Hello, here am I again. I am going to talk about the gospel.
The gospel is the power of God to save those who believe the good news, and
what is the good news? It’s simply that we are righteous, or another word for
“righteous” is “innocent”, that we are, before the beginning of time, we are
already seen as innocent and righteous, holy, blameless before God, and that is
the good news.
God does not want us to be afraid of Him
There is no bad news in the good news, and that is why there
is much concern, especially in the “Christian” world about the mixed gospel
because there seems to be some bad news in the good news, the so-called “good
news”. But we know that God does not give any kind of fear or condemnation
because 2 Timothy says that “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of
power and of love and of a sound mind”, and also we learn that Jesus always
said “Do not be afraid.”
He doesn’t want us to be afraid of Him at all, and He is the
same as God, and there is a misquotation (or rather misinterpretation) about
“Do not fear those who can kill the body and can do no further, but fear him
who has the power to destroy both body and soul.” But that is actually not
referring to God. That is actually referring to the enemy. The enemy is not
God; He is always our Friend; He is our Father in heaven.
The enemy is actually that part of our conscience, our human
psychology, that caused us to feel condemned, and that is actually a symbolic
representation that is simply called Satan or the devil or the accuser of the
brethren in the Bible. Now, for every interpretation of the Bible, I think a
safe guideline to go by is: Whenever it ministers peace to us, that is a safe
bet to say that it is “scriptural” because we know God always wants us to be at
peace with ourselves and with Him.
If there is any interpretation of the Bible that seems to
generate some fear or condemnation or guilt or shame, then it’s probably, most
definitely actually, not from God. If you
disagree, that is ok because I think we all have the freedom to discover for
ourselves what the Bible says or what any other holy scripture that we deem to
be “scriptural” to ourselves, because after all, we are made to have our own
freedom to pursue the path that we think what God is like.
One person’s understanding may differ from another person’s
understanding of God, and I don’t claim… and I don’t think other people also
would have the same… would have the full understanding of what God is really
like, and I definitely don’t have all the answers, but I can only share what I
have studied so far in my journey of faith because I believe that I am a
spiritual being on a human journey, and vice versa. I am a human being on a
spiritual journey as well.
How does the good news affect our consciousness?
So, what I am going to talk about, as I mentioned, is the
gospel. I think the power of the gospel is when we believe the good news. The
good news is simply that God is love and He sees us in His image, and it is
because the first Adam partook from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he
felt alienated from God, but God has never alienated Himself from us down
through the centuries. So that is the reason Jesus came to show us that God is
all the while with us. He is one with us, as He said in the prayer of John 17.
How can we apply this practically because theoretically and
theologically we can go into a lot of details to explain the gospel and the
salvation story? But, practically I would say, in my life, when I believe God
is good and only good – He is love – His love endures forever, somehow good
things also happen to me in my life, practically, realistically.
I think there is something to do with the – maybe you can
call that – vibrations. New age and… ya, this might raise some alarm bells from
some of the more conservative Christians, but actually new age thinkers and new
paradigm thinkers, or we call that new thought philosophers, they are actually…
they have something that is quite close to what we so-called know as the truth
or the reality – whatever you call it – or quantum physics or quantum science.
We actually live in a matrix kind of world, and I am sure
some of you would actually be able to tell the parallel between "The Matrix" and
the gospel story, that we actually live in a world that is something like a
holographic universe. So, how we perceive the world to be actually will play
out in real life. So, it is very important what we believe in our consciousness
because the battlefield is in the mind.
And I’m going to just talk about one passage from the Bible
before I go long-winded and go into other rabbit trails. It’s 2 Chronicles
chapter 20 where King Jehoshaphat and his army were facing a huge dilemma
because they seemed to be outnumbered by the enemies from Moab, Ammon and some
other countries.
I would say there is a spiritual significance to this story
because in our lives, there seem also to be some instances where in our mind or
our consciousness, we may imagine that some things are overwhelming us. They are
overwhelming to us especially when we go through some challenges, but even if
there are no challenges, our mind sometimes can still sabotage us and think that “Hey, something’s bad going to happen.” Maybe we’ve done something wrong.
