The Kingdom of God as Password

The greatest question of all “How can I be saved?” receives a distinct answer in the teaching of Jesus. Jesus was on a mission to save the world. But what are the conditions for entry into the realm of salvation? The public has been trapped into a false way of thinking when it is told that the key to salvation is “Believe that you are a sinner; believe that Jesus died for your sins, and trust in Jesus for forgiveness.” Based on a few verses taken from Romans this approach may seem plausible. The problem is that the words of Jesus himself about how to be saved are bypassed. Lesson number one in the salvation process is to listen first to Jesus. In Mark 4:11 Jesus revealed the secret: “To you the secret of the Kingdom of God has been given, but to those who are on the outside everything comes by way of parables, so that seeing they may see nothing and hearing they may understand nothing; otherwise they might turn to God and be forgiven.” 

Matthew records the same teaching: “Satan comes and carries off the word which has been sown in them for fear that they should believe and be saved.” The knowledge of the secret of the Kingdom of God is the passport into salvation. Forgiveness according to Jesus is conditioned on an understanding of the “secret of the Kingdom of God.” “To you [disciples] the secret of the Kingdom of God has been given,” but not to those outside the Christian circle: “Otherwise they might turn to God and be forgiven” (Mark 4:12, NEB). 

Preaching, therefore, in the New Testament constantly lays before the audience, not just the facts about the death and resurrection of Jesus, but the indispensable Gospel which tells of the Kingdom of God. Reception of the Gospel of the Kingdom, the heart of Jesus’ saving agenda, is the condition of salvation, according to Jesus. Without this information, the “password” which leads us out of death into life, there is no turning to God and consequently no forgiveness (Mark 4:11, 12). Jesus made this fundamental point constantly: “He who hears my WORD and believes Him who sent me has the Life of the Age to Come, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life” (John 5:24).

The above post was taken from here.

The Gospel as Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary(1971-79)

“Gospel”
“1. The Glad Tidings of the Kingdom of God announced by Jesus Christ to the world. The body of religious doctrine taught by Jesus Christ and his Apostles. The Christian religion, the Christian revelation.
2. Identified by Protestants with their own system of belief as opposed to the perverted system of belief imputed by them to their adversaries; also applied by Puritans and modern evangelicals as the doctrine of salvation solely through trust in the merit of Christ’s sacrifice.” 

The first definition represents the clear language of Jesus as reported in Matthew, Mark and Luke. The second definition is a drastic reduction of the Gospel to one of its components, the death of Jesus. The foundation of the Gospel as well as its all-encompassing scope is defined by Jesus as “the Gospel about the Kingdom of God” (Luke 4:43). Jesus presents the propagation of this Gospel as the reason for his whole saving mission: “I am under divine compulsion to preach the Gospel about Kingdom of God…That is the reason why I was commissioned” (Luke 4:43). 

There are 13 chapters of Matthew (3-15), 7 chapters of Mark (1-7), 5 chapters of Luke (4-8), totaling 25 chapters, recording the Gospel preaching as Jesus carried it out, in which there is not a single mention of the sacrificial death or resurrection of Jesus. Jesus “preached the Gospel” and sent others to preach it, with no inclusion of facts about his death and resurrection (which were added later). This must prove that the Christian Gospel of salvation is not a message solely about trusting the merit of Christ’s sacrifice. There is a more fundamental element in the Gospel, and it is called by Jesus (and the gospel-writers) “the Gospel about the Kingdom of God.” Jesus opened his ministry by commanding belief in and commitment to that Gospel of the Kingdom as the basis of saving faith (Mark 1:14, 15). 

In the parable of the sower he makes repentance and belief in the Gospel of the Kingdom the essential requisite for true discipleship: “When anyone hears the word [Gospel] about the Kingdom [Matthew 13:19] the Devil comes and snatches away the word which has been sown in his heart, so that he cannot believe it and be saved” (Luke 8:12; see Mark 4:11, 12). The linkage between believing the Gospel of the Kingdom and salvation is unmistakable. This is merely a confirmation of the basis of saving faith taught from the start by Jesus when he commanded: “The Kingdom of God is at hand: Repent and believe the Gospel [of the Kingdom]” (Mark 1:14, 15). “Believe the Gospel of the Kingdom” is Jesus’ first and most fundamental command (along with his insistence on belief in the One God of his Jewish heritage — Mark 12:29ff.). 

