Feb 21
13
ANOTHER GOSPEL
2 Corinthians 11:4
From time to time there arises a debate on what constitutes “another gospel”. We all know that there are differences among true and honest believers over various doctrines. When do these differences cross the line from mere differences to heresy? When must we cry, “That is another gospel!”? The answer is so simple that there should never again be a debate on the issue. It is “another gospel” when the message is of “another Jesus!”
This is the only issue worth dividing over, and on this issue we must divide with all who disagree. Who is the true Jesus? Of all the adjectives I could use to describe our Lord in the gospel, the one that seems most fitting to me is “the successful Jesus.” The true Jesus is the one who “by Himself (actually did) purge our sins” (Heb. 1:3), the one in whose hand the will of Jehovah prospered (Is. 53:10), the one who is the Word from God that does not return to God empty but actually accomplishes what God sent Him to do (Is.55:11), the one who has already successfully “obtained eternal redemption for us, (Heb. 9;12) That Jesus, and only that Jesus in the Jesus of the gospel!
Other Jesus’s may be very nice and kind; they may fill your heart with warmth and your eyes with tears, but they cannot save your soul! Only the Jesus of definite, successful, and therefore, particular redemption can deliver your soul to God without spot and blemish. Trust Him, and tolerate no other! Fix your soul fast to Him and your soul shall live! Trust any other Jesus and you shall perish.!!!
Joe Terrell
“The gospel of the grace of God.” Acts 20:24
J.C.Philpot
What does the word “gospel” signify? Its literal meaning is either “God’s word” or message, or rather, “good news,” or “good tidings,” which is more agreeable to the original. But if it be “good news,” it must be good news of something and to somebody. There must be some good tidings brought, and there must be some person by whom, as good tidings, it is received. In order, then, that the gospel should be good news, glad tidings, there must be a message from God to man, God being the Speaker, and man the hearer; he the gracious Giver, and man the happy receiver. But if the gospel means good news from heaven to earth, it can only be worthy of the name as it proclaims grace, mercy, pardon, deliverance, and salvation, and all as free gifts of God’s unmerited favour. Otherwise, it would not be a gospel adapted to our needs; it would not be good news, glad tidings to us poor sinners, to us law-breakers, to us guilty criminals, to us vile transgressors, to us arraigned at the bar of infinite justice, to us condemned to die by the unswerving demands of God’s holiness. And as it must be a gospel adapted to us to receive, so must it be a gospel worthy of God to give.
This gospel then, pure, clear, and free, is good news or glad tidings, as proclaiming pardon through the blood of Jesus and justification by his righteousness. It reveals an obedience whereby the law was magnified and made honourable, and a atoning sacrifice for sin by which it was forever blotted out and put away; and thus it brings glory to God and salvation to the soul. It is a pure revelation of sovereign mercy, love and grace, whereby each Person in the divine Trinity is exalted and magnified. In it “mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other.” As revealed in it, “truth springs out of earth” in the hearts of contrite sinners, and “righteousness,” eternally satisfied by Christ’s obedience, “looks down from heaven.”
If you love a pure, a clear, a free gospel, “the gospel of the grace of God,” you love it not only because it is so fully suitable to your needs, so thoroughly adapted to your fallen state, but because you have felt its sweetness and power; because it not only speaks of pardon, but brings pardon; not only proclaims mercy, but brings mercy; not only points out a way of salvation, but brings salvation, with all its rich attendant blessings, into your heart. It thus becomes “the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes.”
PARTICULAR AND EFFECTUAL REDEMPTION
As you know, there is a great division among religious people over the doctrine of redemption. I am truly sorry that the division exists; but it does. Christ and his doctrine have always caused division among religious people. The great majority of religious people believe what is called Universal, General Redemption. They believe that Christ shed his blood for every person in the world, and that the intention of Christ in his death was the eternal salvation of every person in the world. It seems evident to me that three inescapable conclusions must be drawn from such doctrine: (1) If it was our Lord’s intention to redeem and save all men, and yet all men are not saved, then the purpose of Christ in his death is frustrated. (2) If the Lord Jesus Christ shed his blood for every person in the world, and some of those for whom he died go to hell anyway, then, in that measure, Christ died in vain. And (3) If Christ died to make an atonement for all men, and some men yet perish under the wrath of God, then Christ has failed in his mission; his work of redemption is a failure.
These are blasphemous absurdities which we cannot and will not endure. They rob Christ of his glory in redemption, destroy the foundation of our hope, and call into question the eternal Godhood of our Saviour. (If Christ could fail in anything he attempted, or intended, to do, he could not be the Almighty God!) If the commonly accepted doctrine of Universal, General Redemption is to be believed, these shocking conclusions must be accepted!
There are some, however, among whom we are glad to be numbered, though we may be a despised few, who believe in the Bible doctrine of Particular and Effectual Redemption. We believe that the shed blood of Christ was of infinite value, but that the intention of Christ in his death never was the salvation of all men. Without question, if Christ had intended to save all men by his death, if that had been the purpose and object of his atonement, all men would have been saved. But the salvation and redemption of all men never was his purpose. We believe, according to the scriptures, that THE INTENTION OF OUR LORD’S ATONEMENT AND THE EFFECTS OF HIS ATONEMENT ARE THE SAME. IT WAS HIS INTENTION TO REDEEM GOD’S ELECT BY THE SHEDDING OF HIS BLOOD AND BY THE SHEDDING OF HIS BLOOD ALL OF GOD’S ELECT ARE REDEEMED. This is clearly the doctrine of Holy Scripture. The Bible never speaks of those people for whom Christ died as being redeemable, justifiable, pardonable, or saveable; but they are the redeemed, justified, pardoned, and saved. (Read: Isa. 53:4-12; Matt. 20:28; 26:28; John 10:11, 14-16; 19:28-30; Acts 20:28, Rom. 3:24-26; II Cor. 5:21; Gal. 1:4-5; 3:13; Eph. l:7; Col. 1:20-21; I Tim. 1:15; II Tim. 1:9-10; Tit. 2:14; Heb. 9:12; 24-26; 10:10-14; I Pet. 1:18-20; 2:21-24; I John 1:7,9; 2:1-2). These twenty-five passages of Holy Scripture plainly reveal two essential facts about the death of our Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary:
- The Son of God voluntarily laid down His life as a Substitute for a particular people, and
- By his death at Calvary the Lord Jesus Christ effectually accomplished the eternal redemption of all God’s elect, those people for whom he died.
