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How to Answer

 

The apostles who left us the New Testament scriptures never believed that God, the Almighty El Elohiym Yahweh, took on flesh as a man so He could die for the sins of His people. The good news the apostles proclaimed through their accounts in the epistles they wrote to the Church was this: God sent His Christ, His servant, His anointed one, and “It is He, the Christ, who has died for us!”[1]

The New Testament scriptures proclaim “…the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” [2] Jesus is the Christ of God who came to us with the sole intent and purpose of doing the will of His God.[3]

The apostles witnessed and understood Jesus as the man approved (attested) by God.[4] They understood, through both their experience of being with him those three years, and through the scriptures which spoke of him, that Jesus was a man[5] who esteemed the will of the Father above his own.[6] They saw Jesus of Nazareth as the man who was obedient to the Father, and through the suffering brought on by the obedience which he learned,[7] willingly laid down his life…. because that was what the Father had ordained.[8]

With the gift of the Holy Spirit of God, the disciples, who later became the apostles, saw that God the Father[9] was pleased with Jesus because of his love and obedience to the Word of God.[10] In their understanding, Jesus was rewarded for his trust and faithfulness, which was when God raised him from among the dead.

With the guidance of the spirit of God,[11] the apostles looked to the scriptures, now opened to them, and applied them, including these words of the Psalmist, written directly to Jesus: “I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For you will not leave my soul in hell; neither will you suffer your Holy One to see corruption.”[12] In fulfillment of the Psalmist’s words,[13] the apostles understood Jesus of Nazareth was the man approved of by God, and that he has since been seated as the glorified Son of Man.[14] They saw Jesus as the Son of Man, declared as the express image of God,[15] who now sits at the Right hand[16] in the throne of God.[17]

It was this truth which must have pricked against Saul’s heart as he consented to the death of Stephen while holding the garments of those who stoned him. The words of Stephen must have rung loud in the ears of Saul, when Stephen looked up in the midst of his accusers and in a vision saw the Glory of God and declared, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." [18]

In an irony difficult to ignore, we witnessed Saul, who would later become the Apostle Paul, affirming the words of Stephen when he stood on Mars Hill conversing with the Greek philosophers, “He (God) will judge the world in righteousness through a Man Whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead." [19]

This is the actual good news (the Gospel). It is the message specifying what God did for His chosen people[20] by sending His servant,[21] His appointed and anointed one, His faithful and obedient one, Jesus of Nazareth, to be the light[22] in the world and who has revealed the way to the Father.[23]

 

The good news is that Jesus was declared the firstborn of creation.[24] This was made possible by his obedience and love for God and His Word.

The good news speaks of Jesus as one of us, our brother,[25] who has since been proclaimed “the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.”[26]

The good news proclaims that Jesus, upon His resurrection from the dead and His glorification, was appointed by God to be the High Priest[27] who mediates on behalf of God’s people.[28]

The good news is that God’s righteousness[29] was revealed through the shed blood of His appointed and anointed faithful One.[30]

The good news shouts out to us, God is satisfied, and there is now reconciliation between God and man. “More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”[31]

All of this is good news, because God is justified in justifying[32] the ungodly.[33] God the Father does justify His people on the basis of the man, Jesus of Nazareth whose love, faithfulness and obedience led him to suffer the curse of the tree. There upon the tree[34] Jesus died as He gave himself to the will of God.[35] And because of what Jesus accomplished as one of us, as our brother,[36] there is peace[37] between God and His people.

This is the good news the apostles proclaimed to the world!

It is the good news the Church ought to be preaching!

 

At the core of this good news is the fulfillment of God’s decree, revealed in His desire at the beginning to make man in His image and likeness. Jesus has become our example and forerunner, and is the firstfruits[38] of those who will be raised up from the dead in the image and likeness of God.[39]

The good news is the promise that God’s people, in the age to come,[40] will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.[41] This is very good news, assuring us that God’s people are to partake of the Divine Nature,[42] sharing in the life-giving spirit Jesus has become.[43]

The apostles taught us that there is but one God, the Father,[44] and one Lord Jesus, the man who mediates between God and man. The apostles believed in the promise that God would send Jesus back to this earth[45] to claim the kingdom[46] and receive the promised throne of his father David.[47] As Jesus is to inherit all things,[48] so, too, are those who are the called of God to be co-inheritors with him.[49]

This is the good news the apostles taught and left with us when they penned the New Testament scriptures.

 

 

In conclusion, remember it’s important to keep it simple, because our theology does not have to be mystifying, confusing, or contradictory.

"For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”[50] It is with a sound mind, the renewed mind,[51] that the people of God are to think of and believe that God is in control of everything and every event, because He is absolutely sovereign over His creation.

Holding to this understanding, the Apostle Paul beseeched us with a question, the question which we must come to terms with if we truly believe God is sovereign: “What if God, wanting to show His mercy and grace, created the evil as the means to show (demonstrate) His mercy and grace?” [52] It is this reality, this truth that is the witness coming from God Himself.[53] What we do with this witness divulges our judgment of God.[54]

In our judgment of God,[55] we should remember the truth as it was explained by Moses, “the secret things belong to the LORD.”[56]

Those things that are properly to be revealed are found in the scriptures, the revelation of the God who instituted His plan by placing the forbidden tree within Adam’s reach. That God, who is all-knowing, knew Adam would reach out to “grasp and steal” what he was commanded not to take: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.”[57]

As soon as Adam did so, redemptive history ensued in earnest.  

In the mind of God was the Logos, that which was from the beginning.[58] The Logos, in the process of time and space, would manifest as flesh,[59] being born of woman.[60] The Logos God had in mind was the second Adam[61] who returned that which was stolen by the first man. Jesus, the last Adam, restored[62] what the first Adam had taken, and in doing so glorified His God,[63] bringing redemption and justification to His people.

At the end of this age,[64] Jesus, the son of man, now heralded the Son of God with power, will achieve the deliverance of creation from the curse. “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God,” “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”[65]

In the gospel (the good news) the apostles left for us, we are beseeched to wait patiently for the reward of the restored creation with the kingdom of God. The restitution of the creation[66] is the consummation of the reign of God on earth, and is the fulfillment of that promise where God will dwell in the midst of His people.[67]

This is the doctrine the apostles chronicled for the Church and which the people of God are to defend.

Unlike what has happened in the Church throughout history and is the cause for the division we see today, the apostles did not interpret what Jesus did and said, and neither did they interpret the scriptures but pointed to them and said, “this is what was spoken…”[68]

 

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