Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
The word "gospel" is a common one that has been tossed about by almost everyone. It has come to cover all kinds of ideas. But what the apostles actually preached is the only valid, authentic idea. What they said must be read in their own context, fully, not partially read and distorted to a wrong definition of that word.
Paul said that a correct understanding of the word "gospel," if it is believed, "is the power of God to salvation" (Rom. 1:16). It converted very difficult people when Paul preached it (1 Cor. 6:9, 10). What happened at Corinth under Paul's preaching will happen again on a worldwide scale in the proclamation of the Loud Cry of Revelation 18. So, let us inquire--what was the "gospel" Paul preached there?
He tells us: "When I came to you, [it] did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, ... I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:1, 2). Was that a fanatical, monomaniacal trip he was on, preaching boring sermons?
If so, why did the people crowd in to hear him, and then embrace his "gospel" with "power"? There's an answer: there is something in "the truth of the gospel" (Gal. 2:5, 14) of the cross that triumphs over all the imitation, false "gospels" Satan can invent.
"Christ crucified" meant infinitely more than anything the world's great thinkers could come up with: the apostles' idea was that He died the world's second death. That was an idea no one had ever thought of at that time; no one had imagined that there was a love anywhere in the universe so great as that.
Even today, among the vast concourse of professed Christians, there are precious few who conceive of such an idea; and Muslims have not thought of it, or Hindus. Even Jews have had great trouble embracing the idea. But it moved hearts and motivated people to take up their cross and follow Him "wherever" He led (Rev. 14:4).
What about you?
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: April 1, 2007.
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