The Gospel: Part Eleven By Pastor Luis R. Scott I am not aware of any man capable of putting together 1,500 years of history in which we can identify a consistent thread of a plan that culminated in one person’s life. This task is simply impossible for a human mind, mostly because we can only live for 70-75 years. Over the last two weeks I have shared this thread that began with God’s promise to Adam and Eve that the “seed of the woman” would strike the “head of the serpent” (Genesis 3:15), and culminated with a young girl from Nazareth giving birth to a boy in Bethlehem of Judea. The good news (the Gospel) had been proclaimed all throughout the Old Testament and with Jesus’ birth the Gospel took human form. Jesus is the Gospel. He is the good news that God has dwelled among us. He is our Immanuel. God had spoken with people like Moses in the burning bush and later at Mount Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments. God had spoken through the prophets. The Angel of the Lord (a visible manifestation of Jesus) visited Abraham and Joshua, for example. But in Jesus God actually stepped out of his invisible eternal existence and entered the physical world of humanity. Jesus came to live the kind of life that no other person could live. Sometimes we assume that the only thing Jesus came to do was to die for our sins. As important that his death was to release us from the death penalty hanging over our heads, he also had to live a righteous life in order to transfer it to us. This is how the Gospel works: Only perfect people can enter heaven. No one on this earth is perfect. Therefore, no one can enter heaven. Since we are receiving credit for Jesus’ sacrifice and life, Jesus had to live the perfect life so that God would allow us into his heaven on Jesus’ account. In other words, since we cannot live perfect lives, God was willing to give us credit for Jesus’ life. The Gospel is not simply that we do not have to die. The Gospel also includes Jesus’ perfection. After Jesus’ blood was spread on the Mercy Seat of the heavenly Ark of the Covenant, God was satisfied with the blood sacrifice that cleansed the sins of the entire world. When Jesus introduces us to the Father, all he sees is Jesus’ perfect reflection on us. This was a trade God was willing to make. This was a trade God wanted to make solely motivated by love. The proclamation of the Gospel is simply telling the world that, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God took human form to live a perfect life, that after living a perfect life Jesus, the innocent, was crucified by the guilty in order to transfer his life to the sinner. The proclamation of the Gospel is telling the world that when God raised Jesus from the dead on the third day he guaranteed that Jesus’ eternal life could be shared with anyone who believes. This is the Gospel: God sent his Son to live the life we could not live, to pay a debt we could not pay, to reconcile us with the holy and perfect God of the universe. Salvation is from the Lord! Amen.
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 11:48:27 +0000
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