Even when Jesus did introduce the facts about his sacrificial death for sin and his resurrection to his disciples, who had already been preaching the Gospel (about the Kingdom), the disciples did not grasp those facts. As late as Luke 18:31-34, when Jesus made a third declaration of his impending death and resurrection, the apostles did not understand what was meant. The facts before us show that there are no less than 17 chapters in Matthew (3-19), 9 chapters of Mark (1-9), 14 chapters of Luke (4-17) — a total of 40 chapters — reporting the Gospel preaching of Jesus and his disciples, in which there is at first no announcement of Jesus’ death and resurrection and later no comprehension of it. This data must demonstrate to the open-minded that defining the Gospel as “trust in the meritorious death of Jesus” (definition 2, above) is inadequate as a reflection of the Bible. 

The biblical facts demand a definition of the Gospel which contains as its most fundamental, permanent element the “news about the Kingdom of God,” and secondly the companion facts about the death and resurrection of Jesus. The definitions given above therefore describe perfectly the biblical and unbiblical definition of the Gospel.
The first (1, above) describes the facts of the gospels exactly: The Gospel demands an intelligent understanding and belief in the Good News (Gospel) about the Kingdom of God (including the information about Jesus’ saving death and resurrection).
The second definition (2, above) is true of the reduced version of the Gospel presented by evangelicals: Their Gospel has been shrunk to the matter of Jesus’ death and resurrection alone, without inclusion of the full content of the Gospel as it firstly and originally came from Jesus as the arch-evangelist. 

Since the Gospel is synonymous with the Christian faith, with Christianity itself, any loss of the content of the Gospel implies an attack on Jesus and his saving work. The loss of the Kingdom of God as the first element in the Gospel as Jesus preached it is a matter for urgent attention amongst all Bible lovers. The absence of the primary Kingdom of God component in the Gospel as currently preached is demonstrated by the total absence in current preaching and evangelical writing of the phrase “Gospel of the Kingdom” to describe the content of the essential facts to be put to the potential convert. Other ambiguous or vague phrases have been substituted, such as “Gospel of Christ” (Is this “the Gospel about Christ” or “the Gospel which Jesus preached”?), “Gospel of the grace of God,” and so on. These other phrases are actually alternative biblical titles for the Gospel and in a context in which the audience already knew that the Gospel was about the Kingdom of God, they lose their ambiguity. However, since the Gospel of the Kingdom has been so long out of circulation, the alternative phrases become confusing, since they tend to confirm the audience in the erroneous belief that the Gospel is about the death and resurrection of Jesus only. 

If someone should complain that Paul reduced the Gospel to facts about the death and resurrection of Jesus only, our reply would be this: 

1) If Paul did not preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, he was in violation of the Great Commission by which Jesus had mandated the preaching to all nations of the exact teachings which he himself had given (Matthew 28:19, 20). 

2) According to Luke’s careful reporting, Paul did in fact always preach “the Gospel about the Kingdom of God” (Acts 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31) and did not therefore limit his Gospel to the facts about Jesus’ death and resurrection only. 

3) Paul in I Corinthians 15:1-3 declared that Jesus’ death and resurrection were “amongst matters of first importance” in the Gospel. He did not say they constituted the entire Gospel. In the same chapter he assumes that his audience understands the term Kingdom of God, and he uses the term characteristically as the Kingdom which cannot be inherited by a human person in his present constitution (“flesh and blood”) but can be entered/inherited only at the future resurrection when Jesus returns to establish the Kingdom of God on earth (I Corinthians 15:50- 52). 

4) Paul identifies the Gospel as the tradition which he had received from others (I Corinthians 15:3) and as “the word of faith which we are preaching” (Romans 10:8). It is a Gospel held in common by the apostles and evangelists. 

As a corroboration of this Gospel, we find in Acts 8:12 that Philip urged belief in the “Gospel concerning the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ.” Right to the end of his career, which he summarized in Miletus as the “proclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom” (Acts 20:25), Paul doggedly preached the same Gospel of the Kingdom modeled by Jesus’ evangelism: To become a Christian meant being “persuaded about the Kingdom of God and Jesus” (Acts 28:23, 24; cp. Acts 8:12). And Paul is last seen in Acts carrying out a protracted ministry in Rome as evangelist for the cause of the Kingdom of God, the heart of the Gospel as Jesus had preached it (Acts 28:30, 31). So keen is Luke to show that Paul perfectly followed the master in his public declaration of the Gospel that he reports Paul’s characteristic activity as follows: “Paul welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Messiah, with all openness, unhindered” (Acts 28:30, 31). Of Jesus Luke reports: “Jesus welcomed the multitudes and began speaking to them about the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:11). Luke had the unique privilege of writing more of the New Testament than any other writer, and he alone reports the progress of the Christian faith both before and after the cross. Luke documents the work of the historical Jesus as preacher of the Gospel about the Kingdom and the continued work of the Risen Jesus as he continued, through the Apostles, to proclaim the same Gospel of the Kingdom.

