Nothing pains me more than the gospel changed or misunderstood. Some religions use the same words that Christians use, words like: God, repentance, grace, and resurrection. However, the words mean different things to different people. I wonder what a person from a non-church background thinks when they hear the gospel in all its biblical language. Do they give up because it’s too foreign—too much to understand? Do they understand the depth of the message, or have words like ‘repentance’ and ‘confession’ been so overused that they have become ineffectual? If I were to tell someone that Jesus said that you must believe to be saved, would they understand the depth of what the word believe means? Or would they think back to the many musicians, actors, artists, authors, motivational speakers and TV personalities who are continually saying “You must believe in yourself.” To believe in God, to them, must be like what it is to believe in yourself. I’m not sure I even know the gospel apart from the language I have learnt it in, so this will be a challenge for me. I aim to share the gospel as plainly as I can and hope that it does someone justice.
There is an intelligent being who is not like any man, or any other natural substance we know in this universe. He is not like the wind, or the sun, or the expanse of the universe; though people may compare Him to these things to show how vast His span of power covers. He does not have a start and will not have a finish. Time is a concept that only applies to things that He creates and He Himself is not subject to it.
He is not as simple as man. He is complex. He was always a Father, but not like our earthly father. He was always a Son, but He is a perfect Son, a “duplicate of the Father’s perfections” (John Piper). He is also a powerful Spirit who counsels and loves, “the eternal love that flows between the Father and the Son as they delight in each other” (John Piper). He has no body that He can be limited, for He is three persons and He is one. The Father loves His Son more than we can comprehend and the Son loves His Father equally. The Spirit is the very expression of that love and He is complete, just as the Father is complete and the Son is complete.
He is called ‘God’ to people in the Western World, but He doesn’t call Himself God (because the word itself has a possibly pagan origin). The Western World refers to this intelligent being as a ‘he’ because He chooses to reveal Himself to us in that way, though he is so much more than any gender. He calls Himself YHWH (some translate this as Yahweh and some translate this as Jehovah) and His people call Him Adonai, out of fear of the greatness of His name, which is Hebrew for ‘LORD’. It can be translated into English as ‘I am who I am,’ meaning He is self-existent.
The LORD, this intelligent being who is self-sufficient and does not need anything to be complete, decided to create—to display His glory and His love in an expression of Himself—much like how an artist paints themselves into their picture and an author writes themselves into the characters on the page. There wasn’t a world to inhabit before that point. When the LORD decided to create a world, it was created. He only had to imagine it and say the words and it came to be. He took greater care making man and actually formed the man Himself. Man was His crowning glory. After making man, the LORD said, “It is good.” What was not good though, was that man didn’t have company that suited him.
The LORD is not lonely. He is a Father, Son and Spirit. He experiences the closest relationship that we will never have. He loved this man that He had created and so He decided to create something that was an extension of the man, in the same way that the Son is an extension of the Father and the Spirit is an extension of their love for each other. But it is only a weak reflection, because the LORD cannot be anyone’s equal. So the LORD created woman. The LORD loved the man and the woman. He didn’t leave them alone in the world He had created, He chose to be with them and talk to them and involve Himself in their lives. He did not create evil, because evil cannot be born from good, but he created the potential for men to seek evil and made it part of His plan (the evil being that they could choose not to serve the LORD). With the added temptation from a serpent, the man and the woman fulfilled what the LORD knew would happen and they didn’t listen to Him when He said they should serve Him and eat from the tree of life not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (whether this is an actual tree, or metaphorical language, we don’t know). As a result of their actions, they stood before the LORD and had to confess what they had done and then he judged them. There were consequences specific to their genders, such as the man would have to toil for his food and the woman would have pain in childbirth, but there were also severe consequences for mankind in that they would now die, and the world that they lived in would die too.
The LORD is also a loving being and so He gave them some hope. He told them that there would one day be a man who would set everything right again. The man would defeat death and He would defeat all of His enemies, restoring humans into the right relationship with the LORD again. This man would be from the tribe of Kings (Judah) and He would first suffer greatly, in place of those who deserved to suffer for rejecting the LORD, but He would also be victorious and reign over all humans “every knee will bow and every person would confess that He is the LORD.”
Until that appointed time, the LORD chose a people to be His, the Jews, and elected men, known as prophets, to speak on His behalf (He would speak only to them, except in some rare instances). The LORD saw that people were struggling to be holy (to be like the LORD), so He gave them a law (a set of instructions) to follow so that they could identify when they did things that were against the LORD and change their ways. However, even with the animal sacrifices they made and rituals they performed, they could never be clean. The LORD became angry with them, for their continual disobedience and pattern of breaking the law. An even bigger betrayal was when the people started to cry out for a King to lead them and didn’t want to deal directly with the LORD anymore. The LORD gave them a King, but more often than not, the King was corrupt and didn’t lead them in the way of holiness, but led the people away from the LORD.
Israel was conquered many times, but at one point in history, when Israel was under Roman rule, roads were built connecting distant lands and peoples from all cultures were united, the LORD decided it was time to send the One—the Saviour. He needed to be a man, so the LORD chose a girl that He found worthy to bear the child. Miraculously, Mary was touched by the Holy Spirit and conceived a child without ever having sex. This child was called Jesus, but He was given the name Emmanuel by His Father which means “the LORD is with us.”
