Books by Jeremy Myers Archives - Page 21 of 44

I began these three posts on the gospel by saying that “You don’t have to believe the entire gospel to receive eternal life.”

Hopefully after reading the previous two posts (Gospel 1 and Gospel 2), you can see why my statement is true.

If the gospel is Jesus Christ and all truth is related to Him, then it is impossible to believe the entire gospel. The most we can do is believe certain truths of the gospel. When we say we “believe the gospel” or “believe in Jesus” this is a shorthand way of saying that we believe certain truths of the gospel. Since each person is at a different place in their theological development and their walk with God, it is likely that each person believes a different set of gospel truths.

In fact, it is quite likely that there are billions of people on earth today who believe certain truths of the gospel, and yet have not received eternal life.

Why not?

Because they haven’t yet believed the part of the gospel which pertains to eternal life, namely, that eternal life is given to those who believe in Jesus for it (John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47).

One gospel truth is that we are sinners. And most people believe this truth. But nowhere does Scripture say that believing we are sinners results in receiving eternal life.

So also with the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Countless millions of people believe that about 2000 years ago, there was a man named Jesus who lived in Israel, preached sermons, performed miracles, was crucified on a cross, was buried, and rose again three days later from the dead. But — are you ready for this? — although these truths are extremely central to the gospel, nowhere does Scripture say that those who believe these things have received eternal life.

Many of those who believe these wonderful truths about the gospel, have not yet believed in Jesus for eternal life, but are instead, believing in themselves, their good works, their “being a good person”, their religious activity in a particular church, or a whole variety of others human ideas about how to receive eternal life.

It is one of the greatest tragedies of church history that millions of people can believe hundreds and maybe even thousands of gospel truths, but not believe the one truth which is found at the very heart of the gospel, which is that God gives eternal life to anybody and everybody who simply and only believes in Jesus Christ for it.

Though one does not need to believe the entire gospel to receive eternal life (and nobody can believe all of it anyway), one of the central truths at the heart of the gospel which must be believed is the truth about God’s absolutely free offer of eternal life through Jesus Christ.

Eternal life is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.

Want to learn more about the gospel? Take my new course, "The Gospel According to Scripture."

The entire course is free for those who join my online Discipleship group here on RedeemingGod.com. I can't wait to see you inside the course!

Jesus is the Gospel; Calvinism is not

By Jeremy Myers

50 Comments

In a previous post I wrote about the popular misunderstanding of the word “gospel,” that it refers only to receiving eternal life and going to heaven when you die.I then argued that the gospel is everything related to Jesus Christ.

Based on this understanding of the word “gospel” it is not wrong to say that the biblical gospel is Jesus Christ, including everything about Him and related to Him.

The gospel is centered on Jesus Christ, and everything that emanates from Jesus is “gospel truth.” And what is it that emanates from Jesus Christ? Everything! From the creation of the universe to the future of the universe, all is dependent upon Jesus Christ. The truths about reconciliation, redemption, and resurrection all require Jesus Christ.

Without Jesus, there is no such thing as forgiveness, grace, mercy, hope, or healing.

Why did God create mankind? Because of Jesus.

Why did God, out of all the people of the world, choose Abram and the nation that would come from Him? Because of Jesus.

Why was God patient with the Israelites in the wilderness? Because of Jesus.

Why did God raise up Judges, Priests, Kings, and Prophets? Because of Jesus.

Moving into the New Testament, why did God send the Spirit to birth the church at Pentecost? Because of Jesus.

Why did God send the church out into the world to proclaim a message of God’s love? Because of Jesus.

Why is God going to restore the world and remake heaven and earth so that we can dwell with Him for all eternity? Because of Jesus!

It’s all because of Jesus. Jesus is the gospel and the gospel is Jesus.

Calvinism is not the Gospel; Jesus is!

This is why, in my opinion, it is the height of idolatry to say, as some Calvinists do, that “Calvinism is the gospel, and the gospel is Calvinism.” (see Custance, 302; Engelsma, 18; Spurgeon, 129).

I love C.H. Spurgeon, but he was wrong about Calvinism…

I deny Calvinism but I uphold the gospel because Calvinism is not the gospel.

That honor belongs to Jesus Christ alone. Even if Calvinism were true, the most that could be said of it is that Calvinism is one small aspect of the gospel. But to equate Calvinism with the entirety of gospel is to replace the infinite glory of Jesus Christ with a small, manmade system of theology. Such an idea is completely contrary to the Reformation principles of Solus Christus and Soli Deo Gloria.

But here is the point: If the gospel is Jesus Christ and all the truth that emanates from Him, then this means that it is completely impossible for any finite human being to ever believe the gospel. Why? Because just as Jesus and the truth about Him is infinite, so also, the gospel is infinite. It is impossible to ever believe everything there is to know about Jesus, who He is, and what He has done.

Yet if the biblical gospel is infinite then it would be impossible to ever “preach the gospel” (Luke 4:18; Acts 16:10; Rom 1:15; etc.) or “believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). However, Jesus and the apostles seem to have done so quite well.

