The Gospel of Christ

2 Timothy 2:8-15New International Version (NIV)

8 Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, 9 for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained. 10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect,that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.

11 Here is a trustworthy saying:

If we died with him,
    we will also live with him;
12 if we endure,
    we will also reign with him.
If we disown him,
    he will also disown us;
13 if we are faithless,
    he remains faithful,
    for he cannot disown himself.

Dealing With False Teachers

14 Keep reminding God’s people of these things. Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen. 15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

The greatest benefit of my faith is the relationship that I have with God and knowing that this relationship will exist through eternity but one of the many other benefits is that I believe this relationship gives me a particular perspective.  However, my perspective is not necessarily 100% percent correct because of this relationship.  Rather, this faith of mine allows me to view the world differently.  God has blessed me with the ability to not only see the different sides of a disagreement but to honestly try to understand the people behind the many sides of said disagreement.  Again, this perspective is not perfect, for God is the only one who can truly understand the heart of people.  In other words, God has both blessed me and cursed me with an innate ability to play the devil’s advocate.  It is a blessing because this unique perspective allows me the chance to bring peace to the tense situation of a disagreement.  But it also puts me in this constant state of limbo because side a thinks I am for side b and side b thinks I am for side a.  I find myself in this constant loop of misunderstanding and at times it is incredibly frustrating.  

When I read this scripture earlier in the week, I felt like a child in the middle of an argument between their parents.  Most of us have probably seen this scene in any number of sitcoms over the years.  Let’s say Mom is upset at Dad for not watering the flowers and they are starting to die.  Dad says he has been watering the flowers and doesn’t know why they are dying.  Child tries to speak up and say the real reason the flowers are dying but neither parent offers her the chance to say it.  Mom is blaming Dad.  Dad is saying he has been watering the flowers and each time the child goes to speak, she is hushed by the adults.  She is doing her best to bring peace to the situation but both sides are failing to listen to her.  Both think they are right and are failing to listen to the voice of reason.  Mom and Dad angrily walk away with nothing settled and the child is left sitting there knowing that a couple neighborhood dogs have been using the flower bed as a restroom a couple times a day causing the plants to die.  That child is exactly how I feel this political season.  

I find myself here in the middle and one side thinks I support the other and visa-versa.  So not only am I frustrated with the system that produced these two choices, I am frustrated because neither side will listen to a voice of reason.  We are so set on being right, that reason is thrown out the window in defense of what we think to be correct.  This is where Paul’s words ought to hit us upside the head like a ton of bricks this morning.  “Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen.”  This doesn’t only apply politically, it applies theologically as well.  In this scripture, Paul is addressing some of the incorrect, although they may be innovative, teachings that are distracting people’s attention from, and disturbing people’s faith in, the truth of Jesus’ gospel.  John Frederick, a professor of Theology at Grand Canyon University, points this out.  After reading his commentary on Paul’s words found in 2nd Timothy, I was blown away.  He said, “Jesus is the Gospel -- [He] is the Good News which reorients and rebukes both revisionists and dogmatists, both the boundary-breakers and the boundary-keepers, whenever these parties prioritize their boundaries, agendas, religious ideas, ideologies, or theological systems above Jesus Christ himself.”  Paul said, “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David.  This is my gospel...”  Jesus is Paul’s gospel.  Not some dogmatic, pragmatic or progressive teaching of Christ.  But the life, words and actions of Christ is Paul’s gospel and it ought to be ours as well.  We can get so wrapped up in the order of a church service, the hymns sung or not sung, the creeds and prayers spoken, the overall way different churches worship.  We can get so wrapped up in the things that honestly have nothing to do with the gospel of Christ.  Frederick went on to say, ““Jesus Christ is the Gospel, not our revisionist ideologies, not our political ideologies, Jesus. The Gospel is not something other than or in addition to Jesus, but rather consists in Jesus Christ himself and in his work ‘for the life of the world’.”  

We have lost our gospel and replaced it with some other ideology.  We have replaced Christ with political agendas, dogmatic worship practices, and the pursuit of progressiveness.  Do you want to know why the world looks the way it does?  It’s not the media, it’s not the right or the left, it’s not the product of modernity.  The world we live in today is a product of losing touching with our gospel, Jesus Christ.  How many of us care more about the budget of this church than the movement of the Holy Spirit?  How many of us are more concerned with the hymns we sing than the actual words of the hymns?  How many of us are more worried about defending a particular candidate that is nearly impossible to defend than the many lives lost in Haiti?  Jesus IS the gospel.  We attempt to twist this gospel to fit our lives and our ideologies so we can make Jesus fit into what we believe instead of using the transformative power of God’s grace and love to change us.     

So what does this mean?  Plain and simple, we need to get back to the gospel.  We need to get back to Jesus.  Even though God offers me this unique perspective, I too can stray away from Christ by worshipping this perspective instead of what God’s plan is for it.  No matter what it is, it has the possibility to become our golden calf if we lose focus on Christ.  I wanted to put this next quote into my own words but I couldn’t come up with a way to do so without the voices of my high school english teachers making me feel guilty about plagiarizing so here is a pretty long quote from Prof. Frederick that really puts the gospel of Jesus into perspective:

For the parishioner who fears or faces death, or is coping with the loss of a loved one, we do not merely hand them a catechism of words about Jesus, we give them the Word made flesh, Jesus. Or, more accurately Jesus gives himself to them (and to us). As Paul says: ‘If we died with him [referring to baptism], we will also live with him.’  For the weary soul struggling with depression, the single parent, the oppressed, the outsider, the forgotten, the lonely, the rejected, and all who carry the burdens of this sinful world, we do not first and foremost offer revisions of dogmas, or defenses of dogmas, or systems of theological facts consisting of an interconnected set of dogmas -- we offer them Jesus. Better, Jesus offers himself to them and to us. Paul writes: ‘if we endure, we will also reign with him.’  To the soul centered on the self, to the one seeking not to worship God but instead to be “god,” to the one denying the Son of God, we offer Jesus. In these cases, we offer the Lord not as a repose but as a rebuke unto the hope of repentance. We do not rely primarily on apologetics, nor, on the other hand, do we capitulate into the cultural milieu of agnostic spiritual speculation. No, we offer them Jesus, for ‘if we deny him, he will also deny us’.

Jesus is the the voice of that child telling us that the neighborhood dogs have been using our flower bed as a restroom.  Jesus is that voice of reason.  Stop ignoring that voice because the only way the church will stand tall is through following the actual words, actions and life of Christ.  This cannot be accomplished through our interpretation of scripture, our form of worship, or our political and theological ideologies.  This can only be accomplished through living the gospel of Christ.