the article which recently appeard in the Vision 2 Advance website.
I don’t know the easiest way to get you there.
Good points, Angela. I would just add that there is something of a transition in the Gospels, which is clearest in Matthew, from the initial emphasis on the kingdom to an emphasis on the Cross. The phrase, “from that time” marks the changes. As the messiah-king faces rejection, he speaks more and more of his coming sufferings.
A similar transition is apparent in the book of Acts, as the Jews reject Paul’s witness and he turns to the Gentiles. As you rightly say, the Cross is part of the message, but the kingdom aspect is often left out. Yet to see and to enter the kingdom, one must be “born again”, and that happens when the sinner sees that Jesus Christ died on the Cross for his sins. It’s a matter of balance, isn’t it.
Mr Barfoot,
I briefly browsed through your website, and what I saw, I liked. Are you a Biblical Unitarian? You have a Church (not an “ecclesia”) so I judge that you aren’t Christadelphian. Are you of the ex-Way people perhaps?
I also enjoyed your comment above.
Jaco