Jesus frustrated the Jewish people because He claimed to be their Messiah—their Saviour—but He wouldn’t let them crown Him as king or cause an uprising over the Roman rule. Instead, He spent most of His childhood years learning about the law in the synagogues and speaking with the teachers. He gleaned as much as He could and then went and selected some people to travel with Him and spread His message. His message to people was for them to repent and follow Him. He said, “I am the way the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He claimed that no one had seen the Father, except Him, and that the Father loved Him.
He claimed that He had come to bring life to people and that if they accepted him and confessed Him as LORD, that they would live forever. He also preached a message of judgment and told people that there would be a time when the whole world would stand before the LORD and be rewarded or punished for what they did.
Jesus spoke to people that the other Jews would not speak to and He had miraculous powers that caused unnatural things to happen, such as people being healed of sickness, even of death, and He commanded evil spirits and they obeyed him. Mostly He loved people. He spoke to them like He knew them intimately and He always told them the truth. He even told them that those who were not chosen would be cut off from the LORD forever, which meant pain and agony and everything that was not of the LORD. When Jesus had caused a big enough stir over His teachings, the Jewish leaders organized His death. They believed they had the control, but the LORD had planned it from the beginning and Jesus had even foretold it to His followers, giving details about what would happen.
Jesus died in the most brutal form of execution that there has ever been and ever will be, but the worst agony He faced was not the death itself. The worst was the pain of the Father’s wrath against the sin of the world, that Jesus took responsibility for, even though He had never done any of the evil that the humans had done and had never rejected the Father. The Father so loved the world, that He sent His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will never die but have eternal life (John 3:16). The Father punished the Son in the way that you deserve and I deserve and the Son did it willingly, albeit after much struggle. He loved the people even to His last breath, when He said “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
If that was the end of the message I carry, and all Christians like me carry, then that would be tragic. The point wasn’t just for the punishment to be dished out, but also for things to be restored—relationships to be made right. Jesus, the Son, did not remain dead. He came back to life and spoke to His followers, instructing them about how He was going to build His church (the body of people that would be His people). He told them that He would be sending someone in His place and that they should desire Him to leave so that they could know this person. He was speaking of the Holy Spirit, whom He knew and loved.
When the Holy Spirit presented Himself, after Jesus ascended into the heavens (there is no other language to explain this, because no one is quite clear on what that means, aside from that the Son returned to the right hand of the Father), He was able to speak to not just a prophet, but to all men as He chose and empowered the followers of Jesus with the same miraculous abilities that Jesus had displayed. The people went from fearful, doubting men, to bold and courageous heroes. For instance, Peter, the same man who had denied Jesus whom he loved more than anyone, now shouted the message of Jesus in the face of the people he knew would kill him for saying it. Paul, the Jewish man who was killing Christians, suddenly was struck physically blind and the LORD spoke to him, confronting him about his actions, and told him to go and speak to a man who would restore his sight. Instead of just receiving his physical sight, Paul believed that Jesus was LORD and got baptized (a sacrament that John the Baptist paved the way for and Jesus instituted). Paul ended up becoming one of the most influential Christians that ever lived, writing most of the letters in the New Testament section of the bible. Then there was me. I am a girl who grew up in a family who went to church and knew this message but didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand the LORD, His sovereignty (supreme power and governing authority) or His forgiveness. I didn’t care about the fact that He died for me or about the bible. I pretended I did because I knew that I should, but mostly I just wanted to please myself. Thankfully there was a point for me, like Peter and Paul, where the LORD changed my heart and the way I thought about things, and suddenly I was a different person. I was excited about Jesus, I wanted to learn about Him and I wanted others to know about Him. I also wanted to please God and it took me a long time to realise that I couldn’t please God. The only thing that gives God pleasure is my surrender to Him.
The most important word that even leaves Christians lost in translation is the word ‘grace.’ It is one of the most important words in the bible. The bible teaches that it is by the LORD’s grace that you (Christians) have been saved “through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that none can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-10). What this tells me is something I never learned growing up, but am so thankful that I understand now. The LORD gave me faith so that I could believe in Him, and He saved me from the possibility of eternal punishment because of that faith, and none of the things I do could ever earn that. What’s more I have the Holy Spirit with me forever, as a promise. He speaks to me, comforts me, guides me and corrects me. I do not enjoy doing wrong anymore. I want to do wrong things, but I don’t enjoy it when I do it. The LORD has changed me irrevocably and I do not regret it for a second.
What’s more? The church (the followers of Jesus) have grown exponentially and now make up the largest religion in the world. Jesus gave a warning about this, though, He said, “the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:14-15). Which tells me that perhaps there aren’t as many Christians as the statistics show, especially when the bible says that you will know the followers of God by their fruits (their good works) and how they love each other. A Christian is far from perfect and is being sanctified (made into a person like Jesus), but will continue to be worked on until Jesus returns.
Christians who love the LORD, desire so much for the return of Jesus because it means that they get to go ‘home.’ We feel unsettled with this life because we have received a taste of what it could be and we want more. Even though we are eager for the return of Jesus, He is not in a hurry, because He wants to give people a chance to repent—to change their mind about how they are living their lives and follow Jesus instead.
My prayer for those who may read this, even for those who may never read this, is that the gospel is clear and not confused. Jesus wants you. Jesus died for you. Jesus doesn’t need your perfection. Jesus will take anyone who’s willing. You are facing judgment. You are in danger. Give in to Him today.
REFERENCES
Piper, John. (2014). ‘The Place of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity.’ Desiring God Foundation. DesiringGod.org