Nevertheless, when these various gospel-preaching events are compared, one discovers that there is no set list of ten gospel truths, or four laws, or six principles that are always presented in every situation. Sometimes the one proclaiming the gospel talks about sin; sometimes not. Sometimes they talk about the Kingdom of God; sometimes not; Sometimes they talk about grace, mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation; sometimes not. Sometimes they talk about the death and resurrection of Jesus; sometimes not. Sometimes they talk about the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus; sometimes not.

How to Share the Gospel

The point is that all of these truths which get shared at one time or another in the New Testament as part of the “gospel” are simply examples of some of the truth that emanates from the person and work of Jesus Christ, who IS the gospel.

When a person is presenting “the gospel” they obviously cannot share everything, and so they do their best (along with the help of the Holy Spirit) to pick and choose which truths of the gospel should be shared in that particular context to those particular people.

Just as the same person in a different context would share different gospel truths, so also would a different person in that same context. This is one of the beautiful things of the gospel. Because there is so much truth to the gospel, there is no such thing as one set of truths that must always be shared. Since different people are in different places with their walk with God, and each of us have different personalities and different levels of knowledge, God allows each of us to share whatever we know with the people in front of us in whatever way we think best.

That’s liberating, isn’t it?

There are no four laws, five points, or six steps to the gospel. There is only Jesus.

If we simply share Jesus with people, we are sharing the gospel, whether it is by word or action, in a few seconds or over the course of many years, or to a large crowd or to only one person.

The goal of sharing the gospel, of course, is to draw a person closer to Jesus, whether they are already a “Christian” or not, for Christians need to hear gospel truths just as much as so-called “non-Christians.”

We will conclude with one final post on the gospel tomorrow, but until then, what do you think of this idea that Jesus is the Gospel? What do you think of the claim by some Calvinists that Calvinism is the gospel?

What is the Gospel?

By Jeremy Myers

29 Comments

You don’t have to believe the entire gospel to receive eternal life. And even if you believed in the gospel, you might not be saved.

Do such statements shock you?

They should—especially if you hold to one of the traditional (yet not so biblical) definitions for the words “gospel” and “saved.”

When most people today hear the sentence “You must believe the gospel to be saved” what actually goes through their mind is this: “Here are the things you must believe in order to go to heaven when you die” (And of course, everyone has a different idea about what we must believe).

So people are often shocked to learn that the biblical word “gospel” (Gk., euangelion) means way more than what a person need to believe to receive eternal life. Similarly, the biblical word for “salvation” (Gk., sōteria) has very little to do with going to heaven when you die.

To see what each word means, we will look at the word “gospel” in the next couple posts, and the word “salvation” in a few posts after that.

The Definition of “Gospel”

The word “gospel” means “good news.”

And although “gospel” almost universally today refers to good news about forgiveness of sin and the offer of eternal life through Jesus Christ, the word itself carries no such connotations.

In ancient and biblical times, the word is often used regarding things like children who recovered from sickness, a battle which was won, or a successful trading voyage (See my article on the gospel where I document this in more detail).

Just as the words “good news” can refer to almost any sort of happy event or positive outcome today, so also, the words “good news” or “gospel” could refer to almost anything good in biblical times as well.

In the New Testament itself, though, the phrase “good news” or “gospel” has a more focused meaning.

Though it can sometimes refer simply to an encouraging message (1 Thess 3:6), and Jesus often used the term to describe the coming of the Kingdom of God (cf. Matt 4:23; 9:35), Paul is the one who used the word in his writings, and he uses the word most often in reference to describe the complete chain of events regarding what God has done for sinful humanity through Jesus Christ to provide eternal life for them.

And when I write “the complete chain of events” I mean the complete chain, beginning with God eternal love for humanity, including the creation of mankind and their subsequent fall, and going through God’s calling of Israel, His work through them during their checkered history, the birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, and looking forward to the return of Jesus and the new heavens, the new earth, and our eternal existence with God. The biblical “gospel” includes all of this. Every bit.

While the term gospel is a non-technical term for any good news, the NT usage seems to define it as good news for everybody, whether Jew or Gentile, believer or unbeliever, regarding the benefits and blessings which come to us from the person and work of Jesus Christ. It includes everything from “the eschatological expectation, the proclamation of the [kingdom of God] … the introduction of the Gentiles into salvation history, [and] the rejection of the ordinary religion of cult and Law.” This gospel contains everything related to the person and work of Jesus Christ, including all of the events leading up to His birth, and all the ramifications from Christ’s life, death, and resurrection for unbelievers and believers. (see p. 50 of my article on the gospel).

So what is the gospel? It is everything about Jesus.

So do you see why you don’t have to believe “the gospel” to receive eternal life? The reason is because you cannot believe everything about Jesus. It’s impossible to know everything about Jesus, let alone believe everything (we will talk about Mark 1:15 in a later post). To receive eternal life, you simply believe in Jesus for it (John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47, etc.). This is a truth within the gospel, but is not itself “the gospel.”

