defending my MASTER’s message

“It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all” 1 Timothy 1:15 NAS95

As the Lord Jesus was exiting the Temple ground in the week of His Passion, prompted by His disciple’s questions, He stretched out His omniscient mind into the future and started making predictions to warn and prepare His people for what God’s agenda held for them. It is fascinating to realize that of all that the future was going to bring, the Lord started his discourse with a warning about deceptions, lies and false prophets. The wonderful set of prophecies in the incomparable charter 24 of the gospel of Matthew begins with watch out, there will be many coming in my Name and deceiving many (Matthew 24:5 NAS95). If we pay close attention to His words, we realize that the Lord warned us of a coming avalanche of liars that would rise up from inside His church to twist His message, and that the end result would be that many would be deceived and dammed forever to hell. I am writing this post to defend my Lord’s message.

In order for me to defend the message of the Son of God, I must first explain what that message is. It is without a doubt that the Lord’s prophecies have come to pass. We have the great catholic church system as an example of the fulfillment of this predictions, together with all the cults, heresies and blasphemies that this world has seen throughout the ages surrounding the person and work of the Messiah. Now in the 21st century in the American culture, we have the ‘prosperity gospel’ to exemplify this prediction as well. Many people, charlatans for the most part, are saying that Christ Jesus came to this Earth to do many things for the human race. Some say that He came to show us what a good moral person is to be like. Others say that He came to fix human societies. Still others say that He came to make us billionaires. Is this true? What did He say about His mission on this planet? The answer to these questions will explain what Christ’s message truly is. Let’s begin our search with the conversation between the Lord and a very famous religious leader, Nicodemus. Messiah Jesus intrigued everyone in Israel; His powerful words and works were enough to raise the curiosity level in any person alive at that time; Nicodemus was one curious person, but he also was seeking for the truth, since he knew that he could not achieve a good standing with God through the man-made religion they have degraded the Law of God into( this is my opinion). In the wonderful discussion about the necessity to be born again to enter the kingdom of God, my Lord majestically uttered the reason for his coming and dying:

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” John 3:16-18 NAS 95

It is interesting to read that Christ’s mission has nothing to do with this world, this physical existence. He certainly was dependent on the physical realm for His incarnation, crucifixion, burial and eternal resurrection, but the product of His work is to bring eternal life and acquittal in the holy judgement of God to those who believe in Him. His mission is not about our dreams, ambitions and feelings. His whole operation is to bring sinners to His Father, who otherwise would be sent to hell.

Let’s go over other statements spoken by my God. In Mark 10:32-45, Messiah Jesus is telling the disciples that they are going to Jerusalem for His passion and glorious resurrection; His future apostles could not care less about His coming sufferings, and were immersed in the discussion of who would be the greatest in the kingdom. My Lord set them (and us) straight and told them what his mission was, giving Himself as the supreme example of how Christians must live: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45 NAS95). This word ransom-lutron in Greek- was a payment to set free captives and slaves. What a word to describe us and what Christ is to us!!!. He certainly came to pay for our sins and set us free from the devil, the system of evil and the wrath to come. In another passage, the Lord is explaining His divine person and work again to the religious leaders; the leaders are only interested in discrediting Him before the masses of people. Suddenly, my King said this: “…unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24 NAS95), so He basically equated unbelief with dying in sins and eternal condemnation; on the other hand, believing in Him means not dying in one’s sins and receiving eternal salvation.

What I am trying to say is that the message of Christ is unmistakably delineated in Scriptures. It has nothing to do with the stuff of this world. That does not mean God is indifferent to what happens in this little planet. Not all! He is very much interested, but His focus is eternity. And that is what Christ Jesus came to do. We have other passages like Matthew 9:13 and Luke 19:10, where the Lord Himself said that He came for the lost and sinners. Even the angel that appeared to Joseph, step-father of our Lord, explained what the work of Messiah was: ” to save His people from their sins” (Luke 1:21 NAS95). When the apostles, commissioned by Jesus, went out preaching, they also expounded the same message. When they sat down to write letters to the congregations dispersed throughout the Roman Empire, the central message of those epistles is the salvation of souls through active faith in the person and work of the Resurrected Messiah. Even the Greek word the Lord and the apostles used to described the message of the cross must have eternal connotations. If euaggelion-good news- is only concerned with what happens in this world, WOE to us!, since the ‘king of terrors’, as the Bible beautifully puts it referring to death, will destroy everything. Not at all! He was and still is clear: He came to save us from our sins, from the devil, from the wrath to come, and He also came to give us life everlasting, which by the way, is Himself.