Romans Chapter 1:
1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,
2 (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,)
3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:
Paul tells us in the first verse of his letter to the Romans that Jesus Christ, the Lord God Himself, separated Paul from the world and even his mothers womb (Gal 1:15) for the very purpose of preaching the gospel that was revealed from God in the person of His Son Jesus Christ. What is of the greatest importance for us to realize in this verse is the very fact that the gospel is from God, meaning, that the gospel originates from God; this in turn makes the gospel eternal.
The word gospel in the common Greek tongue at the time of Christ was euangelion, which was a term that was used only in reference to any announcement from the herald of the Emperor of the Roman Empire toward the people of the Empire. Whenever the Emperor had something to proclaim, or when there was an ascension of a new Emperor, the Royal Herald would make the grand proclamation to the people, it was known as the euangelion. A literal translation would be “a reward for bringing of good news” or the “good news” itself. The fact that this word was only ever used in connection to the Emperors of Rome or as announcements of military victories is very significant. It would seem that God Himself appropriated this term for Himself, as the sovereign ruler and creator of the universe the only true euangelion belongs to God and God alone.
So, around A.D. 30 these men come on to the scene in the Roman Province of Judea and begin to proclaim the euangelion of God, and they are not talking about Caesar as a god, but the one true and living God Jehovah. What audacity these men must have, to use a word that only belongs to the announcements of Caesar himself and to apply it to the God of Israel. Would this not be viewed as a complete supplanting of Caesar with Jehovah? What news could be better and greater than that of the Caesar? And these men, who are they? They are not the religious leaders of the Jews, but they are a camel haired shirt wearing, locust and honey eating man named John, who claims to be a prophet of this God of the ‘Good News’; they are a carpenter who claims to be the Son of this God of the ‘Good News’; they are the disciples, also called apostles of Christ, who preach all over the Roman Empire for forty years about this God of the ‘Good News’; and especially they preached the Son of this God of the ‘Good News’, who, as the Son of God is also God in like manner. Thus, the gospel of God is a declaration, a pronouncement, in like manner to the Emperor’s pronouncements, but from a source so far above as to be infinite and all powerful and really so far beyond anything on earth in its importance that this very word euangelion even to this day has no meaning outside of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We suggest that to use this word in reference to any other good news as man is so eager to do, is, in and of itself, blasphemy.
There is something else that we fear is blasphemy, and that is the teaching that is prevalent amongst certain sects of heterodoxy that, though seemingly zealous, have a zeal that is without knowledge; these particular sects will insist that there are at least two and possibly many more gospels in the New Testament. This form of theology is ungodly and not grounded in exegetical understanding. It is most unfortunate and it indeed is large in its following amongst those that profess themselves as christian, but to believe such heretical teaching is one thing, and to teach it is quite another, it is blasphemy. At this time we would like to emphasize that this multiple gospel heresy is not merely prevalent in what is known as ‘dispensational theology’, but it has also found it’s way into the theology of some who claim to be ‘Reformed’ in their theology; it’s a rather recent development, but due to the ungodly nature of this modern sect we feel we should identify them. From what we have witnessed of these modern teachers we have found them to be of a post millenarian eschatology, but not in the classical Protestant sense of the eschatology; what these men teach is something recent, something of their own understanding; we call the adherents to this sect ‘neo post millenarians’.
We have witnessed the ‘neo post millinarians’ teaching that the gospel of the kingdom of God is the announcement that all of the world (or most of it) will be converted into being christians and that this is accomplished by God placing His people into the highest secular positions and changing every world system into a christian system. The essence that we garner from their belief is that the gospel itself is a declaration of what God is going to do in the physical world by and through the church; and what that looks like to them is that the entire world comes under the power of the church, a one world church as it were. We see their vision of the gospel as being like and akin to the Holy Roman Church and State that historically ruled in Europe.
These ‘neo post milinarians’ have even set up institutes to train professing christians, who may or may not be christians, to succeed in the secular world for the purpose of affecting a ‘christian worldview’ influence into the secular world that their idea of a post milinarian eschatology might be realized. What we believe we are seeing from this christian sect is something of profiteering for money, power, and influence of the minds, hearts and actions of whosoever believes in their prophetic interpretations. We believe that they are perverting the gospel into a political movement with christianity as its foundation, they appear to believe that the Holy scrip has prophesied a one world church and state. We believe that this modern post milinarian sect is unbiblical and worldly motivated and we do not accept their position as being scripturally grounded. If we only had this one statement from the Lord we feel we would be justified in our negative view of this sect. “…My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.”(Jhn 18:36) We feel that the ‘neo post millenarians’ are little more than philosophers with political aspirations and we do not wish to discuss them except in passing. Their error lies in their assertion that the gospel of the kingdom of God is a separate gospel from the one and only gospel that the scriptures declare.
The gospel of God is referred to in many ways and they all have the exact same meaning; all these terms refer to the good news that comes from God: the gospel of the grace of God, the gospel of peace, the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of salvation, the everlasting gospel, the glorious gospel of the blessed God, &ct. At the time that we will declare what this gospel is (Lord willing) it will become ever so patent as to why there is only one gospel and why it is so important to mark the false teachers and their gospels which the apostle Paul says “Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.”
In our passage above we also have the apostle tell us what the content of the gospel that he was separated unto is, “Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Christ is the content, anything that strays from the blessed Lord, His Person, and His life on earth and in eternity can not be the gospel. The apostle also shows us the doctrine of Christ Jesus being both man and God, “made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:” Christ was made into a man, or manifest in the flesh (1Tim 3:16, 2Cor 4:11), but at the same time we learn that Christ was “declared to be the Son of God”, the word ‘declared’ carries the sense of “being defined or proved” , and so the rest of our statement carries that exact sense; that Christ is proved to be the second eternal Person of the Holy Blessed Trinity, not simply in a powerful way, but by the power that God gave Him. When we read “according to the spirit of holiness” we believe this to be properly interpreted as placing emphasis on our Lords deity; that which is being “declared” is the fact of Jesus Christ being the only begotten Son of God. The spirit of holiness in this verse could probably be understood as The Holy Spirit, for Father, Son and Spirit are one, so here we have the use of the spirit of holiness instead of the Holy Spirit due to the fact that the Holy Spirit is usually kept as a reference to the Person of the Holy Spirit, yet, Christ as the Spirit is corroborated elsewhere in scripture (2Cor 3:17, 1Cor 15:45).
And of course, “by the resurrection from the dead:”, God has declared the deity and holiness of Christ by resurrecting Him on the third day.
So, now we have a general content of what the gospel is, and Lord willing we will continue in declaring exactly what this gospel of God is in its most essential form as well as expounding it outwards to the very limits of our understanding according to that knowledge of which God has provided that we may know what this Gospel is. What we seek is what we have before us in God’s holy writ, we seek the meaning and the content of the gospel of God, and we believe that the meaning and the content of the gospel has been made sufficiently clear in every book of the New Testament. So clear in fact that there is absolutely no excuse for being confused as to what the gospel is. We will endeavour to expound exactly what the gospel is by studying the apostle Pauls exposition of the gospel as he wrote it under Holy Spirit inspiration in his epistle to the Romans. The letter to the Romans is highly, and rightly regarded as the most complete dealing in the subject of the gospel; and this letter is also the primary force that God used in the calling of His saints to reform His church in the the centuries of the 16th through the mid 19th. In fact we believe that why the church errs as she does today in doctrine is primarily due to the misinterpretation of this epistle of Paul to the Romans.
Scripture Alone 