This is the start of a six-part series I will be doing covering The Gospel. The core question I will be addressing is "what is the Gospel?" How I have arrived at this point is a longer story, but the impetus for tackling this question comes from two passages in the Messianic Writings (New Testament), Luke 3:15-18 and Mark 1:14-15, which I will share shortly. The overall arc of this series will be on five main points: Creation, Covenant, Confirmation (Christ), Charisma (Holy Spirit) and Culmination/Cure (Day of Judgement, Eternity). I learned these as "The Five C's" and so I'm preserving that structure because it makes it easier to remember. This first post will be introductory, but mainly covering the Worldview of a 1st Century Jew as a backdrop for the rest of the series.
"Now because the people were waiting in suspense and were all wondering in their hearts whether John himself might possibly be the Messiah, John, in response, told them all, "Though I have been baptizing you with water, the one who is more powerful that I is coming, and I am not fit to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear out his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn. The chaff, however, he will burn in the unquenchable fire." It was with many, many other exhortations of this kind, then, that John was proclaiming the gospel to the people." (Luke 3:15-18, Blessed Hope Translation)
"Now after John was arrested, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God. "The appointed time has been completed," he declared, "and the Kingdom of God is drawing near! Repent and keep putting your faith in the promises!"" (Mark 1:14-15, BHT)
After coming across these two passages some time ago, the question arose in my mind - if John was preaching/proclaiming the Gospel before Jesus was ever on the scene, and if Jesus was preaching/proclaiming the Gospel at the very beginning of his public ministry, before having done and said all he did, before his death on the cross and before the resurrection, then what was the Gospel that they were preaching? In the Evangelical world, we are taught a lot of things about the Gospel, but usually it is something along the lines of, "Jesus died for our sins so that we could be with him in Heaven". If this is the full Gospel, then what was John saying? For that matter, what was the gospel that Jesus was preaching? To begin to answer this question, I want to start with an overview of the Jewish worldview, particularly of the 1st century Jew, by whom and to whom the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and all of the Apostolic Letters, were written.
'Worldview' is a term that gets thrown around a lot and used as a buzzword, but all I mean by it is, "what was their view of time and history?" What was the underlying assumption upon which all other assumptions rested? It answers almost sub-conscious questions like "where is all this going?" Put simply, a 1st Century Jew (and by extension, the ancient Hebrews) viewed time and history on a very simple, linear timeline, consisting of two Ages....This Age, and the Age to Come. This was Jesus' view and almost certainly Paul's as well and it is rarely, if ever, directly laid out because it was such a fundamental understanding. If you or I were writing a letter to someone else, we would do the same, not bothering to get bogged down in the details of a fundamental we both see in the same way. To illustrate this, allow me to borrow from someone smarter than me, John Harrigan, who said: if we walked into a car repair shop and overheard the conversation happening between two mechanics working on a car, we would not hear them discussing the physics and structure of a car engine as they spoke about what needed to be done to fix it. They both understand how the thing works, with no explanation needed between the two of them. It would be very strange if, in order to fix a vehicle, they needed to constantly address the fundamental elements of the vehicle parts and/or the tools they were using to fix it. The Bible is a lot like this. Very rarely do you get a discussion of the fundamentals - most often, there is a set of assumptions that everyone is working off of. It is incumbent upon us, the 21st century reader, to discern what those things are, and there are helpful clues along the way. Permit me a brief aside to illustrate:
"If a person speaks something against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him. If someone speaks against the Holy Spirit, however, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come." (Matthew 12:32, BHT)
"While Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came up to him privately. "Please tell us," they said, "when will these things take place?" And what will be the sign of your coming and of the culmination of the age?" (Matthew 24:3, BHT)
"Jesus said, "Amen, I solemnly tell you this: There is no one who has left behind house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for that of the gospel, who will not receive a hundred times as much now in this present age [...] and in the age to come, unending life." (Mark 10:29-30, BHT)
