This week I was really impressed regarding the gospel, both concerning our need to preach the gospel and concerning the gospel itself being a full and complete gospel.
I grew up in a Christian family and so I heard the gospel being preached many times, and I knew like most Christians that Jesus died for my sins so that I may be saved from hell and have eternal life, and so now I need to speak this to those around me so that they also may be saved and go to heavens after they die.
The traditional understanding of the gospel in Christianity today is very narrow. But the Apostle Paul spoke the gospel in a full and complete way, as seen in the book of Romans; he spoke not only of our need as sinners to receive God’s life, but of God’s forgiveness of sins, His justification, His salvation in life, our being renewed, transformed, and conformed to Christ’s image, and the Body of Christ with the local churches as its expression.
The gospel unfolded in Paul’s Epistles is complete and all-inclusive, and such a gospel should be preached by us in the church life today. It is the complete gospel of Paul that the people today need to hear, and only such a full gospel can answer their questions, satisfy their inner search, and get them to know the meaning of their human life.
We need to tell people that our Triune God wants to dispense Himself as life into us to fill our inner being with His life, so that our spirit, soul, and body would be saturated with His divine life and we would be made the same as Christ for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.
The center of Paul’s gospel is Romans 8, where we see the Father, the Son, and the Spirit working together to make our spirit, soul, and body life – filled with God as life. Hallelujah!
I am so glad the Lord in His mercy opens our eyes again and again for us to see that the gospel is not something low, initial, or basic; the gospel is full and complete, high and deep, and it includes God’s economy for the building up of the Body of Christ for God to have a corporate expression on earth!
Like the Apostle Paul, We’re Entrusted with the Gospel of the Glory of the Blessed God
Paul was entrusted by God not just with the gospel but with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, and he was empowered by Christ Jesus to be faithful as an appointed one to the ministry (1 Tim. 1:11-12).
The gospel that Paul preached was the gospel of the glory of the blessed God – wow! We may have heard of the gospel of forgiveness of sins, the gospel of justification, the gospel of regeneration, the gospel of grace, the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of God, but what about the gospel of the glory of the blessed God?
Glory is God expressed; the gospel of the glory is the gospel of the expressed God, the gospel which expresses God’s glory. This is such an excellent expression: the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, referring to God’s dispensation, His economy. Through the gospel the life and nature of God is dispensed into man, and thus the gospel is the glory, the effulgence of God through man.
When we preach the gospel, we should not merely speak words but shine out the Lord, express Him toward man, so that man would receive God’s glory and have His life and nature infused into us. The gospel with which the apostle Paul was entrusted – which is also our gospel – is the effulgence of the glory of the blessed God (2 Cor. 4:4, 6).
Hallelujah, the glory of God shines on the face of Jesus Christ, and through the gospel we receive an infusion of the face of Jesus Christ, the shining of God’s glory, into our being. When we preach the gospel, there should be a shining of the face of Jesus Christ into man so that they would be infused with God’s glory.
We are not entrusted merely with the gospel; we are entrusted with the shining of the glory of the blessed God in the face of Jesus Christ! We should be daily under the Lord’s shining, having Him infused into our being until we are shining to express Him and infuse Him into others.
In our daily life, when we join ourselves to Christ, there will be an effulgence shining out of us, something of Christ shining out to our neighbors our campus, our workmates, our relatives, and those around us, and people will see in us a kind of effulgence of the glory of the blessed God!
By dispensing God’s life and nature into God’s chosen people, the gospel of the glory of the blessed God shines forth God’s glory, in which God is blessed among His people. As we spend time with the Lord to be infused with Him, we have God’s life and nature wrought into our being, and there’s a spontaneous manifestation – the shining of God’s glory.
When we meet others, there should be a shining through us: others should see Christ in us, God shining in Christ through us. This is the commission and the ministry both Paul and we have received of the Lord; we are entrusted with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God!
Lord Jesus, thank You for shining into us to infuse us with Your glory, Your life and Your nature. Hallelujah, now we have God’s life and nature wrought into us, and we are entrusted with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God! Lord, shine in us and infuse us more and more with Your divine life and nature so that we may be shining out the glory of God! May there be a spontaneous shining of Christ through us and in us wherever we are so that others may see Christ and be infused with Christ and receive Christ!
