In the pre­vi­ous post we have seen that the gospel (that is “good news”) is iden­ti­fied, for exam­ple, by Mark:

Mark 1:15
and say­ing, “The time is ful­filled, and the king­dom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

The mes­sage, that “the King­dom of God is near”, there­fore, is THE GOSPEL or GOOD NEWS — and every­thing else is commentary.

Of course, you will find peo­ple that claim that there is more than one gospel, such as

1. the gospel of the King­dom
2. the gospel of Christ

Their claim, how­ever, can­not stand because you can clearly see from the verses quoted in the ini­tial post that the gospel of the King­dom IS the gospel of God, which was preached by John the Bap­tist, Jesus, the dis­ci­ples and the apos­tles and also Paul, and it is also called the gospel of Christ. There is no other gospel. It is about God bring­ing about the King­dom pre­ceded by His judg­ment upon the world, from which judg­ment sin­ners had to be saved from, hence the urgency of the mes­sage. (more…)

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In the pre­vi­ous post we men­tioned that in a for­eign land there was no need for sac­ri­fices. One could sim­ply repent and pray towards Jerusalem and the Tem­ple. But what if the Tem­ple no longer existed? Was repen­tance and prayer still accepted by God?

This is the pas­sage in ques­tion, Solomon’s prayer at the ded­i­ca­tion of the Temple:

2 Chron­i­cles 6:
34 “When Your peo­ple go out to bat­tle against their ene­mies, by what­ever way You shall send them, and they pray to You toward this city which You have cho­sen and the house which I have built for Your name,
35 then hear from heaven their prayer and their sup­pli­ca­tion, and main­tain their cause.
36 “When they sin against You (for there is no man who does not sin) and You are angry with them and deliver them to an enemy, so that they take them away cap­tive to a land far off or near,
37 if they take thought in the land where they are taken cap­tive, and repent and make sup­pli­ca­tion to You in the land of their cap­tiv­ity, say­ing, ‘We have sinned, we have com­mit­ted iniq­uity and have acted wickedly’;
38 if they return to You with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their cap­tiv­ity, where they have been taken cap­tive, and pray toward their land which You have given to their fathers and the city which You have cho­sen, and toward the house which I have built for Your name,
39 then hear from heaven, from Your dwelling place, their prayer and sup­pli­ca­tions, and main­tain their cause and for­give Your peo­ple who have sinned against You.

This is all good, but what could be done if there was no Tem­ple and no sac­ri­fices, like dur­ing the Baby­lon­ian cap­tiv­ity? (more…)

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This sub­ject came up on a reli­gious forum, I thought I share the answer with you.

Chris­tians tra­di­tion­ally believe that one becomes saved when hear­ing the gospel about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. Many even believe that one needs to pray to Jesus to save him/her. Oth­ers believe that one also needs to be bap­tised by water and/or Spirit.

Hebrews 6 men­tions the fun­da­men­tal teachings:

Hebrews 6:
1 There­fore let us go on toward per­fec­tion, leav­ing behind the basic teach­ing about Christ, and not lay­ing again the foun­da­tion: repen­tance from dead works and faith toward God, 2 instruc­tion about bap­tisms, lay­ing on of hands, res­ur­rec­tion of the dead, and eter­nal judgment.

Some trans­la­tions have “of the Christ”, not “about Christ”, for these were the things Jesus him­self taught.

Check again the fun­da­men­tals and answer the question:

At what point can one be con­sid­ered “saved”?

Let us inves­ti­gate it. (more…)

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Let me spare a few thoughts on the above pas­sage. These lit­tle essays are not intended to indoc­tri­nate, but to chal­lenge to crit­i­cal think­ing. Whether I am right or not is not important.

Rom 8:1 There is there­fore now no con­dem­na­tion for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weak­ened by the flesh, could not do: send­ing his own Son in the like­ness of sin­ful flesh and for sin, he con­demned sin in the flesh… (more…)

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Let me deal with on one of the most mis­in­ter­preted passage.

In order to under­stand the chap­ter we need to keep in mind Paul’s con­clu­sion in Ch. 6:

Rom 6:17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obe­di­ent from the heart to the stan­dard of teach­ing to which you were com­mit­ted, 18 and, hav­ing been set free from sin, have become slaves of right­eous­ness. (more…)

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