What Christ intended to do in His sacrificial death He has done. He has effectually redeemed us from the curse of the law, put away our sins, brought in an everlasting righteousness, purchased to Himself a people, and perfected forever those who are sanctified, or set apart in God’s eternal election as the objects of His love and grace. We reject as heresy any doctrine that denies or diminishes the efficacy of our Lord’s atoning sacrifice.
Don Fortner
BELIEVING WITH THE HEART There is no learning of Christ apart from Divine Truth (Matt. 11:28-30; John 17:3; II Cor. 4:6; I John 5:20), yet one may be able to summarise and recite all of the revealed facts concerning Christ and His accomplished redemption and still be unreconciled to God and under His curse. What I am saying is this; it isn’t the mere knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus that saves the soul, but a love of Christ in that truth (II Pet. 2:19-22; II Thess. 2:9-12). It isn’t a mere intellectual belief and ritualistic confession through which guilty sinners enter into a saving interest in Christ, but a “believing with the heart” (Rom. 10:10), a meeting, a welcoming, a loving, and an embracing of Christ in the truth, as the truth, as the Gospel, as the “Good News” (Romans 10:8-17).
Maurice Montgomery
“The gospel of God’s grace.” Acts 20:24
(Don Fortner)
There is no grace but free and sovereign grace.
There is no election but eternal and unconditional election.
There is no redemption but particular and effectual redemption.
There is no salvation but by the irresistible grace
and omnipotent power of God the Holy Spirit.
There is no security but by the absolute preservation
of God’s immutable goodness.
And any pretended gospel that does not proclaim
these things is, as Paul says, “another gospel’
that is damning to the souls of men.
THE GOSPEL OF GOD’S GRACE
by Don Fortner–
“However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I
may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has
given me– the task of testifying to THE GOSPEL OF GOD’S
GRACE.” Acts 20:24
Grace is the solitary source from which the goodwill,
love, and salvation of God flow to his chosen people.
Grace is completely unmerited and unsought.
It is altogether unattracted by us.
Grace cannot be bought, earned, or won by anything in us or done by us.
If it could, it would cease to be grace.
Grace is bestowed upon sinners without attraction,
without condition, without qualification.
When God’s saving grace comes to a sinner, it comes as a
matter of pure charity, unsought, unasked, and undesired.
If you search the Scriptures, you will find that there are five things
which always characterize the grace of God. Whenever men speak contrary
to these five things they deny the grace of God.
1. The grace of God is eternal (Rom. 8:28-30; 2 Tim. 1:9).
2. The grace of God is free (Rom. 3:24).
3. The grace of God is sovereign (Rom. 9:16).
4. The grace of God is distinguishing (1 Cor. 4:7).
5. The grace of God is in Christ, only in Christ (Eph. 1:3-14).
Grace is not something God offers to sinners.
Grace is the operation of God in sinners, by which he
effectually saves the objects of his everlasting love.
The gospel of God is the message of grace.
To the self-righteous religionist, it is a stumbling block.
To the learned, philosophical worldling, it is foolishness.
Why?
Because there is nothing in the gospel to gratify the pride of man.
The gospel of God declares that man can never be saved,
but by the grace of God. It declares that apart from Christ,
the unspeakable gift of God’s grace, there is no salvation,
and that the state of every human being is desperate, hopeless,
and irretrievable.
The gospel addresses men and women as depraved,
guilty, condemned, perishing sinners.
It puts us all upon one level-
The gospel declares that the purest moralist is in the same
condition as the vilest profligate, that the zealous religionist
is no better than the most profane infidel.
Without Christ, without grace, all are lost!
The gospel addresses every descendant of Adam as a fallen,
polluted, hell-bent, hell-deserving sinner, utterly incapable
of changing his ruined condition.
The grace of God in Christ is our only hope.
All men, by nature, stand before God’s holy law as justly condemned
felons, awaiting the execution of his wrath upon us (John 3:18,36;
Rom.3:19).
Our only hope is grace!
“Grace is a provision for men who are–
so FALLEN that they cannot lift the ax of justice,
so CORRUPT that they cannot change their own nature,
so AVERSE TO GOD that they cannot turn to him,
so BLIND that they cannot see him,
so DEAF that they cannot hear him,
and so DEAD that God must himself open their graves
and lift them into resurrection” (George S. Bishop).
The only hope any sinner has of salvation and eternal
life is the grace of God freely bestowed upon sinners
through Jesus Christ,the sinner’s Substitute.
The only bestower of grace is God the Holy Spirit,
who is called “the Spirit of grace” (Zech. 12:10).
He is the One who applies the gospel to the hearts
of chosen, redeemed sinners by his effectual, saving power.
He QUICKENS God’s elect while they are yet spiritually dead.
He CONQUERS the rebel’s will, MELTS the hard heart,
OPENS the blind eye, and CLEANSES the soul.
He gives ears to hear, eyes to see, and
a heart to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.