I was a Biblical Studies major in university and so I got to spend those formative, smart-alecky, know-it-all years of early adulthood poking around rather deeply in the Bible and coming up with some difficult questions. One of those questions since I was floating around in more evangelistic circles involved the Gospel: What was the Gospel the early churched preached. You see, I was having trouble finding in the Bible where it proclaimed that Southern Bible Thumper Gospel that was lingering about. You’ve heard it. “God created and loves you. You are a sinner who has stepped outside the bounds of God’s moral law. Therefore, God who is all-righteous has condemned you to death and you will go to Hell when you die. But, God in his love sent his Son to become human in order to pay the penalty of death for you. If you believe this good news and accept Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Saviour, God will forgive you and you can go to Heaven when you die.” That is what is known as the “Penal Substitution” model of atonement put forth as “THE” Gospel by the Medieval Roman Catholic theologian St. Anselm of Canterbury back in the 11th Century and has persisted.
Another more palatable, more recent, and more popular version of that “Jesus stepped in for you” gospel was developed by American Presbyterian
and Evangelical leader Bill Bright in 1952 in his booklet The Four Spiritual
Laws. Bright was the founder of
Campus Crusade for Christ and thought every Christian should have the Gospel
memorized and be able to share it.
Bright’s gospel went: God loves you and offers a
wonderful plan for your life (Jn 3:16, 10:10). Humanity is sinful
and separated from God. Therefore, we cannot know and experience God's love and
plan for our lives (Rom. 3:23, 6:23).
Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin. Through Him you can know and experience God's
love and plan for your life (Rom. 5:8; 1Cor. 15:3-6; Jn. 14:6). We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Saviour
and Lord so that we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives
(Jn. 1:12; Eph. 2:8,9; Jn. 3:1-8; Rev. 3:20).
All you have to do is pray the prayer of repentance to seal the deal.
This was the gospel Billy Graham preached for nearly his entire career.
The problem that I faced with these gospels was that I couldn’t find them presented as “THE” Gospel
anywhere in the Bible. I assumed that
they were there somewhere. Indeed, the
basic Christian tenants they represent are there. Jesus did die for us all the
death we deserve due to our sin. God
does have a plan for my life greater than I anything I can come up with apart
from Jesus Christ. Those teachings are
there but only as facets of the greater gem of what the Triune God of grace has
done in, through, and as Jesus Christ not only for me as an individual, but
more so for us as his people and even all of humanity and indeed the entirety
of his creation.
Scot McKnight who is a rather prolific writer and professor of New
Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, IL calls particularly
Bill Bright’s gospel a very effective rhetorical device
developed by American Evangelicals in the 20th Century explicitly to
elicit a particular decision and it is simply not in the Bible in the places
where we find the New Testament writers actually proclaiming the Gospel such as
1 Corinthians 15:1-28, the sermons of Peter and Paul in the Book of Acts, the
Gospels, and Jesus himself. He would say
that the same applies to the penal substitution gospel but its roots run deeper
in history than the 20th century.
The biggest problem I find with the penal substitution and the four
spiritual laws gospels is that Jesus himself did not proclaim those as the
gospel. Jesus never preached either of
those two gospels. Jesus’ Gospel is surprisingly simple.
His ministry was to walk about the small towns of Galilee and Judea
announcing, “The time has come. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.” When he announced this Gospel,
he also healed people and cast out demons as well as pronounced the forgiveness of
sins. His Gospel was rooted in the real
history of real people rather than simply involving what happens to individuals
after they die. Jesus comes as the Anointed
King God had promised to Israel through the prophets. The King through whom God himself would
deliver Israel, indeed the whole creation, from its enemies even sin and death
and establish the Kingdom or Reign of God on earth. For Jesus to say that the kingdom of God is
at hand or come near was to say that it is here, with him it is here. This long expected time in history of God’s present and visible reign began with Jesus and his ministry and
continues on today in and through us his followers and our congregations
through the working of the Holy Spirit as Jesus reigns from that right hand of
the Father and will return. Jesus
proclaimed and enacted the kingdom of God, the reign of God in word and act in
history. That was what he was here to do
and what he continues to do in and through us in the power of the Holy Spirit
to the glory of the Father. The Kingdom
of God was the central focus of Jesus’ ministry. Therefore, it should be the focus of our
ministry as well.
But, the topic of the Kingdom of God is a difficult one particularly for
Christians in the West. After the first
few decades of the church talk of the Kingdom of God all but disappears having
been engulfed into that interestingly dysfunctional marriage of Church and
State that we call Christendom. The
phrase Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven resurfaced during the Crusades and
then persisted with the divine right of kings into the British Empire only to
evolve into the American notion of Manifest Destiny. In the Church a more biblical idea of the
Kingdom of God emerged in the late 19th century among Christian Liberals
who taught that by mixing social ministries and Christian mission we could
bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.
