What Good News?

Galatians 1.11-12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation of Jesus Christ

The Gospel is the ‘good news’ of what God has planned and promised. At least 7 essential features can be traced in the Old Testament, in the coming upon earth of:

the presence of God
peace
joy
healing
deliverance
righteousness & justice
return to Jerusalem

v 14 zealous for the traditions of my fathers

It is quite likely that Judaism, in the time of Jesus, did not consciously try to be legalistic. The people had known enormous persecution. The result was that, to protect them, their religion had consolidated into a set of practices that were quite brittle. Rigid Sabbath observance. Extreme precaution against acts of personal, ceremonial pollution. And formality. People were wanting to prepare themselves for God’s Kingdom.

The reason that it clashed with Jesus was simple. Jesus offered an understanding of the Kingdom that seemed to disregard all of this. His teaching and ministry pointed to the core ‘drivers’ of God’s Kingdom. He was indifferent, even hostile, to the practices that had built up. And the religious conservatives felt threatened.

We too need to ask, ‘which side of the road to Damascus experience are we on?’. What actually changed there, for Paul? He already believed in the ‘Good News of the Kingdom’, as a devout Jew. How did Jesus make a difference?

As Christians, we have to watch that we do not separate the ‘Good News of the Kingdom’ from the ‘Good News of Jesus Christ’. Because they need to go together as one. We can have a message, ‘Jesus died to take the punishment for your sins’! Do you accept it?’. But that by itself, as Deitrich Bonhoffer famously put it, is a message of costless discipleship, of ‘cheap grace’.

Paul’s understanding of Jesus and the Kingdom of God goes much deeper. He talks of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Corinthians 4.4). For Paul, as a Jew, sees that Jesus brings the full presence of the Kingdom of God to earth. This is the good news. Jesus’ life lives out what Israel is called to live for. His life ushers in the presence of God, as God has promised to Israel. Jesus brings the presence of God, as God’s icon (Colossians 1.15). He brings the realisation of the full blessing of God to Israel; and He also lives out the obedience that Israel is called to. In short, Jesus is a microcosm, a life encapsulating and effecting all of God’s blessing in and through Israel to the world. Indeed, His death and resurrection even demonstrates that He’s God chosen One, as well as that God has fully borne and satisfied God’s wrath at Israel’s disobedience and waywardness (Hosea 6.1-3). Now there is, through Christ, participation in this blessing of being part of God’s Kingdom presence. Through being joined to Jesus Christ, we are brought into enjoying God’s full blessing.

This is where baptism provides such an instructive depiction, for Paul. Baptism represents repentance from wilful wandering and disobedience; and a commitment to live in Kingdom power for Kingdom purposes. It is an acknowledgement that God has swept us into His loving presence, purpose and power through Jesus Christ. For Paul, true conversion happens not as a moment but is better understood as an ongoing movement represented by engrafting into the death and also resurrection of Jesus Christ. Going down and rising up in baptism symbolises this. Repentance and faith go together: they usher entry into positive participation in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

Baptism’s self-emptying death identifying movement downward and the empowering, Spirit enabled movement upward point the way forward in our Christian life. Life for Christ can only be enabled by the Holy Spirit. Therefore our decision and commitment has not simply towards the cry, ‘I’m saved!’, but into the ongoing movement into being saved, of ongoing discipleship. This is how we can express that the good news of Jesus’s death and resurrection is the fulfilment of Israel’s longing for God’s Kingdom. We have entered a fellowship where there is a demonstration of the Good News of God’s Kingdom being outworked upon the earth, in and through our own lives.

Proclaiming Christ's death

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11.26)

At the 1st weekly communion of the new session at IBTS this morning, the rector Keith Jones preached on the reminder of Paul, the apostle, that is our physical communion with Christ, we proclaim Christ’s death until He comes. It got me thinking. What could Paul really mean?

Well, of course he meant to remind folk again of the sheer grace of God. Of Christ’s sacrifice for us. Of the message of Isaiah 53. We are called to be recipients of what Christ did, when he died to demonstrate and manifest the fullness of God’s forgiving love.

But there’s something more, too. Something that Western Theology has tended to forget. That is, that the Cross must be followed by the Resurrection, as surely as Isaiah 53 is followed by Isaiah 58. For as the Cross is what Christ passed through for us, so we too, in our baptism, must pass through the Cross with Christ. What does this mean?

Jesus didn’t get crucified only to bring God’s forgiveness to us. The Bible is clear that He was crucified because He gave Himself for the purposes of the Kingdom of God. His life was given over to the expression and execution of the Nazareth Manifesto. And just as his crucifixion was the fruit of His faithfulness to God’s Kingdom purposes, so His Resurrection is the vindication of such a life given over in the purposes of God.

And so it is for us. To declare Christ’s death is to declare our commitment to His cause. To recognise that faith demands fulfilment through our participation in God’s purposes revealed in Christ’s life and ours.

The declaration of Christ’s death is, yes, a declaration of thankfulness. But it is also a declaration of purpose. As Christ lived to bring good news to the poor, so must we.