Or even if we have done nothing wrong, somehow there is a voice that seems to
tell us that “Hey, don’t expect too much. Sometimes bad things do happen.”
Well, what happened in the story in 2 Chronicles chapter 20
is that King Jehoshaphat and his army, they actually learnt to sing “Praise the
Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever”, and I believe they sang this
over and over again. They were actually building in their mindset or their consciousness
how good God is, who is all the while with us, who is our heavenly Father, who
loves to bless us, who is already blessing us actually all the while. So, the
more we are aware of that, the more we actually become conscious of God’s
goodness and love that endures not just for a moment but forever. We can also
believe that at every moment, we can expect good things to happen to us.
Yes, it has nothing to do with our performance because the
moment we think it has something to do with our performance, we are actually
going back to the law mindset, to the tree of knowledge of good and evil where
Adam used to eat, and that’s how he felt alienated from God. But Jesus came to
bridge the gap, not in terms of the actual separation but in our mind, to show us
that God is all the while with us, to show us that He is our true identity – “as
He is, so are we in this world” – accepted, beloved, favoured, prosperous,
completely healed, whole, healthy, peaceful – that is shalom.
Jesus is our Shalom. And I would say the battle is in our
mind. The only way to overcome, to fight this battle is to actually be at rest. “Be still
and know that I am God.” We are actually gods, according to Psalm 82, which Jesus actually quoted to say that we have the
divine nature in us because we are all made in His image, which has never
changed and will never change. So this is the battle that we continue to fight,
not by struggling, but by resting.
Rest is the greatest work that we can do in
order to stay victorious. This is spiritual warfare, and probably it’s not like
what some of the traditional Christianity has taught. So, this is basically the
gospel, the aspect of the gospel which I want to focus on in this message. And
keep on fighting the good fight of faith, believing that we are righteous, we
are innocent, we are holy, we are blameless.
Christ is our wisdom, righteousness, holiness and
redemption. We are redeemed from the sense of alienation because by one man’s
disobedience – Adam’s – he made all sinners. “Sin” is not a moral thing; “sin”
is simply ignorance about our true identity, ignorance of the love of our God.
But by one Man’s obedience – Jesus’ obedience – all were made righteous. The
word “many” there means “multitudes”. So, it actually means “all” – the multitudes
of everybody. We are ALL made righteous, in our mind, and God has all the while
seen us righteous because we are all wrapped up in Him – the new Man, Jesus
Christ, the second Adam or the last Adam.
This is the gospel, as I believe it, and I’m still on a
journey. If you are blessed, I am glad to know that because I am also blessed
by knowing the gospel, and it is my privilege and pleasure to share this with
you. God bless you. Know that we are loved by God always unconditionally,
universally, individually, personally forevermore. Amen.
Christianity fosters self-hate in mankind (sometimes tastefully called
"conviction of sin") so that it can offer its own special answer
(salvation) to an entirely artificial problem. The real solution begins
by understanding that there is nothing wrong with you just as you are -
that man is not a "fallen" being.
If you consider yourself a christian, does it strike you as strange if people say christianity is a self-loathing religion? After all, you think christianity is about God loving us unconditionally, even the worst of us. Yet I realise there is something amiss with the presentation of the gospel by mainstream or traditional christianity. The doctrine of "original sin" tends to paint a picture of how sinful and fallen we once were, and a holy and righteous God could not stand being around us for a second more and had to come up with a plan to send His Son to die and cleanse us with His blood to make us acceptable before Him, and even then, those who are seen as "rejecting this good news" will continue to fall out of favour with God and will continue to suffer misery and separation for ages and ages in a place called hell without end after they die. What a miserable existence, is it not?
Another common refrain I have heard in the evangelical christian circles goes something like "We are nothing without Jesus" or "It is all about Jesus, not about me". It is as though to love ourselves the way we are is a terrible sin and can cause us to become proud or puffed up, and so we must see ourselves as originally dirty and condemned, and only Jesus' blood can wash us clean. I also hear believers say things like "All glory to Jesus", as if Jesus is somewhere up there and we are down here, and the only way to defeat pride and demonstrate humility is to try to make ourselves nothing and make Jesus everything.