And so, programs of public education, public health, and public welfare
systems came into being along with temperance and restorative rather than
retributive penal systems and these programs became the thrust of a global
missionary movement. Yet, since the two
World Wars talk of the Kingdom again all but ceased until recently as
Christendom has finally all but died. No
longer can we, the church in the West rely on and take for granted our
privileged position. The institution of
"the church" is dying in North America and something new is emerging
and in the new emerging church the idea of the Kingdom of God as Jesus preached
it is re-surfacing.
Today, to speak of the kingdom of God is not to speak of a mixture of
Church and State (though this persists among conservative Evangelicals). It is to speak of God’s really extending
his grace into his creation and this means we need to know what grace is. It is not courtroom leniency where God just
forgives humanity’s sin on account of Jesus’ death on our behalf. The
biblical understanding of God’s grace derives not from the courtroom but from
the royal court and involves the idea of having a monarch’s undeserved favour. God’s grace is that we have been brought into God’s presence in
response to his summonsing us to come to him and there in his presence he
extends his favour towards us and promises to act on our behalf and truly does
so in time in the real events of our lives.
Paul in Romans speaks of grace as being a place in which we stand. He writes: “Therefore,
since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which
we stand” (Rom. 5:1-2).
Experiencing God’s grace is the reality in which we stand where
the power of God’s grace is the authority under which we conduct
or lives. We no longer need be slaves to
sin and the fear of death for we are adopted through Jesus by the gift of the
Holy Sprit to be children of God and co-heirs with him to his Kingdom, his
reign in history right now.
So, the Kingdom of God, God’s reigning over us according to grace is near. It is here, at hand ruling over us. That should lead us to ask how do we know it’s here? What should be our
experience of it? Though the church has
talked almost exclusively about the forgiveness of sins for the last 1,000
years and God’s plan for our lives the last 50, we are not
accustomed to seeing the Kingdom come with power with miraculous healings or and
the casting out of demons the way that it came with Jesus, though I know people
for which both have happened. Just to
make a summary statement here, Jesus didn’t heal and cast
out demons for the sake of doing miracles.
They were physical signs of the kingdom’s presence and
the end result of them was to restore people to being able to function with
dignity within human community. That
provides us with a rule of thumb when it comes to how the kingdom of God comes
and the way God’s grace works.
Grace doesn’t dehumanize like sin and death do. God’s grace re-humanizes people,
restores us to dignity as a sign pointing towards the future when Jesus returns.
But back to the questions I was just asking about experiencing the
kingdom of God, indeed, experiencing God’s reign of
grace in our lives, what’s that like.
Psalm 6 to me is quite descriptive.
It’s written by King David probably in the episode
of deep depression he went through after the baby died that Bathsheba had. If you remember, David abused his kingly
power and had an affair with Bathsheba and then had her husband Uriah
killed. Uriah was a very loyal soldier
among David’s elite. So David writes: “O Lord,
rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord—how long? Turn, O Lord,
deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death
there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise? I am weary
with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with
my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all
my foes. Depart from me, all you workers
of evil, for the Lord has heard
the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord
accepts my prayer. All my enemies shall
be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back and be put to shame in a
moment.”
David was deeply in remorse.
Indeed, depressed with it and so he prays. He prays and he prays and he prays and he
prays, praying “Don’t do to me as I deserve but rather, “Turn, O Lord, deliver my
life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love.” We don’t know what
happened, but we suddenly find David proclaiming that the Lord had heard him
and was going to show him favour against his enemies who were going to take
advantage of him in his weak state. That’s grace. That’s God’s reign breaking in. And notice the role prayer played in it.
That leads us to the question of from what do you need saving. Where in your life do you, like David did, need
God to prove he is the only steadfastly loving and faithful god? It doesn’t have to be
that you are depressed and overwhelmed with your own sinfulness. Maybe it’s a grudge or a
resentment you’re bearing.
Maybe it’s somebody you love, somebody you know just
needs to know the Lord? Where do you see
the need for God to step up to the plate and prove he is the One and Only
steadfastly loving and faithful God?
Look around here in Stokes Bay.
What do you see people need saving from?
Friends, the time has come. The
Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and
believe the Gospel. “Repent and believe” that means pray and be disciple. Look at those needs, pray, get involved
according to the love of God. And when
those prayers are answered tell about.
30 years I have prayed for my best friend growing up to know the
Lord. One month ago he got
baptized. He’s a changed a
man these days. He’s peaceful on the inside. I know
many alcoholics involved in AA whom God in answer to prayer has taken away
their compulsion to drink and is healing them on the inside and in their bodies
of the damage alcohol has done. I could
go on. The Kingdom of God is at hand, my
friends. Pray and be a disciple and
watch the Kingdom come. It will. Amen.
