Why your heart skips a beat when you hear “Jesus is coming soon”
Most of us have heard that Gospel means Good News, well, not quite. The word Gospel translated from Greek (Euangelion) actually means News that is too good to be true or too good news. Whatever translation you choose, one thing is certain; there is a lot of emphasis on the “goodness” of the news.
Except the definition of good has changed, why should the message of Jesus evoke feelings of fear, how can it be good news if it makes you scared? In my experience as a teacher and student of the Gospel, there are 2 reasons.
Reasons why a person is fearful when they hear the Gospel
- They heard a wrong message (~ 97% of the time)
- They misunderstood the message (~3% of the time)
The Gospel is so simple and good that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to hear it preached correctly and be scared.
What the Gospel is not
- If you fornicate you are going to Hell ❌
- If you wear Jeans, you are going to Hell ❌
- If you use earrings & make up, you are going to Hell ❌
- If you lie, steal, kill, you are going to Hell ❌
The Gospel is the message of how Jesus saved humanity from Hell, not how He is sending us there. ✔
What does Jesus' birth represent to humanity, to you?
The best explanation comes from the mouth of angels when they heralded the birth of Jesus to shepherds. A short commentary on Luke 2: 8–10
If all I have been saying before did not hit home, these are words recorded in the Bible from angels themselves. They described the birth of Jesus as “great joy to all people, as peace on earth and Gods good will toward humanity”. More importantly, the Angels described Jesus as “Saviour”, but Saviour of who? from what?
Who Jesus Saved and What He saved them from
The best explanation comes from Apostle Paul's letter to one of the early churches in Rome. A short commentary on Romans 5: 12–14
Apostle Paul's letter to the church in Rome (The book of Romans) is a sophisticated one that assumes the reader is an expert in the first 5 books of the Bible. For the sake of this post, I will assume you are not an expert on the Torah, (the first 5 books of the Bible) and give a fairly detailed explanation of the portion of this letter that is necessary to understand this article.
Explanation of Romans 5: How sin entered the world & affected you
Apostle Paul refers to a story from Genesis, telling us that through one man, (Adam) sin entered the world, and just as the natural consequence of putting your hand in fire is that you will get burnt, the natural result of sin is death. But not just death as we know it (6 feet below the ground), but separation from God who is the source of life.
If we were to explain this in very simple terms, (it is not simple) it is like permanently damaging the charging port of a smart phone, despite all the features and benefits that the phone can bring to the table, all of that does not matter now, there is now only one destination for such a useful and powerful device.
But it was Adam & Eve who messed up, how does that affect you & me? Well, the same way we can look at a child and see a spitting resemblance to their parent, the same way we can scientifically tell that a child came from a certain man or woman by checking their DNA, the same way diseases can be genetically passed down from parent to children, Apostle Paul explains that since we all descended from Adam, we all share his destiny.
Hence, the only people that can be free from Adam’s destiny are people who are not descended from him or people who are able to change their lineage, this is where Jesus comes in. I did a Twitter thread that can help you understand the consequence of Adam’s sin better, check it here
What Jesus did about the destiny we inherited from Adam
He swapped it.
You may or may not have heard this statement before.
“The son of God died the death of the sons of men, so that sons of men can become sons of God”
Recall we already said that the natural consequence for sin is death, so Jesus suffered that consequence in our stead. Three questions that should be on your mind are:
- Why couldn’t it have been another man that died, why did it have to be the son of God?
- If people have died in the past and it did not change my life, what makes Jesus's death special, how does another person's death affect me?
- Why did God require such a huge sacrifice (the life of Jesus), why couldn’t He just forgive?
Answer to question 1: Why did it have to be Jesus?
It could not be any other person but Jesus because of what we have explained earlier. Everybody that is conceived by a man bears the same “sinful spiritual DNA” of Adam. Do you remember Old Testament stories where the Israelites sacrificed (killed) spotless Lambs to God as propitiation for their sins?
Well, God says that the blood of those Lambs did not take away their sins, but they were a representation of Jesus and what He was going to do. The reason why the Lambs were required to be spotless was because the requirement to take away sin had to be PURE and HOLY, the spotlessness represented purity and holiness.
Any sacrifice from the seed of Adam was tainted and will not be able to take away sins, hence Jesus's virgin birth. Not born from Adam’s tainted seed but by the HOLY spirit, hence a HOLY sacrifice.
Answer to question 2: How does Jesus’s death affect me?
