We’ve already addressed the idea of learning your gospel. We showed that it is through your experience with Jesus that you learn a true gospel. That teaching is number 22 on the list if you want to visit that again. This teaching will take a different approach to your gospel and will address the question of what makes your gospel one that Jesus would approve of having His name on.
I have been in church since I was four years old. Through the years, I have seen many different groups teach the gospel of Jesus in very different ways. When you have an abundance of teachings, everyone usually believes their truth is the right one. We know that everyone can’t be right, so let’s look at this question. I’ll lend my voice to this discussion to get an answer to what makes your gospel of Jesus Christ the right one.
Finding this answer is the key to determining if your beliefs are true. It is important to say that the beliefs of a man-made gospel will not get us to heaven, so we must discern what we believe as our gospel. The safe way to ensure you are following a true gospel is to put it to the test, but knowing how to do that is not always evident. I want to help you with that in this writing.
What is right and wrong is not always as straightforward as what we might hope. So while I’m careful not to misjudge anyone falsely, I want to shine a light on what the correct gospel of Jesus will look like when it’s being taught. While the diversities of the gospel may vary between all of us, there still must be some clear spiritual rules that we all live by.
First, the gospel we all believe and teach must be the one that came from Jesus, and not what we want it to be.
I know this seems obvious, but with so many false teachings in Christianity today, it isn’t. Everyone has the opportunity to learn the words of Jesus the way He gives them to them. God has made it so we can all connect with Him and receive His word in the Spirit. God gave us that, and how we hear may vary to some degree, but our gospel will always follow Jesus and be unified in the end.
Secondly, the gospel of Jesus will always focus on the Spirit and not the flesh.
If Jesus had focused on the flesh, He would have stayed on earth and become Israel’s earthly king. That was never His goal in life. The earth was greatly affected by the spiritual gospel but His goal was to overcome a spiritual Satan, save the souls of His spiritual children, open heaven for His saints, reveal eternal life and immortality, and finally create a new bloodline of children born of the Spirit and not the flesh. Jesus was the most spiritual person ever walking on the earth, and His gospel should reveal that as you believe it and teach it.
John 6:63 Jesus said that the Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
The true gospel is the way Jesus taught it.
Let’s look at what Jesus taught in His gospel to help us clarify what our gospel needs to be. It can take a long time to learn everything Jesus taught. Some of it will probably be taught to you after you die. With this in mind, I don’t want to focus on exactly what Jesus taught in every situation but instead on the mindset He had when He taught His gospel to others. When it comes time for me to judge whether I will follow a gospel or not, I live by these two spiritual rules mentioned above, the same rules I believe Jesus lived by.
John 7:16–18 So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but His who sent me. 17 If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. 18 The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of Him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.
John 14:10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does His works.
If the teachings come from God, they will be spiritual and focus on the spiritual life. Jesus knew this very well and applied it to His gospel when He was on the earth. I’m convinced that the correct and most beneficial way to teach the gospel is to focus on inward things and not outward. This approach means we focus on what is spiritual and not physical. Jesus did it, and Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, followed in the same manner. I also genuinely believe that when you focus on the Spirit, everything you need to be spiritual and help you deal with the earth will be readily available.
Speaking of Jesus, since it is His gospel, He came to the earth and fulfilled the law by making it a thing of the heart rather than a work of the flesh. Having this example revealed to us is the secret to a true Jesus Christ gospel. The law of God is the commandments that God gave His people to follow so that they could be holy and enter into all the promises He gave them. God knew they weren’t ready to do these things from the heart, so He commanded them to obey Him, and He would guide them to a new heart. They failed. This story is an excellent example for us to see, and I thank God we have this example in the Old Testament to learn how the people of God failed in the flesh.
Being in line with God, Jesus didn’t remove the law; He made it spiritual. It still has the same thoughts that have always been from the beginning. What’s different now is that God can accomplish the work of His gospel in our hearts without having to do everything in the flesh. That’s the power of a spiritual gospel.
Jesus taught a spiritual law that can be lived inwardly when led by the Spirit through faith. His approach revolutionized the word of God from the Old Testament and gave it a spiritual perception. A good example of this is found in Matthew 5:17-48, where Jesus uses six examples of what was said in the old compared to what He says about it in the new. In every example, He goes after the heart and shows how to live for God through the new inward gospel He is teaching. (You should check that out.)
Jesus knows that when He changes your heart, you will be changed forever, and you won’t always have to be told what to do in the flesh anymore. He knows that His words will work in your heart, and you will do all the works of God because you love Him, not because He is making you do things you don’t want to do. He teaches a spiritual gospel that focuses on what’s taking place inside of you so that all your actions will come from a clean and honest heart. This way is more effective than focusing on the flesh and trying to change your heart by convincing yourself through your good deeds. Anyone can do a good deed, but not everyone doing them has a clean heart before God.
This is the standard by which the gospel of Jesus Christ must be taught and believed. Again, I understand there will be diversities in the gospel, but what would the gospel be like if everyone focused on a spiritual gospel instead of an earthly gospel. Changing the heart has always been the primary focus of the gospel.
Matthew 22:35–40 And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him (Jesus) a question to test Him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Paul’s gospel was through the same lens as a spiritual Jesus.
One thing I’ve learned to do, and I think is very important, is to learn to be taught by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Paul was a good example when He said, “I received my gospel by the revelation of Jesus.”
Galatians 1:11–17 For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not man’s. 12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. 14 And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of those my age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when He who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by His grace, 16 was pleased to reveal His Son to me, in order that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood; 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.
Paul wasn’t saying that a man in the flesh didn’t teach him. We see that others taught him the whole law. But when it came time to convert his teachings of the law to the gospel of Jesus, only Jesus could teach him this spiritual revelation. He received a spiritual experience that changed his gospel from the works of the flesh to the work of the Spirit. Jesus transformed his gospel into a spiritual gospel that focused inwardly. That’s why he taught subjects like being earthly-minded versus spiritually-minded or the old man versus the new. Most of the New Testament we have is the spiritual gospel that Jesus gave him to teach.
No wonder He stirred up so much trouble in the religious world. He emphasized walking in the Spirit and not fulfilling the lust of the flesh. And to clarify, the lust of the flesh is not always to do evil things in the world; it can also apply to doing the works of God by focusing on the flesh and not the Spirit. He never strayed from the commandments in his gospel, but he showed his followers (including us) how to receive a spiritual gospel and apply it to our hearts.
All the teachers, preachers, and saints of God should live by this standard. You can teach or believe any subject of the Bible that you want to focus on, but never break the one commandment that holds it all together; love the Lord your God first with all your heart. The heart is where the spiritual gospel works first. If you begin to test your gospel, let your first test be finding out if your gospel is all about earthly things or heavenly things. Ask the question; does it focus on spiritual things like Jesus did or the flesh like the religious people of His day? When you have that answer, you will begin to see more clearly if your gospel is true or not.
Remember, in these short writings, I do not always have time to clarify my point in more detail. If you would like more understanding and clarification, I encourage you to continue reading each teaching because over time all the teachings together will help explain things in more detail. You can also contact me with questions through my email at danielellis@livingfellowship.org
Part 2 is coming next Friday.
In the next teaching, I will address the idea of why a spiritual gospel can have a negative impact on people. In that teaching, I will address the struggles and problems you might face when trying to live by a spiritual gospel.