What have the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In Romans 2:16, the Spirit, through Paul, says this: “In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ.”
From anyone but Paul this would be almost blasphemy. But the spirit-ruled heart has a consciousness that Paul is telling the truth.
Romans 1:1: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God.”
“Paul” means “the little one.” The Greek word dulos means “a love slave”—the little love slave of Jesus the Messiah; and he is called by Jesus, Himself, to be an apostle and has been separated by Jesus Christ unto the good news of God.If you will notice carefully, he was called; but there were fourteen years of separating before the separation was complete. Then he was commissioned and sent out as an evangelist of Christ.
SEPARATION
Many of us are called, but we are never separated. That separation is a threefold thing. First, the new creation separates us from the old life. Second, as the Word is built into us, we are separated unto Christ.
First, there is a separation from the world.
Second, there is a separation unto the master. Jesus become the Lord of our lives. His Word dominates us.
Third, in our walk, there comes our own choice in which we separate ourselves from that which is not sinful in itself but is unnecessary, and this separation continues year after year, until the world has lost its dominion over us.
We are giving up good things for the best. We are learning to walk in the fullness of His fellowship.
Paul was called to be an apostle.
The four Gospels give us a picture of the incarnation of the Son of God. Each one of the four gives us a different vision of the incarnate One. Matthew gives us a picture of the kingdom; Mark, of service; Luke, of fellowship; and John, of Sonship. In John we catch a vivid picture of the Father. Jesus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).
THE FATHER’S WORDS
Again, He declares, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). In the gospel of John, many times He says, in essence, “The Words that I speak of not mine, but the Father’s.” (See John 7:16, 12:49, 14:10.)
John 12:45: “And he that beholdeth me beholdeth him that sent me.” Jesus is introducing the Father.
Perhaps you get a clearer picture in John 1:18: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.”
Rotherham puts it, “The only begotten Son who is now in the bosom of the Father has introduced Him.”
Jesus comes with a revelation of the Father, but the Jews cannot understand it. When He calls God His Father, they try to stone Him.
John 5:18: “For this cause therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only brake the sabbath, but also called God his own Father.” This is the only charge they brought against Him.
John 19:7: “We have a law, and by that law He ought to die.”
The Jew could not accept the revelation of God as a Father because they were natural men.
John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.”
In the four Gospels, there is no substitutionary sacrifice taught. Had it been taught, no one would have understood it. Nowhere do any of the Gospels speak of Jesus’s being made sin on our behalf.
The great unfolding’s of the church are sometimes spoken in parable form, but no one could have understood them if the Master had attempted to teach them. When Jesus was arrested, the disciples hoped in some way He would perform a miracle and save Himself from their hatred. They have only sense knowledge faith in Jesus.
John 6:30: “They said therefore unto him, What then doest thou for a sign, that we may see, and believe thee? what workest thou?”
And as they stood about the cross, the disciples could not see Jesus as a substitute. None of them believed that He was dying for their sins. To them, He was dying as a martyr; and during the three dark days that His body was lying in the tomb, no one believed that He was to rise from the dead. No one understood; and when He arose from the dead, no one believed it.
Luke 24:11–12. When Joanna and Mary, the mother of James, and the other women told them that Jesus arose from the dead, their words appeared to them as idle talk. They disbelieved them.
After the resurrection and His talk with them, they did not yet grasp the significance of His substitutionary sacrifice. Why? Because they were spiritually dead. Eternal life had not yet come to them.
John 10:10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
ABUNDANT LIFE
That new life would make them new creations. You understand now that the disciples had only sense knowledge faith in Jesus. They believed that He was the Messiah, the Son of God; but they did not believe that He was to die for their sins and be raised for their justification. That was to come when they had been liberated from their darkness, disbelief, and doubt.
THE MIRACLE OF PENTECOST
Pentecost must always stand as the most outstanding miracle of grace ever manifested. No one could stand in the upper room and tell that group of 120 that Christ had died for their sins according to the Scriptures, and that He had risen again for their justification. No one could stand then and tell them that Satan had been defeated and conquered, that Jesus had carried His blood into the heavenly Holy of holies, and that the Father had accepted it. No one had explained to them about the new creation.
They sat there in the upper room waiting as the Master told them. During that time, they had tried to find someone to take the place of Judas. They had cast lots as natural men do and had selected a man to take Judas’ place. God never accepted their choosing. Paul was to take Judas’s place, but they did not know that. They were in that upper room as natural men.
They were hoping that Jesus would restore the kingdom of Israel and break the rule of Rome over them. The spiritual kingdom was utterly out of the range of their thought.
The Spirit came to that upper room where they had gathered waiting. Suddenly the room was filled with a sound from heaven as the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled the whole house wherein they were sitting. They were immersed in the Holy Spirit. Jesus told them that they were to be immersed.
Then, a second thing happened. Tongues of fire appeared on the head of each one, indicating that the gospel was going to be preached with tongues anointed by the Spirit, which would be irresistible.
Men could not resist them. This is what caused the persecutions to come. When man cannot answer, he uses brute force.
