Destined to reign - Part 3 - The Gospel that Paul Preached

Dear friends,

The power of the Gospel is to live each walking moment having the confidence that all your sins have been forgiven. Contrast this with living with a perpetual sense of guilt and condemnation that comes with thinking that when you sin, fellowship with God is broken, He no longer answers your prayers, He is far away from you, and until you repent and confess all your sins, the Holy Spirit will not return. There are so many Christians, even mature ones, who are still confused about the teaching of forgiveness. The best way to understand the Gospel is to go back to what the apostles preached in the early church.Let us examine what Paul, the apostle of New Covenant, preached. After all, he was the apostle whom God appointed to preach the Gospel of Grace.

Let us start by examining Acts 14: 8-10:
Acts 14: 8 Now at Lystra there was a man sitting who could not use his feet. He was crippled from birth and had never walked. 9 He listened to Paul speaking. And Paul, looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made well, 10 said in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” And he sprang up and began walking. When this crippled man heard Paul speaking, he was filled with faith to be healed. How did the man come to be filled with faith?

Look at what the Bible says about faith. Romans 10: 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. The man at Lystra was filled with faith because he heard the word of Christ. In many English translation of the Bible, the word of Christ was translated the word of God. You see, faith does not come simply hy hearing the word of God, which would encompass everything in the Bible, including the Law of Moses. There is no impartation of faith when you hear the Ten Commandments preached. Faith comes only by hearing the word of Christ. To hear the word of Christ is to hear preaching and teaching that have been filtered through the New Covenant of Grace and the finished work of Jesus Christ. You can preach from "Genesis" to "Revelation", but it has to be from the perspective of Jesus and His grace. Christ is in the Old Testament concealed, and in the New Testament revealed.

What was preached by the Apostle Paul?

Let us go back one chapter to Acts 13. Paul's sermon in Acts 13 climaxed in verse 38-39:
Acts 13: 38 Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man (Jesus) forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, 39 and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. The power of the Gospel that Paul preached is found in the forgiveness of all your sins for "everyone who believes". There is no other qualification for being forgiveness for your sins.The old covenant was based on justification by works (obedience to the Ten Commandments). You have to perform to be forgiven. But the new covenant of grace is based entirely on justification by faith (believing in Jesus Christ).

There is power in hearing and hearing the Gospel of Jesus. That's how faith comes. The more of Jesus you hear, the more of His grace you receive. The more revelation you get of His "finished work at the cross", the more you will receive an impartation of faith for any situation, even the seemingly imposible ones. Are you faced with an impossible situation today? Are you trusting the Lord for a breakthrough? If so, I encourage you to get hold of good teachings that are full of the good news of Jesus. Faith will be imparted to you as you hear more and more of Jesus. Then, you will stop being pre-occupied with yourself, with your lack, and with your weaknesses, but you will become fully occupied with Jesus, His beauty, His perfection and His grace! Amen!

Rightly Dividing the Word

There is a lot of confusion and wrong believing in the church today because many Christians read their Bibles without rightly dividing the old and the new covenants. When reading the Old Testament, we need to read with the perspective of Jesus or the new covenant of grace. Take an example of the verses from Psalm 51 below. David wrote this Psalm after he committed sin with Bathsheba and repented. These verses were used in a worship song that I used to like and sing frequently. It may sound harmless, but it is very misleading. Psalm 51: 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Why is it misleading? As a believer under a new covenant, the Holy Spirit will never leave us forever.

Even when we are reading verses from the New Testament, we must read it with the right context. For example, we don't realize that even some of the words which Jesus spoke in the four gospels (in the New Testament) are part of the old covenant. They were spoken before the cross as He had not yet died. The new covenant begins only after the cross, when the Holy Spirit was given on the day of the Pentecost. It is important to realize that the cross made the difference. In addition, we also need to examine who Jesus was speaking to. At times, He was speaking to the Pharisees, who boasted in their perfect law-keeping. With them, Jesus brough the law to its prinstine standard, such that it was impossible for any man to keep. Take a look at what Jesus said in Matthew 18: 7 “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! 8 And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire. Do you think that Jesus expects us to do that, or does He want us to rightly divide the Word, and understand who He was speaking to in that passage and what He meant? He said all that so that man would come to an end of depending on Himself and begin to see that they desperately need a Saviour. So learn to rightly divide the Word of God whenever you read the Bible. Not everything that Jesus said was spoken to the church or the believers.

The Main Clause of the New Covenant

Hebrews 8: 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. 8 For he (Jesus) finds fault with them when he says: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 9 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.... 12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” 13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

This is the main and final clause of the new covenant: "For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” God does not remember our sins any longer. How can you still think that God is punishing you for the sins you committed in the past when something that seems bad happening in your lives, such as lack in finances, sickness or accidents? If you don't believe in the main and final clause of the new covenant, you are rejecting the new covenant and negating the finished work of Jesus at the cross. That is disobedience.
I pray that you receive the revelation of grace from God, and you will be liberated from the bondages resulted from the wrong teaching in the past that are not based on the new covenant.

Dedo Suwanda

PS. The content of the article above was extracted from the book "Destined to Reign" by Joseph Prince.