The Gospel, what’s that? Well, if you’ve been around me long enough,
you know that when I ask that question I'm setting you up for one of my
favourite discussions. What exactly is
the Gospel is indeed an important question for as Paul indicates here to turn
to a gospel other than the one he proclaimed and which he received as the result
of his personal encounter with Jesus is actually a turning away from Jesus. The content of the Gospel is integrally tied
to the person of Jesus. Wrong Gospel, no
Jesus.
In our reading Paul is very upset with
the churches in Galatia for they had turned away from the Gospel he proclaimed
to them and had easily accepted a different gospel that said a person is not truly
one of the people of the Messiah unless one ascribes to the ethnic, cultural,
and scriptural requirements placed upon a Law observant Jew. This “other” gospel was bad news particularly
if you were an adult male who was not yet circumcised.
Humour aside, the problem with this “other”
gospel was that external requirements trumped the God-given means of salvation,
which is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ and the faith and faithfulness creating
work the Holy Spirit does in us. In this
“other” gospel salvation, which is new life in Jesus Christ enlivened in us by
the Holy Spirit who moves us to be a community of people who live according to
the way of the cross – unconditional love – did not hinge on what God has done
in, through, and as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit according to
the love of the Father. Rather, it hinged
on whether or not your men got circumcised and your women didn’t wear pants and
about 611 other things. The result of
this “other” Gospel was that acting according to the love of Christ got
overshadowed by eating and drinking like a Pharisee.
Well, that was Galatia. Looking closer to home, what would Paul say to
us today about whether or not we have stayed true to his Gospel? I would like
to play Don Quixote this morning and try to make the case that if Paul were
speaking to the church of North America today he would largely call us to the
carpet for believing “other” gospels just as he did the Galatians. There are many “other” gospels floating around
in Christianity today.
For example, one “other” gospel I am
most familiar with is the one I heard growing up in the Bible Belt of the
Southern United States. That one goes
like this: This is God’s world and God is a holy and righteous God but we are
sinners. We have transgressed his good
commands and serve ourselves rather than him.
Therefore, death is God’s penalty placed upon us for our sin because God
can’t let sin go on forever. When we die
our immortal souls will come before God to face judgment and the verdict will be
go either to Heaven or to Hell. The only
way to get to Heaven is for a person to profess publicly “Jesus Christ is my
Lord and Saviour”. That means that
sometime in your life you must accept and believe the biblical truth that Jesus
Christ died for your sins and paid the penalty of death on your behalf and from
that point on you must show your belief by living as much in accordance with
the Bible as you possibly can. Do those
things and God in his love will upon the doors of Heaven to you.
This “other” gospel, which I have
heard proclaimed even at funerals, leans towards Jesus as the means to salvation
but it omits the gift of the Holy Spirit and his work in us of creating saving faith
and making us able to follow Jesus by giving us the desire to know him
personally. There is no talk of
resurrection in it and thus it is merely a Good Friday rather than an Easter
faith meaning that it reduces Jesus’ death to simply being an escape not from
the true consequence of human sin, which is death, but rather as our way to
escape Hell after death. There is no
real grace in this “other” gospel for in the end we simply wind up saving
ourselves by being rational or smart enough to make a decision on our own
efforts about the meaning of Jesus’ death and then how we ourselves are able to
maintain that “saved from Hell” status by our own efforts at being good. In this “other” gospel Jesus ultimately is
not the means of salvation rather I save myself by my own reason and will.
Well, I can pick apart “other” gospels
all day, but due to time constraints and the reality of there being food
downstairs maybe I should say what the Gospel really is. Oddly, in his letter to the Galatians Paul
doesn’t spell it out so clearly. One
place that he does is 1 Corinthians 15.
There Paul says, “This is the Gospel I passed on to you and which you
received and in which you now stand and are being saved. Christ Jesus died for
our sins in accordance with Scripture. He was buried and on the third day
raised in accordance with Scripture and appeared” first to the apostles, then
to 500 others, and then to Paul himself a few years later. Let me stop and note some core elements:
Christ Jesus, his death for our sins, and his resurrection both in accordance
with Scripture. Also, Paul wants us to
really get the historical reality of Jesus bodily resurrection from the dead. Over 500 people saw him.
