Jesus came with a Message. He came to save with his Message as well as by his sacrificial death for the sins of all mankind. ...
The public in general has been lulled into thinking that salvation in the New Testament consists in believing that Jesus died and rose again — believing, in other words, facts about what happened to Jesus, to the practical exclusion of what Jesus preached and taught.
A very popular evangelist, in a tract circulated in thousands of copies in various languages, tells us that “Jesus came to do three days work — to die, be buried and rise from death.” This we believe to be a stunningly misleading statement.
Jesus made his own intentions crystal clear in a kind of “John 3:16” encapsulation of the reason for his whole mission. The neglect of Jesus’ words when he unpacks his own mind and purpose is nothing less than a theological disaster, requiring urgent attention and repair. Jesus announced in Luke 4:43 (a verse, surely, deserving prominence in any discussion of Christianity) that he “must proclaim the Gospel about the Kingdom of God: That is the reason why God sent me.”
“As God sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21) were the words of the Great Commission as John recorded it. Quite simply and obviously, then, Christians are those who, like Jesus, will be found proclaiming the Gospel about the Kingdom of God: That is the reason why they are sent. While confusion reigns about what the Kingdom of God is, a paralysis has afflicted the Great Commission. We want to do our part to rectify this very unfortunate situation.
While uncertainty reigns as to what the Gospel is, how can Jesus’ gospel summons to repentance and belief in the Gospel succeed (Mark 1;14, 15)?
For too long Christians have uncritically accepted the status quo. And that cherished status quo dictates, in the form of an all-pervading dogma, that the death and resurrection of Jesus comprise the whole Gospel.
If that is so, we argue, what do we make of those scores of chapters in Matthew, Mark and Luke which tell us with brilliant clarity that Jesus was preaching the Gospel, but which contain not a word (at that stage) about his death and resurrection? That is the question Christians of all levels of understanding are invited to face — and face squarely and honestly.
Let us make the point clear: Matthew, Mark and Luke, three independent and corroborating accounts of Jesus and his ministry, persist in telling us that Jesus came announcing the saving Gospel.
But that Gospel for a large part of Jesus’ ministry contained no information whatsoever about the upcoming death and resurrection of Jesus. You see the point: Jesus preached the Gospel and, what’s more, sent his chosen disciples out to preach the Gospel. Yet that Gospel contained no word about death and resurrection.
This must prove to the honest investigator, the noble Berean so highly commended in Acts 17:11, that the Gospel is not confined to facts about death and resurrection. Now do not misunderstand us. We are not suggesting that the death and resurrection of Jesus are minor components in the Gospel. Not at all. Without the death and resurrection of Jesus there is no Gospel. But what of that part of the Gospel which did not concern the death and resurrection of Jesus?
For over forty chapters in Matthew, Mark and Luke Jesus and his circle preached and proclaimed the Gospel. Late in the ministry of Jesus, not long before his crucifixion, Jesus made a repeated declaration that his death and resurrection was impending. We find this dramatic statement in Luke 18:31ff (NASV): “Then Jesus took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘Behold, we are going to Jerusalem, and all things which are written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles, and will be mocked and mistreated and spit upon. And after they have scourged him, they will kill him, and the third day he will rise again.’”
Now observe the reaction of the inner circle of friends as co-workers for the Gospel: “The disciples understood none of these things, and the meaning of this statement was hidden from them, and they did not comprehend the things that were said.”
There it is. Those Gospel preachers, who had worked side by side with Jesus in the preaching of the Gospel, did not yet understand even the basics of the death and resurrection of the Savior.
The Gospel they had preached with Jesus had
been the Gospel about the Kingdom of God.
The
Kingdom of God is the bedrock foundation of the
Gospel, to which were added later, as they
happened, the crucial facts about Jesus’ death for
sins and his resurrection to immortality.
Logically, then, the Gospel has as its major, foundational component the Kingdom of God, and secondly its companion facts about the death and resurrection of Jesus. These latter facts make possible our entrance into the Kingdom of God. But without the Kingdom of God basis in the Gospel, the death and resurrection float in the air. Jesus did not come “to do three days work.” (Was he on vacation for those 3 ½ years of arduous preaching of the Gospel?)
He came to preach the saving Gospel of the Kingdom of God, the heart of the New Covenant, and then he graciously died, shedding his blood to ratify that Kingdom covenant (Luke 22:28-30), which entails the gift to you of life forever in the coming Kingdom of God.
With renewed enthusiasm we call on the Christian community to beseech the God of Heaven to “Let your Kingdom come,” and to follow Jesus’ terminology by speaking always of the “Gospel about the Kingdom.”
At the same time laborers for the Kingdom of God (Col. 4:11) are needed everywhere. We will all do well if we adopt the slogan of Jesus himself: “I must preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God…That is the whole reason for my mission” (Luke 4:43).
So it should be the mission of everyone who loves Jesus and his Gospel.
The above post was taken from here.
