For many years I proclaimed what I now believe was only a "potential gospel." I taught that if a person believed on Jesus Christ, then God would forgive his sin and reconcile that person to Himself. Studying the Scripture over the past few years, I've come to see how misguided, albeit sincere, my approach to the gospel was. I didn't preach a finished gospel. The word "gospel" means good news and the good news of the work of Christ is that it is a finished work. Jesus said from the cross, "It is finished" and He meant it. In fact, when our High Priest ascended back to His Father He did something no other priest of God had ever done in the Holy of Holies. He sat down.
Jesus didn't sit down by the right hand of the Father because He was tired. He sat down because He was finished. All that the Father, Son and Spirit had planned to do for mankind had been accomplished at the cross. The first Adam had brought humanity down into the darkness of sin, but the Last Adam remedied what the first Adam had done. He gathered us all up into Himself, took us to the cross with Him, and then and there the Adamic race died. Out from the tomb walked a new humanity - one reconciled to God because in Jesus we were forgiven and justified.
The gospel is the fantastic news that because of what Jesus has done, we can now live in freedom. Freedom from our religious attempts to justify ourselves before God. Freedom from guilt and condemnation. Freedom from fearing God. Freedom to be who we are - a new creation in Christ Jesus.
What Jesus has done, He has done and nobody's unbelief is big enough to negate it. Unbelief simply causes a person to continue to stand in his own personal darkness, with all of its implications and subjective consequences, despite the fact that the Light of the World has come and taken care of the need of every one us without asking so much as an opinion on the matter from us. Our faith doesn't make it true. Faith simply allows us to walk in what was already true before there was an inkling of belief stirring inside us. God showed mankind just how much He loved in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (See Romans 5:8)
The Bible doesn't present a potential gospel - what can happen. It presents a complete gospel of what has happened in Jesus Christ. Theologian Thomas Torrance summarized the gospel well:
God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour. (T. F. Torrance, “The Mediation of Christ,” 94)
Let's make sure when we share the gospel that we offer the finished work of Christ as the answer. Anything less is a watered down version of the gospel and a watered down gospel is no gospel at all.
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