The Gospel (part 1)

by

bert bauman

Almost 2000 years ago, a message came into the world which completely changed it. The world has not been the same since. This message created a special body of people whose principal purpose is to continue proclaiming that message. This special body of people is the church, and the message came to be known as THE GOSPEL. Through the centuries this gospel has varied often and considerably. Sometimes it seemed to lose its original content completely, but at those times God moved to restore it – at least in part.

This message known as THE GOSPEL is much more than a message; it is a body of truth which contains the Living Word of God. From its beginning, it has come to man in two ways – through the teaching of man and by revelation of God. I will refer to these two ways as the taught gospel and the revealed gospel. Unfortunately, these two are not always synonymous. We see the difference illustrated in the understanding of Peter and Paul. The gospel preached by Peter was largely colored by his Jewish traditional understanding of scripture and Old Testament law. Even though God began to reveal His glorious gospel to him upon the Joppa rooftop, Peter seemed unable to rise above the understanding he had into the fuller divine revelation. He remained the apostle to the circumcision and preached an interim gospel, that is, his gospel served as a bridge between the Old Testament understanding of God and the New Testament revelation. In contrast, Paul as a zealous student of Jewish theology, was undoubtedly more deeply inoculated with the same tradition and learning as Peter, yet through the grace of God, he was able to receive the heavenly revelation. According to his own words, he became the first man to fully understand and preach the revealed gospel. “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man- for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ”. (Galatians 1:11,12). Alas, though he imparted the pure gospel, it soon became polluted with tradition and human understanding. Even in his own lifetime, what he preached was under constant attack by others within the church. Repeatedly he wrote to defend what he jealously called “my gospel” (Romans 16:25, 2 Timothy 2:8)

DILUTION OF THE GOSPEL

The resistance Paul experienced and the historical record of the church since, expose the human inability to contain such wondrous glory as the revealed gospel unveils. Passing from generation to generation, it is soiled with human understanding and is changed into something more logical to human reason. The revealed gospel becomes the taught gospel, reverting to something similar to Peter’s “interim gospel” which was heavily influenced by the Jerusalem church in which James was dominant. James gave the gospel a heavy mixture of Old Testament law and Peter seemed unduly intimidated by him. Notice how Paul confronts Peter at Antioch. (Read Galatians 2:11-15). It is ironic that Gentile Christianity named its grandest monument, a basilica in Rome, after the apostle to the circumcision rather than after its own divinely appointed apostle. Is this not a subtle indication of which gospel gained the ascendancy and popularity?

But there remains a certain vitality even in a polluted gospel. Only rarely, as during the dark ages, was its power almost destroyed. Happily, the smallest remnant of truth contains enough of the potent seed of life to bring man into the Kingdom of God. Most Christians have been made alive through less than a wholesome gospel, as is apparent in the manifold splintered church. Each fragment preaches its variegation of the gospel and yet born again believers may be found in most, if not all, of the splinters. What is called gospel preaching is most often a checkered kaleidoscope of blatant legalism mixed with multihued shades of grace. In fact, most traditions consider good gospel preaching to be a proper balance of law and grace. Gospel has come to be a name for a body of teaching with little regard for what the word actually means, that is, glad tidings or good news.

The law has never been good news. Paul asserts that law and grace are totally incompatible – absolutely contradictory. You may hold one of the other, but you cannot hold both at the same time. It is difficult to comprehend how the intelligent theological mind can nurture such contradictions as “a proper balance of law and grace”. In practically all of his letters, the apostle Paul rejects the law as a power to save or give life. On the contrary, he says it kills. Those who preach the formula mixture are alternately ministering life, then death to their followers.

Extract from the book “The Gospel” by Bert Bauman