Want to learn more about the gospel? Take my new course, "The Gospel According to Scripture."

The entire course is free for those who join my online Discipleship group here on RedeemingGod.com. I can't wait to see you inside the course!

Faith is Not a Work; Faith is Not a Gift

By Jeremy Myers

50 Comments

If we define faith as “confidence” or “conviction” based on the evidence presented, and once we recognize that there is no such thing as “degrees of faith,” then this leads to the truth that faith is not a work.

Faith is not a Work

If we do not choose to believe something, then it cannot be said in that faith is meritorious. That is, faith does not contribute in any way to our goodness before God.

Calvinists often argue that if man “contributes” faith to the process of salvation, then man has done a good work to earn that salvation, which therefore makes salvation not a gracious gift of God but a transaction between God and man.

But if faith is not something we choose, but is rather something that happens to us when we are persuaded or convinced that something is true, then we cannot say in any way that faith is a work. Besides, Paul pretty clearly contrasts faith and works in Romans 4:5.

Faith is Not a Gift

Yet despite the fact that faith is not something we choose but is that which happens to us based on the evidence presented, we must not go to the other extreme and say that faith is a gift.

Faith is not a gift. Though there is a spiritual gift of faith (1 Cor 12:9), this is not to be confused with the faith that leads to eternal life (John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47, etc.).

And though some claim that the “gift” which Paul refers to in Ephesians 2:8-9 is faith, the Greek word “that” (“that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God) is neuter and the Greek word for “faith” is feminine, which means the gift of God is not faith, but rather the entire “salvation package” which originated with God (i.e, “by grace you have been saved”). See the excellent article by Rene Lopez on whether or not faith is a gift.

What is Faith?

What then is biblical faith (or belief)? In the end, we can do no better at defining faith than does the author of Hebrews. He writes: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1).

To expand on this a bit, we could say that faith substantiates, or sees as reality, that which we previously only hoped to be true; it is the evidence, conviction, or confidence in things we cannot see. Certainly, some things we believe in can be seen, but the great faith described in the rest of Hebrews 11 is the faith that is confident in God’s promises based on what is known about God’s character and God’s Word.

Faith is the confidence or conviction that something is true based on the evidence presented.

Faith is seeing what is true based on what we know to be true.

Are there Degrees of Faith?

By Jeremy Myers

24 Comments

Yesterday we defined faith as confidence or conviction. One of the problem people sometimes have with this sort of definition, however, is that we think that there are degrees of faith, or (to put it another way), faith is on a sliding scale, where one end is “wishful-hope-so-thinking” and on the other end is “absolute certainty.”

Though lots of people like to talk about “degrees of faith” this is not a proper way of thinking about biblical faith.

There are no Degrees of Faith

Faith is more like a light switch (and not a dimmer switch!). Just as a light is either on or off, so also, you either believe something or you don’t. If you are not sure whether or not you believe something, then you don’t believe it. If you are partially convinced, but not yet fully convinced, then you do not believe.

Though Scripture does talk about “little faith” and “great faith” (e.g., Matt 8:10, 26), this is not a reference to the degree of faith someone has, but to the difficulty of the truth believed. Some things are easier to believe than others, and so when someone does not even believe the simple and obvious things, they have little faith, whereas, when someone believes things that are difficult to believe, they have great faith (See my article, “Now That’s Faith” for more.)

You Cannot “Choose” to Believe

What all of this means is that we cannot exactly “choose” to believe something. Belief, or faith, is not a decision we make. Faith is something that happens to us when presented with convincing and persuasive evidence.

Sometimes we might not be able to believe something until we see it with our own eyes. Other times, we might come to faith through reason, logic, and the weight of argumentation. Occasionally, we even come to believe something despite our desire not to believe it.

For example, if a father was told that his son was a mass-murderer, the father might not want to believe it, and would not believe it. But if the father sat through the trial of his son, and saw the weight of the evidence, and maybe even heard the confession of his son to his crimes, the father would be forced to believe what he did not want to believe. The father did not choose to believe, but was persuaded or convinced by the evidence presented, and came to believe something he did not wish to be true.

So while facts, logic, and reason can lead to faith, so also can experience, relationships, and revelation. Even hope and trust, which are not themselves faith, can be transformed into faith.

Faith itself can lead to faith, for once we believe some things about God, it becomes easier to believe other things. Divine revelation itself can lead us to believe things about God, ourselves, and eternity which we may not have believed otherwise (Rom 10:17).

It’s impossible to believe the entire gospel

Jesus is the Gospel; Calvinism is not

Calvinism is not the Gospel; Jesus is!

How to Share the Gospel

What is the Gospel?

The Definition of “Gospel”

Faith is Not a Work; Faith is Not a Gift

Faith is not a Work

Faith is Not a Gift

What is Faith?

Are there Degrees of Faith?

There are no Degrees of Faith

You Cannot “Choose” to Believe

Theological Study Archives

Bible Study Archives

Advertise or Donate

Search (and you Shall Find)

Get Books by Jeremy Myers

Schedule Jeremy for an interview

Click here to Contact Me!