SPIRIT-FILLED MAN
But the spirit recreated them. The Spirit comes and chooses the men for the propagation of the gospel. Then He filled them with the Holy Spirit. You notice that He recreated them before He filled them.
Then they spoke in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. No one understood the phenomena of that day, but the Spirit had filled them. Now they go with tongues of fire to tell the world what has happened. Fifteen years or more go by, and yet there is no revelation of what happened from the time that Christ was made sin on the cross until He sat down on the right of the Father on high.
They preached what God gave them. There was nothing taught about substitution. So far as we know as recorded in the book of Acts, there was nothing taught about the body of Christ until God gave it to the man, Paul, by revelation.
One of the most beautiful things about the early church was the way that John and Peter and the other apostles received Paul’s revelation.
You remember in 2 Peter 3:15–16, Peter says, And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; wherein are some things hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unsteadfast wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
In Galatians 1:18–19, Paul says, “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and tarried with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother.”
Those must have been wonderful days, when Peter told Paul all about his fellowship and walk with the Master, and Paul told peter about the revelations that he had received of Jesus and of His finished work.
Now let Paul speak to us in Galatians 1:6–12 I marvel that ye are so quickly removing from him that called you in the grace of Christ unto a different gospel, which is not another gospel: only there are some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema. As we have said before, so say I now again, If any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema. For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? or am I striving to please men? if I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ. For I make known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man. For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ.
Notice that he says, “Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we have preached unto you, let him be anathema.”
REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST
And in the twelfth verse: “Neither did I receive it from man, not was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Paul knew that the message he had was not of man.
In Ephesians 3:1, we read, “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you Gentiles.”
Notice that he is a prisoner of Jesus, yet he is locked in a Roman jail. Is there any incongruity in this? No. Paul is being shut away, a guest of the Roman authorities, that he might have an opportunity to write these marvelous epistles, gives to us this revelation.
Ephesians 3:2–5 If so be that ye have heard of the dispensation of that grace of God which was given me to you-ward; how that by revelation was made known unto me the mystery, as I wrote before in few words, whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ; which in other generations was not made known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit.
Paul dared to confess that he was what God had made him to be.
Romans 16:25–27 Now to him that is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which hath been kept in silence through times eternal, but now is manifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, is made known unto all the nations unto obedience of faith: to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever.
Paul believed in the gospel that he preached. Let me give you Scriptures from Conybeare’s translation of 1 Thessalonians 1:3: “Remembering in the presence of our God and Father, the working of your faith, and the labors of your love, and the steadfastness of your hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
IN THE FATHER’S PRESENCE
Note, “remembering the presence of our God and Father.” Paul recognized that he was in the Father’s very presence.
1 Thessalonians 2:3–4: “For our exhortation is not of error, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile: but even as we have been approved of God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God.”
He dared to say that God had proved his fitness for this revelation, that God Himself had prepared him, Paul, to be this instrument of God’s grace to unveil what He did in Christ from the time that He was made sin on the cross until He sat down on God’s right hand.
In 1 Thessalonians 2:13, we see another startling statement: “And for this cause we also thank God without ceasing, that, when ye received from us the [spoken] word of the message, even the word of God, ye accepted it not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God, which also worketh in you that believe.”
Paul knew that the Word that he spoke to them in his public ministry was the very Word of God. He called it the “spoken Word of God,” and the people of Thessalonica received it. It worked in them effectually and produced in them a faith and a life that glorified the Father. Why is it that the Word spoken today does not have the same effect upon the hearts of men that the Word did when Paul preached it?
1Thessalonians 3:9: “For what thanksgiving can we render again unto God for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God.”
You can understand now Hebrews 4:16, in which he invites us to come boldly into the throne room. Paul lived in the throne room. “Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace.”
He lived in the presence of God and of Christ upon that throne of grace.
“THE THRONE OF GRACE”
1 Thessalonians 3:12: “And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we also do toward you.”
Paul dared to say he loved as Jesus loved.
And in the thirteenth verse we read, “To the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”
If we could remember that we are living in the actual presence of God, our Father, and of Jesus all the time, we would see things differently.
Jesus says, in John 15:5, “I am the vine and ye are the branches.” Well, the branch is a part of the vine and is in the presence of the vine all the time.
1 Thessalonians 4:8: “Therefore he that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who giveth his Holy Spirit unto you.”
Paul believed that his words were God’s words.
HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?
- Why did Paul have to wait fourteen years after he was called before he was commissioned as an evangelist of Christ?
- Give the different visions of the Gospels of the incarnate One.
- Why did the Jews try to kill Jesus when He called God His Father?
- Why did the disciples ask for a sign that they might see and believe?
- Explain why Pentecost is the most outstanding miracle of grace ever manifested.
- How did Paul know that the message he had was not of man?
- Explain the mystery that was made known to Paul in this revelation.
- Explain 1 Thessalonians 1:3.
- Show how the Word works effectually in those who believe.
- What is shown in 1 Thessalonians 4:8?