The Gospel of Christ

Those that truly accept Christ as their savior must accept His authority in their lives and live by His commandments. That’s the covenant they enter with God. It should go without saying that one who accepts Christ as their savior accepts His message…His gospel (good news).

Many churches will tell you they teach the gospel but few seem to fully understand what that means. Some churches teach that the Gospel of Christ is the coming Kingdom of God. Christ did preach that the Kingdom of God is coming but we don’t see that expounded on in the scriptures.  What is expounded on is that Christ is the Way to enter Kingdom of God. One simply has to read the epistles of Paul to see what the gospel of Christ is. Paul preached Christ. Christ IS the gospel!   This doesn’t simply mean the person of Christ taught in the scriptures. It means who Christ really is to us. He is the way, the truth and the life. He is the way into the Kingdom of God…period! Anyone who truly understands this should find new life in the Hebrew Scriptures. They are just as relevant today as they were when they were first penned. To accept Christ is to accept the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) because He IS the OT. He is the logos, the Word of God, made flesh.

To rightly divide the Word of Truth is to understand the coming of Christ would happen twice. The Jews of His time didn’t understand that.  They knew that the Messiah would come as a conquering king but they missed the prophesies of His first coming as a savior to mankind. When Christ came the first time He was born as mortal human being to walk among us. He would go on to live and die a sinless life. The world of Christendom celebrates His birth and His resurrection. While the facts of those events have been distorted by human traditions over the centuries what has been the most distorted is what He did in His first coming; what He preached and what He’s doing now.  These things are the heart of Christ’s good news to man.

One can roughly break down Christ’s ministry into several functions. The first was as a Rabbi or teacher.

As a Rabbi / teacher:

The first word Christ is reported to have spoken when He began His ministry was ‘Repent’. The meaning of repentance is to turn from your way of life and follow Gods way. Remember that Christ came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  Most of the people He preached to knew what God expected of them from  the scriptures but their religion, Judaism, was not the faith delivered to their forefathers. Judaism was NOT the religion of the Israelites. Judaism is what the people turned the faith once delivered to them into. It was the religion of the tribe of Judah dominated primarily by Pharisaical traditions. It was that religion that had gotten off track. A part of Christ’s ministry was an attempt to restore it.

He pointed out the errors in Pharisaical thinking, as well as other errors that had entered into the various sects of Judaism. He tried to put the faith once delivered back on track.

The second function that Christ served was, what we may call, His Levitical function.

In His Levitical function:

He filled the written moral law to the fullest. He didn’t do away with the law.  He expanded the law to include its intent. What had been ‘Don’t commit Adultery’ was expanded to ‘Don’t even allow yourself to sexually lust after another’. What had been ‘Don’t commit Murder’ was expanded to ‘Don’t hate your fellow man’. What had been ‘Remember the Sabbath to keep it Holy’ was expounded to mean it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. He taught that all the extra rules and regulations the Pharisees had tacked onto the Sabbath were contrary to the intent of the law.

What Christ did away with was the penalty for breaking the law for those who accepted Him.

This brings us to His role as our Savior:

He took the place of animal and other sacrifices. He paid the penalty for the sins of anyone willing to accept His sacrifice and take that sacrifice to God the Father. He filled the need for a high priest by becoming ours. He made it possible for us to go directly to God the Father.

By His life He showed us the plan of salvation that the tabernacle in the wilderness foreshadowed. Christ took the religion of the Israelites and made it universal. When one accepted Christ one no longer needed an animal sacrifice, a priest or a tabernacle because those things are all complete in Christ. He fulfilled all the requirements of the priests, sacrifices and tabernacle.  All the ceremonial laws contained in the Torah were made complete in Christ. When we ask whether we still need sacrifices, a high priest and a tabernacle the answer is YES! We need Christ to fulfill those functions. That is His continuation of the faith once delivered to the Children of Israel. We take His sacrifice when we go before God the Father every day. Christ, as our High Priest, intercedes for us to God the Father every day.

Think of the excitement it generated among believers when they learned the truth of Christ. Now the faith once delivered was no longer bound by the temple, the only place on earth where a sacrifice could be offered. The faith could now be practiced anywhere…through Christ! The Jews have never proselytized but the early church developed a burning desire to do so. Through Christ they could live Gods way anywhere! Early Christians wanted to share that Good News with the world!

We take the Belief in Christ into our hearts, not just in our actions, because He offered those called a new covenant, one which has the law written in our hearts. One could say that the Hebrew Scriptures, the so-called Old Testament, are primarily about Right Actions. They were primarily addressed to the nation of Israel. The Greek scriptures, or New Testament, are primarily about Right Attitudes. They are primarily addressed to individuals. Each is incomplete without the other.

In Judaism one can be a good Jew and still believe anything as long as one does what is expected in the community. One can be an atheist and still be a good Jew. Early Christianity changed that by requiring one to believe in its tenets. (Modern Christianity has gone so far the other direction that many now think the only thing that matters is what one believes…what one does no longer matters to such believers.)

So what now?

Since it is clear that Christ made the ceremonial laws complete, Christians throughout the centuries have asked what parts of the law are still relevant today.  

The careful Bible student will turn to the epistles of the apostle Paul for an answer. Paul seems to rail against the law at the same time that he is says we should no longer sin. Here again to rightly divide the Word of Truth we need to understand that Paul was addressing TWO bodies of law. Paul was a Pharisee before his conversion. The Pharisees believed that their oral law was on the same par with the written law of the Torah. Christ, in a carefully worded statement in His first sermon in Matthew 5 said the written law would not change. Not one jot or one tittle. (These are Old English terms used in the King James translation referring to written language.) Christ went on in the scriptures to condemn the oral law of the Pharisees because much of it was contrary to the intent of the written law that God had revealed. Remember the laws the Pharisees had added to the Sabbath made its observance so restrictive that they violated the intent of the law.

Paul later used the example of an obscure written law that said the ox that treads the grain should not be muzzled. The oxen doing the work were allowed by law to eat of the grain they trod on. Paul pointed out that the law was not written for the benefit of oxen…it was written for our benefit. The apostle Paul applied the principle of that law to paying the ministers who spread the gospel. The principle of the law is still relevant today.  This sheds a great deal of light on how Paul and the early church saw the law.

Remember that God gave us His law out of His love for us. His laws are for our own good. If one accepts the truth of that assertion then one can’t now claim the law is a burden. God wasn’t trying to be restrictive or tyrannical the way some modern Christians would have us think. They confuse the oral law Paul was referring to with the written law revealed to us for our benefit.

Christ said not one jot or one tittle of the written law would change. That means ALL the law is still relevant today. The PRINCIPLES of all the law are still relevant today even if the letter of the law no longer holds the same relevance for us. For example: Leviticus 19:27 commands us: "Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.” Modern Judaism takes this law literally so we see modern Hasidic Jews wearing curls above their sideburns. This law had the intent of instructing Gods people not to adorn their heads the way people who followed other gods did. That PRINCIPLE is still valid today! We are not to adorn ourselves the way people who follow false gods do. Just as the physical nation of Israel was to be separate from other nations…spiritual Israel, the Body of Christ, is to separate itself from the practices of the world.

What is Christ doing now?

The last thing Christ did on earth was conquer death. He is alive and sitting at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven. He works as our High Priest to intercede for us to God the Father every day. He will return someday soon as a conquering king to live and reign on earth for a thousand years. He will expand His kingdom for ever.

Christ was our prophet and the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, He is our High Priest and one day He will be our King. That is the Gospel...

His offer to us…eternal life.

That is the culmination of Christ’s gospel… For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Amen