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14
No. 5
The Gospel of God
The word "gospel" means "good news from God". Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers used to speak of the
"godspell", meaning "God's spell or story", and it is this "spell" or "story" that we desire once more to make known.
In chapter 1 of the epistle to the Romans we find this "gospel of God" associated with (a) a Book, and (b) a Person:
"The gospel of God, (which He had promised afore by His prophets in the holy Scriptures,) concerning His Son"
(Rom. 1:1-3).
These two, the Book and the Person, are so linked together that if we deny the one, we renounce the other. It is
vain to imagine that we can trifle with the Word of God and yet find an interest in the Christ of God. Listen to what
He Himself said concerning the Scriptures, and you will be able to settle this matter without further argument:
"Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how
shall ye believe My words?" (John 5:46,47).
This association of the gospel with the Scriptures is enforced by the testimony of the apostle Paul, who said:
"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS ACCORDING
TO THE SCRIPTURES; and that He was buried, and that HE ROSE AGAIN THE THIRD DAY ACCORDING TO THE
SCRIPTURES" (1 Cor. 15:3,4).
Returning to the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans, let us note more fully what it says concerning "His
Son". First of all, God's good news is entirely concerned with His beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. There can
be no "good news" from God, to a world of sin and death, that is not centred in Him.
Do we ask for evidence of the love of God? He points to the gift of His Son:
"In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world,
that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to
be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:9,10).
The "gospel of God" is "concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord". In the passage quoted above from 1 John
4:9,10, we learn that the reason why the Son of God came was that He might be "the propitiation for our sins". This
means, in simple language, that the Lord Jesus Christ by His death put away sin (for the wages of sin is death), and
provided a way wherein God could come out to poor sinful man in all the fulness of His love and forgiveness,
without compromising His holiness, or setting aside the demands of righteousness. With this in view, we turn once
more to Romans 1 for further teaching concerning "His Son". We discover by reading verses 3 and 4 that it speaks
of Him under two aspects:
(1) "The seed of David according to the flesh".
(2) "The Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead".
It would take us too far afield to consider what the reference to David implies. Let us pass that and just consider
the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ came "in the flesh". It is evidently very vital to the gospel that "Jesus Christ came
in the flesh", for it is the spirit of antichrist that denies it (1 John 4:2,3). The following Scriptures will reveal the
necessity for the manhood of Christ:
"Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same;
that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who
through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Heb. 2:14,15).
"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us,
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Rom. 8:3,4).
"For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead" (1 Cor. 15:21).