How simple Can the Gospel Be?

How Simple Can the Gospel Be?

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I’m a windbag.  I too much explain everything I say in life.  So I am going to try to say the Gospel in as short a way as I can.  There is God and there is man, the generic sort of man; male and female, adult and child, white and black, and all that exists in between.  There is a mediator between God and man.  We read from St. Paul’s writing to Timothy:

            “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time.”  (I Timothy 1:3-6)

            Who is this man, this Christ, this Jesus who is the one mediator between God and man?  The Scriptures tell us that He was God become flesh, become man.  He has been believed upon as fully man and fully God.  He is man.  He is Christ.  He is Jesus who shall save us from our sins.

            As Christ, as God become flesh he comes to us with a message from God.  God wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of truth.  That is no abstract principle of theology.  It is what God said to humankind in the person of Jesus Christ.  God says to us that he wills that we would be saved.  He says it in the sending of his Son, for He so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son that whoever believes on Him would not perish but have everlasting life.  God says that to each of us in Jesus Christ.

            Jesus Christ is man.  He represents us.  He has died for us.  Our death he made his death.  Our sins he made his sins.  In his death for our sins, our sins and our death have died.  Jesus Christ is man and as God addressed man in Jesus Christ saying He wishes none of us to perish, Jesus replies back to God on our behalf, “Thy will be done, O Lord.”  Therefore he is our mediator now.  God is speaking to us in Him saying that he wills that none of us should perish.  Will we respond with the prayer Jesus is wishing to reply to him on our behalf?  “Thy will  be done, O Lord.”

            It is that simple but also that profound.  It takes that much for the life of faith to begin and it will take the whole of life to begin to comprehend that life in depth.  But it really is that simple, in Christ God has said he wills all men to be saved.  In Christ, we may reply “Thy will be done, O Lord.”  God and man were brought together in the person of Jesus Christ, and therefore God and man have been joined together now and forever by his work of mediation.