The above post was taken from here.

Death, Resurrection and Rewards: The Biblical Timetable

The Bible and its study, a daily investigation (Acts 17:11), presents us with a challenge. It provides numerous statements which bear on the question of our future: what happens at death and when Jesus returns. The biblical teaching on this important subject must be collected from across the pages of Scripture and synthesized to give a harmonious picture. 

Fatal to this process are three factors:
1) We prefer to believe what we have always believed, or perhaps what is popular, despite the clear evidence of the Bible against us.
2) We choose to examine the subject selectively, relying on a small portion of the relevant evidence and ignoring the rest. (You can prove almost anything from the Bible, provided you use tunnel vision and confine yourself to a tiny handful of verses.)
3) We prefer not to examine the subject at all and rely on a trusted instructor or tradition. 

As Christians we are being trained to weigh evidence fairly, dispassionately, objectively and to arrive at Truth, even if such Truth disturbs our comfortable “status quo,” or perhaps puts us at odds with others. 

In order to examine what Scripture teaches us, we start with the Hebrew Bible. It is a fundamental methodological error to ignore the clear teaching of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) in regard to the nature of man and his destiny. Someone might object to this principle by saying that in other matters, such as the observance of some laws, the Old Testament has been superseded by the New Testament. In that case, however, there is extensive New Testament teaching about our Christian relationship to Old Testament Law. But no New Testament teaching suggests that the Old Testament prophecies concerning the future of man and especially his resurrection from death are canceled by the New Testament. 

According to Scripture in the Hebrew Bible, man at death descends to Sheol/Hades, the world of all the deceased (Psalm 86:13; Proverbs 15:24; Ezekiel 26:20). All the dead go downwards at death. No one ascends to the throne of God in heaven as a disembodied, immortal soul. 

Secondly, Sheol/Hades is a place of complete inactivity. Conscious fellowship with God has been severed. “Existence” in Sheol is really not life at all: “One fate befalls both wise and fool” (Ecclesiastes 2:14). “The fate of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies, so dies the other. There is no advantage for man over beast. All go to the same place. All come from the dust and all return to the dust” (Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20). (The writer then poses a question about where the breath or life force of a man or beast may go. But he does not answer the question. His point is that everyone at death returns to dust.) 

The condition of the dead is then described with crystal clarity: “The living know that they are going to die: the dead do not know anything, nor any longer do they have any reward, for their memory is forgotten” (Ecclesiastes 9:5). So the wise policy for the living is this: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no activity, nor planning or wisdom in Sheol/Hades where you are going” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). “Mortal man’s spirit departs, he returns to the earth. In that very day his thoughts perish” (Psalm 146:4). “Enlighten my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death” (Psalm 13:3). “Sheol/Hades cannot praise You. Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness” (Isaiah 38:18).

What hope then does the Hebrew Bible offer for the dead? “The Lord kills and makes alive. He brings down to Sheol/Hades and raises up (resurrects)” (I Samuel 2:6). “God will ransom me [literally, ‘my soul’] from the power of Sheol/Hades” (Psalm 49:15). And now the classic passages in the Old Testament (from the 6th and 8th centuries BC) which promise us rescue from Sheol/Hades by resurrection from death: “Many of those who are sleeping in the dust of the ground will awake, some to everlasting life [literally, the life of the age to come]” (Daniel 12:2). “Your dead will live; their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust of the ground, awake and shout for joy” (Isaiah 26:19). 

This consistent teaching about the afterlife from the Hebrew Bible, the Bible in which Jesus was thoroughly trained, as was Paul (Luke 24:44; II Timothy 3:15), tells us:
1) At death everyone goes down to Sheol/Hades, a place of inactivity and silence.
2) Only by a future resurrection of the whole person from death/Sheol/Hades can the sleeping dead be awakened to “everlasting life.” 

New Testament Christianity, not surprisingly, confirms this clear teaching unmistakably. Jesus echoes Daniel 12:2 and sees the dead in the same location until their rescue via resurrection: “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming in which all who are in their tombs will hear the voice of the Son of man and will come forth to a resurrection of life; others to a resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28, 29). The pattern is utterly clear. There is no recovery from death apart from a future collective resurrection. Resurrection means coming out of the tomb. And this will not happen until Jesus returns to effect that rescue at the last trumpet. 