Why is this important? Well, for a start, it keeps us from actually loving and accepting ourselves the way we are if we think God is constantly trying to change us into something we are not. Secondly, it may cause us to see others as lost and miserable creatures if they do not profess to believe in Jesus. No doubt, some of us may say Jesus saw people as sheep not having a shepherd, but I believe it does not mean that Jesus saw people as being destined to go to a so-called place for hell.
Thirdly, it can create a sense of false humility when people insist on saying that it is all about Jesus and not about them. The question is: How can it be only all about Jesus when He is already one with us? We are inseparable from Jesus, so if Jesus is glorified, so are we glorified together with Him. It is impossible to glorify Jesus without us sharing the same glory that He had, so it might as well be better for us to be truly humble and accept the fact that we are as perfect and complete and righteous and beautiful and powerful as Jesus is.
1 Corinthians 6:17 says "He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him."
"Yes, but that is referring to believers", someone might say. Really? When Jesus died on the cross, who died with Him? When Jesus was raised from the dead, who rose with Him? Only believers? No, every one of us rose together with Him and we are united with Him.
"If we are already righteous, why did Jesus shed His blood then?" Good question. The interesting answer that I have come to learn is that God is not the one who requires the blood sacrifice. The religious sacrificial system is actually a pagan practice, which the Israelites borrowed from the pagan cultures in the old testament times. God does not need to appease His anger because He was not angry with us at all. "What? This is blasphemy! Heresy!" I hear some of you say.
Wait a minute, folks. Why would the Israelites think God was angry with them whenever something bad happened to them? Has it occurred to us that they interpreted events based on their concept of God or Yahweh, thinking that God must be punishing them whenever they were attacked by enemies or harmed by natural disasters like earthquakes? I believe before Jesus came on the scene 2,000 years ago, people back then felt separated from God. It began in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and after that, they felt alienated from God. It was interesting to note that God was all the while with humankind, and yet humankind thought their sins had separated them from God.
To cut a long story short, the Jews in the new testament times needed to be saved from sin-consciousness because they had been under the law for so many years (about 430 years). The law of Moses could not save them; it only condemned them. The only way for them to be saved from the religious mindset is to understand that Jesus came to be the perfect offering. Again, it is not to appease God's wrath, but rather to silence the roaring of the lion that accuses them day and night in their own conscience.
"For the worshippers once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins" (Hebrews 10:2)
This blood sacrificial system is never for us today. Why? Because we are never under the law in the first place. We are living in the new covenant of grace already. The law system ended officially in AD70, marked by the destruction of the temple by the Roman army in Jerusalem. So, since we are under not law, and by the law is the knowledge of sin, it means that sin has never been imputed to us.
So let's fast forward to the main question - How are we righteous? Is it by believing in Jesus or is it by Jesus' obedience? Some might say, "well, it is definitely not by our works, because the Jews sought to be righteous by obeying the law to obtain their own righteousness and have not submitted to the righteousness of God, according to Romans 10". I agree we are righteous not by our performance, but it is also not by believing in Jesus either. "What?" I hear you say. Yes, you read it correctly, we are righteous not by believing in Jesus, but by Jesus' obedience.
Romans 5:19 says "For by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous".
"Fine" you might say. "That happens when Jesus did the divine exchange at the cross, for God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. That means before Jesus died on the cross, no one was righteous."
Well, not really, because the cross is outside time - Jesus is the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. Therefore, by the time God created humankind, He created us to be righteous and innocent and perfect and complete. We were originally beautiful and good and perfect - that is our true identity, and Jesus came to restore that identity to us. Our part is simply to renew our mind with this wonderful good news.
"And be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness." (Ephesians 4:23-24)
So, the heart of the gospel is that we are created righteous and holy and beautiful, and it is not by our doing but by God's doing. We are crowned with glory and honour. Christ in us is the hope of glory. And Love is who we are because we are made in Love's image.