"Those who are considered worthy of taking part in the coming age, however, and the resurrection from the dead, aren't going to marry or be given in marriage..." (Luke 20:35, BHT)
"This is the will of the one who sent me: All those he has entrusted to my care, that I would not lose any of them, but raise them to life at the last Day." (John 6:39, BHT)
There are many others like this, but I wanted to do a brief fly-over, as it were, through each of the Gospels to show you what I'm talking about. Paul uses similar language:
"In this regard, I am certain that the sufferings of this present age can't even be compared to the glory that will be revealed with respect to us. Indeed, all creation is waiting, so eagerly, for the time when God will reveal his children in resurrected glory." (Romans 8:18-19, BHT)
"...in order to display in the coming ages the extraordinary riches of His grace expressed in the kindness he has shown us through Messiah Jesus." (Ephesians 2:7, BHT)
"I, you see, am already being poured out like a drink offering, and now upon me is the time appointed for me to depart this life. I have run the good race, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. For the future, there is stored away safely for me the victor's crown of salvation, which the Lord, the just judge, will award to me in that Day, and not only to me, but indeed to all who set their hearts on his appearing." (2 Timothy 4:6-8, BHT)
We see here, clearly laid out in the passages above a simple, linear, two-age understanding of time and history - THIS AGE/WORLD (Olam Hazeh), encompassing all of history from the beginning through to this very moment, and THE AGE/WORLD TO COME (Olam Haba). When The Age/World to Come begins is a source of some debate. Some say it begins at Jesus' return, others say it begins at the end of the Messianic Age, or at the end of the thousand-year reign of Jesus. In any case, the Age to Come is ushered in after the Day of the Lord and the Jesus' return.
The 'Great and Terrible' Day of the Lord - The Divider of the Ages
The thing that separates This Age from the Age to Come is what Scripture refers to as' The Day of the Lord', 'the Day of Judgement', or sometimes simply "the Day". Scripture talks about this being the culmination of human history - all other days before it being the day of man's exultation, but That Day being the day of God, the day of His exultation. It is a day when all humans who have ever lived will be resurrected and then face Judgement, going either to Eternal Life in God's Kingdom, or to Eternal punishment in Gehenna (hell). Most of us have heard about this before, but it bears mentioning here, as the singular moment that will define all of existence when it happens. There was a 'before' and there will be an 'after', and it is that Day that will be the line between the two. There is a passage in Luke which talks about this fairly directly:
"And just as it was in the time of Noah, this is how it will be in the time of the Son of Man. People were simply enjoying life, they were marrying, daughters were being given in marriage, right up to the day Noah entered the ark, and then the flood came and destroyed them all. It will be the same as it was in the time of Lot. People were simply enjoying life, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building. On the day Lot left Sodom, however, fire and sulfur rained down from the sky and destroyed them all. That is precisely how it will be at the time when the Son of Man is about to be revealed. At that time, if someone happens to be on the roof of his house, with his belongings in the house, he must not come down to gather them. Similarly, if someone happens to be out in his field, he must not turn back 'toward the things behind.' Remember what happened to Lot's wife! If someone tries to preserve his life, he will lose it. If someone is prepared to lose his life, however, he will keep it. I tell you this: On that night there will be two people in one bed; one will be taken, and the other will be left. There will be two women gathering grain together at the same spot; one will be taken, and the other will be left." (Luke 17:26-35, BHT)
Why Is This Important?
I have taken the task of explaining this first because I feel it is fundamental to understanding the overall narrative of Scripture. Having this framework in mind will help us to understand how each of the elements of Creation, Covenant, Crucifixion, Charisma, and Culmination fit together in the overall effort of answering the question, "what is the Gospel?" The Gospel is ultimately about the restoration of a Kingdom, God's Kingdom, and in order to fully grasp what that Kingdom is, we have to understand how Jesus, his Apostles, Paul and all of the Biblical narrators before them understood the thrust and goal of History. We are headed towards something - and that something is the restoration of all things, the day when God reverses the curse that he placed upon mankind and upon Creation itself in the story of Genesis. In the next part of this series, I will examine that story more closely, detailing how God has planned the End from the Beginning.
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