This is best answered agriculturally and mathematically using an illustration of grafting and the concept of like terms.
The concept of Grafting
Grafting is taking a part of one tree (let's call it Y) and surgically adding it to another tree (let's call it X) so that the tree X now produces fruits similar to fruits from tree Y.
A clearer example: Assume that we have two orange trees, orange tree X and Orange tree Y. Assume that orange tree X produces sweet Oranges, and orange tree Y produces sour Oranges. We can graft a branch from orange tree Y into Orange tree X. That grafted branch will now produce sweet Oranges.
Hold this example in your head and go to the next example.
The concept of Like Terms
Below is a simple algebraic equation, relax, you don’t have to be a Math Wizz to understand this example.
Notice how some of the letters are colored green? I did this intentionally to make the example simple. Let us call this Equation 1 and the one after it Equation 2
What changed from equation 1 to equation 2 is that we added all the elements of equation 1 that had the same variable ‘a’. We were able to do this because all those elements have the letter ‘a’ in common. It will be mathematically incorrect to do the same for the other elements that don’t have the letter ‘a’. But how does all these relate to how Jesus’s death affects you?
Marrying the concept of ‘Grafting’ and ‘Like Terms’ together
Just like the branch in the grafting example, when a person meets the requirements for salvation, they are cut off from the family of Adam and grafted into the family of Jesus, such that they are able to produce ‘fruits’ like children of God not children of Adam.
This means that they are severed from the lineage of Adam and grafted into the lineage of Jesus, so that the destiny we inherited from Adam (death) is nullified and we inherit a new destiny from Jesus (life). John 15:5
Notice how the relationship between the vine and the branch in the Bible verse is symbiotic? Not only is the branch grafted into the tree, but the tree is also grafted into the branch. (You live in me and I in you).
When a person meets the requirements of salvation, God lives in them as the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit lives in them, they have something in common with Jesus. So, if we rounded up all the people who are like Jesus, they will be among. The like term example above and the Bible verse below (Romans 8:11) will help you understand this better.
The Bible says that the same thing that Jesus experienced will happen to you because you have the same thing He has. The Holy Spirit is the believers ‘Like Term’ with Jesus that allows us to be grouped with Him and share the benefits He has.
Answer to question 3: Why did God not just forgive, why did He require such a huge sacrifice?
This one is very simple to answer. The magnitude of the offence equals the magnitude of what is required to resolve it. Asking why God required such a huge sacrifice means you have not understood the magnitude of the offence. It is like asking a parent who just had their child murdered to ‘just forgive’. Yes, the Bible teaches forgiveness, but the same Bible teaches justice for the victim. Understand that forgiveness is not the avoidance of justice.
If you rape someone, and we want to preach to you so you can receive salvation, you will receive our ministration from the comfort of your prison cell, serving the full and just punishment as dictated by the law of the land.
So, picture it as a contract between God and Man. Man breached the contract and should bear the consequence, but God chose to bear the consequence, extend forgiveness to Man and repair the relationship. It goes against every rule of common sense.
So, what is the Gospel & What is required to receive it?
The Gospel is a Love story.
The story tells of how God demonstrated His love for His creation by laying His life down for them and saving them from the terrible consequence of their wrong action.
What is required to receive it?
Just believe in Jesus.
This is the part that confuses people all the time. “It sounds too simple”, “that can’t be all” “there must be more”. The Bible is clear…
“What if I have a pornography addiction?” “What if I have a drinking problem?”
Even though the Bible is also clear that those who belong to the family of God must live up to their new status, but that is a teaching on sanctification not salvation.
When Jesus called His disciples, he called them with their sins, addictions, short comings, problems etc. But after 3 years of teaching and receiving the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, they were totally different people.
Peter who was too scared to be associated with Jesus for fear of his life and denied Jesus to a child, preached and over 3,000 people were converted in a single day, was persecuted and ultimately killed for his belief in Jesus. What made the difference? Time and the influence of the Holy Spirit.
(Holy Spirit + Time + Teaching + Consecration = Sanctification).
Make no mistake, while Salvation and Sanctification are 2 sides of the same coin, Salvation is instant, while Sanctification takes time. In another blog post I will explain sanctification, but this is a blog post on salvation, how sons of men are saved from death to receive life.
What to do Next
- Confess, (simply say it to yourself) that you believe that the death and resurrection of Jesus has saved you from death and given you life.
- That is all.
How can something so good, simple, and beneficial inspire fear?
Do you have questions? Reach out to me on Twitter here