A large number of New Testament passages fit hand-in-glove with what we have seen so far. The essential point to be grasped is that future rewards are not gained at the moment of death, but only at the future resurrection, an event which cannot occur until Jesus’ return to the earth: “The Son of man is going to come in the glory of his Father with the angels and then he will reward every person according to his deeds” (Matt. 16:27). 

“You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:14). “Those who are considered worthy to attain to that [future] age and the resurrection of the dead…will be sons of the resurrection” (Luke 20:35, 36). Christians will receive eternal life in the Age to Come (Luke 18:30). The faithful will be resurrected at Jesus’ coming again (I Corinthians 15:23). “In the future there is laid up for me a crown of glory which the Lord will award me on that day, not only to me but to all who have loved his appearing” (II Timothy 4:8). The Bible concludes with an impressive statement declaring that it is only at Christ’s return that rewards are to be granted: “Behold, I am coming quickly and my reward is with me, to render to everyone according to what he has done” (Rev. 22:12). 

...

The above post was taken from here.

The Gospel and the Future Kingdom

 “It may be said that during Jesus’ ministry the Kingdom of God is spoken of always as a future event. It is expected, prayed for and hoped for. But it is never said explicitly to have arrived, not even at the Last Supper. What is present is the agent of God, Jesus. But because the agent of the Kingdom is present and active through his teaching and mighty works, the Kingdom of God may also be said to be potentially present…Its arrival in its own right is depicted as a future event” (Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels [A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship], IVP, 1992, “Kingdom of God,” p. 425). 

Since the Good News/Gospel offered by Jesus for our belief has to do with the Kingdom of God, it follows that the term Kingdom of God must be defined. Without a definition, how can one “repent and believe the Gospel of the Kingdom” (Mark 1:14, 15)? You cannot believe in a Gospel about a Kingdom which remains a vague concept. 

A widespread confusion exists in the churchgoing community about what Jesus meant by the Kingdom. The quotation above from the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels is immensely helpful as establishing the fact attested by Matthew, Mark and Luke that Jesus thought of the Kingdom as the great event of the future. He urges his disciples to keep praying “Thy Kingdom come!” This does not mean “Thy Kingdom spread”! You do not pray for the Kingdom to come, if it has already come. Note, too, that Joseph of Arimathea, who was a Christian disciple, was still waiting for the Kingdom of God after the death of Jesus (Mark 15:43). The Kingdom of God is the great hope for the future to be realized only by the return of Jesus to reign on earth. 

... The vast majority of the Kingdom texts in Jesus’ teaching unmistakably point to the future intervention of God at the future coming of Jesus. The Kingdom of God is the objective of the Christian faith. Loss of this simple fact is responsible for a great deal of confusion amongst Bible readers. 

Here are two key verses: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his throne of glory…In the regeneration, [when the world is reborn] when the Son of man sits on the throne of his glory, you too will sit on twelve thrones to administer the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 25:31; 19:28). 

These sayings combine to give us a clear vision of the second coming of Jesus and his subsequent session on his throne, ruling in company with the apostles. Jesus foresaw a reconstitution of the tribes of Israel. This “concrete” expectation of divine government coming to the earth — the Kingdom of God/Heaven — is fundamental to any understanding of the Bible. Replacing the constant Kingdom language of Jesus with “heaven” (which Jesus never offered as the Christian goal) confuses the New Testament and suppresses the words of Jesus.

The above post was taken from here.

TEN Bible Lessons - Lesson 10

Jesus is Exactly Like His Brothers

The Bible says that Jesus is like us in every way, and actually had to be in order to make atonement for our sins.  But if Jesus has two natures or two minds ... as orthodox Trinitarianism demands, then Jesus is not like us in every way.  Furthermore, God doesn't have brothers ... but Jesus clearly does.

Hebrews 2:17

"Therefore, he had to be made like his brethren in all things, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people."

Romans 8:29

"For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren"

Jesus Was Given a Name Higher Than the One He Had

The Bible says Jesus was given a name above every name because of his obedience to God.

Philippians 2:8-11

… He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  For this reason God also highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him a name which is above every name, That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Hebrews 1:4

So he has become as much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.

Romans 14:9

For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

Acts 2:36

Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: GOD has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah!

The above post is based on an article taken from here.