There are other elements of Paul’s
gospel that he spelled out in the rest of that chapter that need to be added
in: Jesus’ return, the resurrection of everybody, the final judgment where
those who are in Christ now by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit will be
justified, and then finally the new creation where God will reign and sin and
death will be no more. Also, the church
is very important now as the fellowship of believers who walk by the Spirit
according to the way of the cross is a foretaste and the proof of what is yet
to come.
That’s Paul’s Gospel. Now, if Paul
were here today calling us to the carpet for our “other” gospels, I would for
the sake of conversation take up the futile exercise of arguing with Paul and
ask him what happened in his Gospel to the Gospel that Jesus himself proclaimed
which simply went: “The time is
fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at
hand. Repent and believe this
gospel.” Paul would answer, “Yes, that is
the Gospel Jesus proclaimed, but if you go on to read the whole of the four
Gospels as they tell the story of Jesus Christ the Son of God become human,
what led to his death which was for our sins, and his resurrection, the promise
of the Spirit, the importance of the Church, that he’s coming back, there will
be judgement and as Lord he will put his Creation to rights…well, my Gospel is
all there.”
I would then ask Paul, “Paul, I’m
curious. I’ve read your letters I don’t
know how many times. What happened to
the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed to be at hand and manifested in
everything he said and did? You mention
it once maybe twice.” I don’t know what Paul’s answer to that would be. Probably he would say “everywhere in my
letters you see the phrase ‘in Christ’ I am talking about the Kingdom of
God.
To shorten a long story Jesus’ gospel of
the kingdom of God did not disappear from the gospel Paul proclaimed. To Paul encountering Jesus resurrected and
ascended on the road to Damascus meant that Jesus is Lord and his kingdom is at
hand just not yet here in it’s fullness.
That day will come as God has promised.
Until then, God has given his Spirit to his people as a deposit assuring
us that Jesus the Lord and Saviour will return to establish the kingdom of God
in its fullness. This assurance given to
us by the presence of the Holy Spirit is the faith by which are assured that we
are right with God in fact that we are his beloved children. Then on that day the Father will raise the
dead, there will be judgment (some will suffer eternal destruction), and he
will make a new heaven and a new earth for us to live in resurrected bodies
that are immortal and incorruptible by sin and death.
Until then we’ve a message to proclaim
and as Paul has said it here in Galatians God the Father has raised Jesus
Christ from the dead, Jesus who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from
this present evil age according to the will of the Father to whom be glory
forever and ever. Jesus is Lord and he
is delivering us from this present evil age.
Paul would like us to think of ourselves as being on a new Exodus. Just like when God led Israel out of slavery
in Egypt, now Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit is calling and leading all
of humanity to a new Exodus out of its slavery to sin and death. Some people by the inner teaching of the Holy
Spirit hear this good news and in faith get up and start walking according to
it. That’s us. We are the ‘in Christ’ people who have the
responsibility of living and proclaiming the Gospel. Those who don’t, well, in God’s time in God’s
way. Don’t give up hope on anybody.
Friends, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. God is really acting on behalf of his people
in Jesus who by his death and resurrection has won the victory over sin, death,
and the devil. He has been and still is
God with us and has done and is doing all the things God said he would do
himself for his people. He has come
himself to be our shepherd in this New Exodus.
The end time kingdom of God into which it is God’s will that all peoples
be included is now beginning. We’re
going to have to put our prejudices aside and be hospitable and compassionate
to everyone. We are on a new Exodus now,
an Exodus from slavery under sin and death, but we’ve yet to wander through a
vast wilderness following Jesus Christ by walking in the Spirit whom he has
freely given to us to give us faith. In
the love of Christ and fellowship of the Holy Spirit that is in our midst we’ve
a taste now of what is awaiting us when Christ returns.
As we go on this Exodus Jesus by the Holy
Spirit in our midst is going to manifest his kingdom in really wonderful
ways. Our especial task is to live our
lives together right now according to the love of God that’s been poured into
us so that we don’t discredit the work of the Lord. We won’t do it perfectly. But that will not separate us from the love
of God who is with us now and has made us his children through Jesus Christ by
giving us the Holy Spirit who cries out in us “Abba! Father!” God truly has come as Jesus Christ in the
power of the Holy Spirit to deliver us from this present evil age. To know this and live according to it is the
free gift of faith. I pray the Spirit
give us ears to hear the Good News and empower us to live accordingly. Amen.
