For a long time now the Gospel has been announced as a replacement gospel - not the Good News of Israel and Her Messiah but good news, as it were, that even though Israel lost the promise of the Good News (according to replacement theology) you, whoever you are, as an individual could choose to receive Christ, to believe in his death and resurrection for you as an individual human being and so the Good News would be yours. You would replace Israel as the recipient of the Good News. Now it is time to correct that misrepresentation of the Gospel of God. How is this to be done? How is the Good News to be presented to a sinner convicted by the Spirit of God of their need of salvation?
There are differences between the generation when the great assignment of announcing the Good News was given and the present generation - however, there are things that are unchanged. When the confusion of replacement theology is removed, we can see the things that have not changed and begin there. To begin with the Good News is about Yehoshua (not about our lives as its subject). The Good News is that he came to his own and while they did not receive him he gave himself in prayer for them, and until this day his prayer remains and is heard for Jerusalem and for Israel, and his desire is ever more toward his people and will be until his nation is filled with the joy of salvation and of her Good News.
When we are announcing the Good News today, we are not called to speak to an individual sinner, whether they are found alone or as a member of a group or an audience, primarily about their personal life. Rather, as from the beginning, we are called to speak to them primarily about the story of Yehoshua and how God made him to be both Lord and Messiah of Israel. We are called to do this in a general way or in a detailed way, depending on the circumstances. When speaking to a sinner we are not being called to be saying to them by the manner of our address, "You are special" in contrast to anyone else. Yes, everyone in the world is 'special' to God who created them, but we are not to speak to them in a way where they are bound to misinterpret our saying so as being an element of the Good News itself. For the truth is that no matter how special any sinner is to God because He created them, this alone will not save them, nor will it ever be the cause that causes God to save them. The death of Yehoshua declares unto us that the death of every sinner is indeed the result of God's judgment. A sentence from God of death and not of life must and will be carried out upon every sinner. The fact that they are special to God who created them does not change this. There is one cause and one cause only for salvation coming into the world. It is the grace of God. It is that God chose to love the world through the gift of His only begotten son. This is the way that God loved the world. In announcing the Good News to the hopeless and desperate sinner we are to speak about Christ alone, that is about the Messiah of Israel, who God raised from the dead. For by this news there is a revelation of a new humanity to bring hope to all Humanity in all the world.
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