The Rest of the Old Old Story

This morning two things brought up the issue of what the Gospel is.

Note: I reproduced this at Christian History for Everyman, where I could include sidebars with quotes from early Christian writings showing you that this is what the apostles’ churches taught as well.

One, I am a member of Tangle, a Christian version of youtube. Their email for the day concerns a video on the Gospel. It’s this one:

The second were two questions asked in the comment section of my blog post, Obedience and Christian Salvation. I’ll do a second post to cover those.

The Tangle Video on the Gospel

The Gospel does not come presented any worse than this.

This deluded person says, “If we’ve lied once, cheated once, hated once … just once … then our soul becomes imperfect and can’t get into heaven.”

That doesn’t sound so horrific on the surface, but let’s look at what he’s saying. He’s already said that heaven or hell are the only places our immortal soul can go. He believes that hell is a place of torment, full of literal flames. So … So God is a being who will  send the vast majority of souls who have ever lived into eternal torture even if all they’ve done is just hated once.

Forget Guantanamo Bay. That was a place of exceptional righteousness, where people were subjected to light and temporary humiliation and discomfort, the majority of them for being exceptionally evil.

God, according this video, is much worse. He’s going to torture people in flames for all eternity for hating once, or for cheating on a test in elementary school, or for telling a lie at work … just once.

This is a just Judge???

Slandering God

This is not the Gospel. This is slander.

This deceit was planted in Christians by the devil, who is the father of all lies. We need to root out this counterfeit Gospel, driving it out with our whole hearts as the blasphemy that it is.

That is not God. Listen for a moment to who the Judge of all the earth, the one who does right, really is:

If the wicked will turn from all the sins that he has committed, keep all my statutes, do that which is lawful and right,  he shall surely live. He shall not die. All his transgressions that he committed, they shall not be mentioned to him. In his righteousness that he has done, he shall live. (Ezek. 18:21-22)

Yahweh passed by before [Moses] and proclaimed, “Yahweh God, merciful and gracious, patient, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.” (Ex. 34:6-7)

Okay, granted, God will not clear the guilty. He’ll even punish the children for sins of the fathers. Don’t freak out about that. We all know that children are prone to inheriting the faults of their parents. Punishment is not evil. Punishment is a wonderful thing that produces repentance, and as you can see from the Scriptures above, repentance produces life and drives punishment far away.

However, read those verses. Is this a God that sends people to hell for one lie???

And how does he forgive the mass of sins that the wicked have committed. Does he require sacrifices and oblations? Does he have to kill a human? Does he have to send his own Son to earth and kill him so that he can forgive sin?

That’s not what the Bible says. After King David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, then killed her husband Uriah to hide it, God punished him in body and by killing his love-child. David repented, crying out for forgiveness.

 You do not  want sacrifice, or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Ps. 51:16-17)

This is a God that can’t forgive sin unless he kills his Son???

Why Jesus Really Died

Jesus did not die because God was a monster that could not forgive sin. God did not need to be saved. He has always been wonderful. Everything he has done has always been redemptive and has always been good. God did not change when Jesus died.

Jesus died because we are monsters. Look at Paul’s description of us:

There is none righteous, no, not one. …
Their throat is an open grave; with their tongues they have deceived;
The poison of asps is under their lips; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

When Paul wrote, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” he was not talking about cheating on a 6th grade math test. He was talking about those things I just quoted from Romans 3,  which Paul quoted from the Old Testament.

Worse, according to the Bible, at least for the majority of us, there’s not much we can do about it. “How to perform what’s good I cannot find” (Rom. 7:18).

Now that’s a problem worth dying for!

And that’s the problem Jesus did die for …

For what the Law could not do, because it was weak through the flesh, God did. By sending his own Son in the likeness of  sinful flesh, as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk after the flesh but after the Spirit. (Rom. 8:3-4)

Awesome! So now we wicked people with the poison of asps under our lips and whose feet are swift to shed blood can “put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit” and live (Rom. 8:13).

That was worthy dying for.

And it doesn’t make a monster out of a loving, kind, and merciful God.

One More Verse to Mull Over

When Peter told the Jews in Jerusalem–including the other apostles–about the conversion of Cornelius, the Gentile, they were horrified. Forget the fact that Cornelius had received the Spirit of God, having had his soul cleansed by the blood of Jesus. They were horrified that he’d, gasp, eaten with gentiles!

After Peter explained what happened, however, they were silent and accepting. This was the work of God.

Their comment, however, should be mulled over by all  modern Christians who have been deceived by that blasphemy from the devil that says that God forgives sin by killing and sacrifice rather than on the basis of repentance:

So, then, God has given the repentance that leads to life to the gentiles as well. (Acts 11:18)

Hmm.

Do you want one even more difficult for modern, deceived Christians to swallow? This is Paul speaking:

 I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but have announced first to those in Damascus and Jerusalem, then to all the regions of Judea, then to the nations, that they should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance. (Acts 26:20)

Paul said that??? Paul did that???

Yes!

Of course, he also told them that the power for this repentance is found in the grace bestowed upon us by the Lord Jesus Christ in his death …

Sin will not have power over you because you are not under Law but under grace. (Rom. 6:14)