“And With His Wounds We Are Healed”
“The gospel is so simple that small children can understand it, and it is so profound that studies by the wisest theologians will never exhaust its riches (Charles Hodge).” This is a truth that I love about my God, he can be a father to little children, and at the same time be a safe refuge for those can call on him. He is our great judge and defender and at the same time is a humble servant. He is the Lion of Judah and The Lamb that was slaughtered. The gospel is the story of our redemption by the blood of Jesus.
Sometimes we can get the wrong idea of what the gospel is. Many times we get confused by thinking that the gospel is a list of steps, and that once you convince someone to follow along with a prayer he is saved. It does not mean anything if that person does not believe in God and he only blindly followed along. Accepting Christ is a matter of the heart.
It also is much more than just wanting to get into heaven, or escaping hell. God wants humble and willing hearts. He wants us to love him for who he is and for all the great works he has done for us, not just to run away from our consequences. Still, even when we come to God with the wrong motives he still loves us.
I once heard a friend describe the good news this way: when we get to heaven we will be surrounded by all the blessings and gifts that the Lord has for us, but that is not the main attraction; the reason we should be so enthusiastic about going to heaven is the
The Holy bible tells us in details what god wants from us and how we can get the salvation. God revealed to Moises in the Sinai Hill 10 basic rules to reach salvation.
In Chapter 3 of Speaking of Jesus, Carl Medearis says that if we do not really know what the gospel is then we will find ourselves having to explain Christianity. Instead of reaching out to people and showing Jesus, we put all our time and effort into defending our religion. It is like we are on teams and we try to get the most people on our side so we have the biggest team. Medearis put it like this, “In a way, we’re drawing a line in the sand and telling people, “You’re on that side, and you need to believe what I’m telling you in order to cross the line. Once you cross it, you’re saved.” (p.45).This is the kind of mentality of salvation that was also referenced in the introduction to the book. Christians tend to treat salvation like a check
In Matthew 1-2, the infant stories are used to prepare the ground for the theme of Jesus; the new and perfect Moses, the great teacher and interpreter of God’s ways. A parallel can be drawn between the experiences of the infant Jesus and the experience of Moses. This can be seen in Matthew 2:16-18, where the slaying of innocent male Hebrew children occurred around the time of the birth of Jesus, and in Exodus 1:15-22, where Hebrew children were also murdered at the time of Moses’ birth. Just as Moses came out of Egypt, leading the people of God, so does Jesus. Following the infancy stories, the rest of Matthew’s Gospel is structured around five long discourses where Jesus teaches. On each occasion, the evangelist indicates that a great teacher has been at work (Maloney, 1988, p. 133-34).
The main reason people reject the Christian gospel is their denial of their sin. If one does not realize our problem with sin, the Christian gospel is meaningless to them. If you believe you are a perfect person, then you do not need Christ's sacrifice and forgiveness. As previously mentioned, most people think that they are good people. Sure, they have done some things wrong, but no one is perfect.
17- “Jesus-who knew the truth, spoke the truth, and lived the truth-is still the Truth today.”
God wants us to be free from false dependencies, and to be controlled by nothing less than the love of Christ.
God loves us and He does not want anyone of us to perish but He wants us to have eternal life with Him and so He his Son to die for us and pay for our sins (John 3:16). In order to have eternal life, we have to accept Jesus in our life and believe
The essential problem Wright identifies in the introduction can be documented most clearly in six ordinary, but unsatisfactory responses often provided by the church to the query "What are the Gospels all about?, ” which are: 1) teaching people how to go to Heaven, 2) recording Jesus's exclusive ethical teaching, 3) depicting Jesus as a moral prototype for the people, 4) exhibiting Jesus as the perfect sacrifice, 5) telling stories with which humans can recognize and then find direction, and 6) signifying Jesus's spirituality. While each of these answers contains a portion of truth, Wright contends they all fail to hold the heart of the Gospel accounts. According to Wright, “the gospels tell of Jesus who embodied the living God of Israel and whose cross and resurrection really did unveil and initiate the Kingdom of God.” Wright then claims that the kingdom is apart of a greater eschatological theology, which is concerned with what is believed to be the final events of history, or the definitive destiny of humanity.
Some of the reasons intellectually that people reject the gospel is that they are not understanding or don’t want to understand the power that comes behind the word. The world develops minds that think and breathe social media, television and other thing that separates us from the gospel. Other reasons is that we are not discipline enough in our faith to want to learn the real truth behind the gospel. The gospel tells us everything that God wants and have instore for us, until we get the discipline to read and learn we as people will never know its meaning to make our lives better.
God 's primary condition for receiving salvation is FAITH. Its not just any kind of faith, but the kind of trusting, heartfelt faith that takes Jesus on for all that He is and doesn 't let Him go. Its a faith that takes hold even of the nature of God and causes a person to be transformed. Here is the tricky bit. A person cannot be saved from sin if they want to continue in sin. So at some point, the believer must embrace REPENTANCE - a change in heart and mind, if they wish to remain in Christ and experience salvation.
Everyone must accept God as their savior or they will go to hell. This is a very familiar message that is preached by Christian religious leaders in places of worship around the world. As simple as this message may seem, the way it is delivered to the people makes all the difference in either turning them into believers, or scaring them away from religion altogether.
There are so many wonderful things about the gospel and knowing that we serve a gracious and merciful God. To know that God sent his son down to earth to pay for our sins is an incredible gift and through the gospel we get to receive it in its entirety. Most people don’t understand the great love God has for us and everything he’s truly done for the greater good of his people and I hope that I can get more and more people closer to a relationship with God as I grow in my faith as well. Four things about the gospel that have stood out to me are that it connects us as humans to God through his son Jesus who is our savior, it is the “good news”, it is the truth, and it teaches us about God’s grace.
This is a summary of a No Travel Seminar on a Study of the Gospel of Matthew. The seminar was lead by Dr. John Dunaway who is a professor at NTS and has served as a pastor for over 50 years. After his brief self-introduction, he began his presentation with an overview of the Gospel of Matthew, followed by a more elaborated narrative summarizing the gospel, and he finished with brief closing remarks. Throughout this enthusiastic presentation, Dr. Dunaway made reference to remarks by multiple prominent commentators, which added substance to his narrative, even though none were explicitly stated upfront.
Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. The Scriptures are clear that there is no other name by which man can be saved but by Christ alone (Acts 4:12). One can only be delivered by the power of sin through the Lord Jesus Christ. In John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me.” The same exclusive statement is made in John 10:7-8 when Jesus said, “Truly, Truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers.”
Through out history, as man progressed from a primitive animal to a "human being" capable of thought and reason, mankind has had to throw questions about the meaning of our own existence to ourselves. Out of those trail of thoughts appeared religion, art, and philosophy, the fundamental process of questioning about existence. Who we are, how we came to be, where we are going, what the most ideal state is....... All these questions had to be asked and if not given a definite answer, then at least given some idea as to how to begin to search for, as humans probed deeper and deeper into the riddle that we were all born into.