Practicing to Preach the Gospel and Give out Tracts Daily, Weekly, and Monthly
As believers in Christ and as those who see something of what the Lord is recovering in His word today, we should be those who cooperate with the Lord by practicing to preach the gospel and give out gospel tracts daily, weekly, and monthly.
The truth in the Bible brings in the divine life, this divine life produces the church, and the church is responsible to preach the gospel. Our unique commission as those who have heard the truth and now have the divine life is to preach the gospel.
We first need to know the full and complete gospel – the gospel of Paul – and then we need to practice preaching the gospel. We all should be gospel preachers – we all should preach the gospel.
Preaching the gospel is not hard: we just need to practice to preach the gospel. We need to be brought into the burden of the gospel, and we need to make sure that, wherever we go, we have a gospel tract with us. We meet people every day at work, at the store, on the bus, and on the train; we need to make it a practice that every day we would give a gospel tract to someone.
Even if we’re too shy or in a hurry to speak to someone, we should just put a gospel tract on their table or chair. Many people get saved simply by receiving a gospel tract that was either given them or found by them “by accident”.
The Lord needs our cooperation: He wants to save all men, but He needs us to cooperate with Him by going to preach the gospel and by daily practicing to give out gospel tracts. We need to practice to preach the gospel of the glory of the blessed God every week and give out a gospel tract every day.
We are indebted to preach the gospel to others; we owe it to them. Woe is to us if we don’t preach the gospel! If we would have the heart of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ and the love of our Father God, we would simply speak to others concerning Christ and earnestly preach the gospel, fervently praying for them to be saved and come to the full knowledge of the truth.
We need to contact people every day, preach the gospel every week, bear fruit every month, and gain the increase every year for the church life. May the Lord give us new fruits every month.
Remember: the mouthpiece of the gospel is man, and an outlet of the gospel is the home. We need to rise up and preach the gospel, so that the Lord would gain the materials for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.
Lord Jesus, we give ourselves to You to preach the gospel. Lord, we want to build up a habit of daily giving out a gospel tract to at least one person we meet, weekly preach the gospel, monthly bear fruit, and yearly gain an increase for the church. We don’t want to be passive enjoyers of Christ but active enjoyers of Christ who overflow with this wonderful One to those whom we meet! Amen, Lord, bless all the gospel tracts that we give, bless all our conversations with those around us, and gain an increase as we practice to preach the gospel and give out gospel tracts!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message for this week, and Truth, Life, the Church, and the Gospel—the Four Great Pillars in the Lord’s Recovery, ch. 10 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Gospel (2016 International Chinese-speaking Conference), week 4 / msg. 4, Paul’s Gospel — the Gospel of Completion.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic:
# I have a Savior, He’s pleading in glory, / A dear loving Savior, though earth-friends be few; / And now He is watching in tenderness o’er me, / But oh, that my Savior were your Savior too! / For you I am praying, / For you I am praying, / For you I am praying, / I’m praying for you. (Hymns #933)
# Oh listen to a story of abounding grace / Of how our God came down to earth to join the human race / And through His kind intention, He came up with a plan / That He Himself might be expressed by dispensing into man. (Song on the gospel)
# Who can be entrusted, God’s gospel spread, / Willing to respond, be commissioned, sent? / His love’s constraining me, ’tis I no more, / This day my response bursts forth: Send me, Lord! / How I long to live this gospel life, / Afresh consecrate, spread Christ with might, / Respond to His call, press boldly forward, following the Lamb, / Knock on every door! Lord, may You quickly come! (Song on preaching the gospel)
To preach the gospel is not to tell people about escaping perdition and going to heaven or to tell them about prosperity and peace. It is to tell people about God, about Christ Jesus, and about the church. In other words, to preach the gospel is to tell people that God wants to enter into man and make sinners sons of God, that these sons of God are living members of Christ for the constitution of the church, and that these ones are in the church, which is expressed in different localities, so that they can live the church life in the local churches. (Witness Lee, Truth, Life, the Church, and the Gospel—the Four Great Pillars in the Lord’s Recovery, pp. 122-123)