Scripture Reading: Mark 1:1, 14-15; Gal. 2:5; Acts 20:24; Matt. 24:14; 1 Tim. 1:11
Ⅰ
The gospel is the fulfillment of the promises, prophecies, and types and is also the removal of the law; this is a full definition of the gospel—Mark 1:1, 14-15; Gen. 3:15, 21.
Ⅱ
The fulfillment of the promises, prophecies, and types and the removal of the law are a living person, Jesus Christ—Matt. 17:2-8; Rom. 10:4.
Ⅲ
We must believe in the gospel—Mark 1:1, 14-15:
A
To believe in the gospel is to believe into the things in which we believe and to receive into us the things in which we believe.
B
To believe in the gospel is mainly to believe in Christ, and to believe in Him is to believe into Him and to receive Him into us so that we may be organically united with Him—Acts 16:31; John 3:15-16; 1:12.
C
Such a faith in Christ is given to us by God through our hearing of the word of the truth of the gospel—Gal. 3:22; Rom. 10:17; Eph. 1:13.
Ⅳ
In Galatians we see the basic truth of the gospel—2:5, 14:
A
Sinners can be justified not out of the works of law but out of faith in Christ— v. 16:
１
Faith in Christ denotes an organic union with Him through believing; the term in Christ refers to this organic union—v. 17; 3:14, 28; 5:6.
２
By means of our organic union with Christ, God can reckon Christ as our righteousness; only in this way can we be justified by God—1 Cor. 1:30.
B
In God's New Testament economy we have life and live by faith—Gal. 3:11.
C
We are dead to the law, we are alive to God, and we have Christ living in us— 2:19-20.
D
In Christ we are a new creation—6:15.
Ⅴ
We must believe in the pure, high, and complete gospel—Mark 1:1; Rom. 1:1; Matt. 24:14; Eph. 2:17; 6:19; 1 Tim. 1:11; 2 Cor. 4:4; John 12:24:
A
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with all the processes He passed through and all the redemptive work He accomplished, is the content of the gospel; hence, the gospel is of Him—Mark 1:1; Rom. 1:1-4.
B
The gospel was planned, promised, and accomplished by God, and it is the power of God unto salvation to all believers that they may be reconciled to God and regenerated by Him to be His children; hence, the gospel is the gospel of God—vv. 1, 16.
C
The gospel brings the believers into the realm of the divine ruling so that they may participate in the blessings of the divine life in the divine kingdom; hence, the gospel is the gospel of the kingdom of God—Matt. 24:14; 1 Thes. 2:12:
１
The gospel of grace emphasizes the forgiveness of sin, God's redemption, and eternal life—Acts 20:24.
２
The gospel of the kingdom, which includes the gospel of grace, emphasizes the heavenly ruling of God and the authority of the Lord—8:12.
D
Christ Himself is peace, in His death He made peace, and as the Spirit He came to preach peace as the gospel; hence, the gospel is the gospel of peace— Eph. 2:14-15, 17; 6:15; Acts 10:36.
E
The gospel is the gospel of the glory of the blessed God—1 Tim. 1:11:
１
The gospel with which the apostle Paul was entrusted is the effulgence of the glory of the blessed God.
２
By dispensing God's life and nature in Christ into God's chosen people, this gospel shines forth God's glory, in which God is blessed among His people.
３
Because Christ, the image of God, is the effulgence of His glory, the gospel of Christ is the gospel of His glory that illuminates and shines forth—Heb. 1:3; 2 Cor. 4:4.
F
The gospel in the book of Romans is the gospel of the One who is now indwell-ing His believers as their subjective Savior—1:1, 9:
１
The gospel of God, as the subject of Romans, concerns Christ as the Spirit within the believers after His resurrection—8:9-11.
２
Christ has resurrected and has become the life-giving Spirit; thus, He is no longer merely the Christ outside the believers, but He is now the Christ within them—vv. 34, 10.
G
Paul's gospel is the center of the New Testament revelation—16:25; 2 Tim. 2:8:
１
Paul's gospel is a revelation of the Triune God, processed to become the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit—1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17; Gal. 3:2, 5, 14.
２
Paul's gospel is centered on the Triune God being our life in order to be one with us and to make us one with Him so that we may be the Body of Christ to express Christ in a corporate way—Rom. 8:11; 12:4-5; Eph. 1:22-23.
３
The focal point of Paul's gospel is God Himself in His Trinity becoming the processed all-inclusive Spirit to be life and everything to us for our enjoy-ment so that He and we may be one to express Him for eternity—vv. 4, 6; Gal. 3:13-14, 26-28; 6:15.
H
The highest point of God's gospel is that God became a man that man may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead—Rom. 1:3-4; 8:3, 29:
１
God became a man through incarnation and then passed through human living, death, and resurrection in order to have a mass reproduction of Him-self—John 1:14, 29; 12:24.
２
God's intention is to have, in Christ, a mass reproduction of Himself and thereby to produce a new kind—God-man kind.
３
The one grain—Christ as the first God-man—through His death and resur-rection has produced many grains—the many God-men; now these many grains are blended as one loaf, which is Christ's Body, His reproduction— v. 24; 1 Cor. 10:17.