This is the 10^th episode of A Better Bible Study Podcast’s series called The Gospel and Spiritual Growth. We are group of  friends from the church of Christ and we are happy to share this episode of our personal online Bible study. This episode focuses on the thought process that Christians must go through.

 

Last Week’s Review

Studying the gospel in terms of components means breaking down the gospel into interrelated pieces and how these pieces work on the human being. The gospel is after all intended to be delivered to human beings and so looking at how it tends to effect those creatures seems useful.

The argumentative implications of the gospel argue points that are either offensive or ridiculous to the unconverted. This is the scenario during the first century:

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• the Jew are less willing to believe because the gospel goes against their accepted religion. They think of it as a different kind of Judaism to being a completely blasphemous heresy.
  
• The gentiles are involved in pagan superstitions and these superstitions are adopted by their society, and provide no spiritual anchor.
  

Those who preached the gospel in the first century  “went everywhere preaching the word†(Acts 8:4). They were preaching the gospel with the help of the Holy Spirit, with miraculous gifts and the inspired teachings of the Apostles. They preached to the Jews and gentiles. Many of whom resisted the gospel ,though with  a different set of reasons.

However, the gospel is equipped to undermine and disintegrate all the forces that people put up to resist the gospel. Today as in those early times,  only if the hearer is intellectually honest and makes an effort to understand the gospel do they become open to hearing its message.

This is so because when we preach the gospel, the listener is faced with paradoxes. This means that there are two truths that cannot exist at the same time. For a hearer of the gospel, it is a contradiction that ,unless you are intellectually honest and not too lazy to deal with it, you will struggle to understand and work through this impasse. It will bother you.

Most people ,in the 1^st century and most people today, find it hard to believe that there is an invisible God because their common sense, their worldly experience and their logic do not permit it. Add to that that this invisible God become flesh and that he allowed himself to  go through death and then raised himself  from the dead. These things are all impossible to common sense and logic.

The Arguments of Paul

Paul presented the gospel as a story that proves what these people were unwilling to believe. Yet, it is happening in front of them. Jesus was the Christ. He rose from the dead on the third day, just as the scriptures say.

If a person is not intellectually honest, he will get angry at those who are preaching the gospel and will turn away from them. If however the Gospel finds a person who is intellectually honest enough and mentally energetic enough to pursue the conflict, the preacher of the Gospel has found fertile soil.  At this point, the hearer is open to an explanation. This means that he is in the position to be taught by God.

There are few who are willing to be in this position of being forced to work though the impasse of having two conflicting realities in their mind.

It is at this time  that they are open to be taught by God. This is the point when they are hearing, not hearing with ears but hearing as stated in Romans 10:17.

^{17          Â}  So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

Paul is saying that in this position or mental stance, faith comes by people being open and being in a state of wanting to know.  This allows for something extraordinary to explain how two impossible things that cannot exist together and yet they do exist. When the hearer of the gospel is willing to open himself up to this, hearing comes by means of the word of God.

 

Precisionists

Members of the Lord’s Church, New Testament Christians were once  recognized as being precisionists. The doctrines of the Church of Christ have been forged through a 100 years of debates. In order to debate, one has to be precise. In order to be precise ,we have to try to understand and explain as precisely as possible the actual wording of  passages in the scriptures.

The gospel that Paul preached in the first century is the same gospel that we teach today. And the passages that Paul used to preach are the same today. One such passage is in Romans 10:17. It was important to our forefathers to look at this passage and say that  this is where faith comes from. There is no other passage in the bible that says anything different than this. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word about Christ.

When preaching the gospel, there will be a few people who are going to hear and it is at this point that the gospel successfully  convinces by argument .  The gospel then begins to instruct. When these people can reconcile two conflicting facts by temporarily suspending the knowledge that came from their worldly senses, they are ready to be instructed.

Logic cannot get us to God. What will get us to God is the gospel. The gospel produces the faith rather than the sight that we depend on all our concrete lives. The gospel is the only power of God unto salvation to those who believe. We believe because when we are hearing the gospel, it persuades us and then it teaches us.

Men must do something to be saved

When the gospel teaches us, it teaches things about the gospel. Romans 10:17 is important because it shows where this concept comes from. The concept is that faith is a work . Since we want to be precise, we have to teach that men must do something in order to be saved. Our reasoning power shows us that this is what the Bible teaches, and therefore this is what we should teach.

There may only be three in a thousand who will hear. However, when the hearer of the gospel is able to suspend his personal judgment and  accept the possibility of the impossible, he is ready for the instructions of the gospel.

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• The gospel will teach him that what he just heard is the singular power of God unto salvation and that he has to receive it and believe it. Those who do not believe do not have faith and without faith it is impossible to please God. And if we cannot please God, we are condemned.
  

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• The gospel will teach him that a Christian is a Christian so long as he stands in the context of the gospel. And that those who don’t remain in Christ and the gospel have believed in vain.
  

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• That Christians are saved on the condition that they hold fast the faith. That they hold fast to the word that was preached to them which is the gospel.
  

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• The gospel will teach them that what they heard reveals the righteousness of God. The righteousness that comes from God should make them want to be righteous.
  

In another sense, the few who listen and truly hear the gospel do not only listen to be saved but also there is a desire to become better internally.

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• The hearer learns that God calls the Christian.
  

^“It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.2 Thess. 2:14(NASB)â€

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• The hearer learns that the Gospel performs a work in him;
  

For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.†1 Thess 2:13 (NASB)

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• The hearer learns that the gospel must be obeyed.
  

“..and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, ⁸dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. ⁹These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power,..†2 Thess. 1:7-9 (NASB)

To be in a position of having to weigh in two truths that cannot exist together yet exists, and to be able to suspend worldly knowledge, logic and personal opinion is the thought process that every Christian goes through. Working through this process opens us to the instructions of God.

This is the recap of past weeks’ lessons in our free online Bible study from our series The Gospel and Spiritual Growth. Stay tuned for next week’s lesson with our friends from the Church of Christ.