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| Surprise! Christians Agree on the Gospel |
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 The Gospel or "God story" is good news about being saved, rescued from the consequences of all our wrongdoings, ultimately death. To the surprise of many, Christians are actually in agreement on the Gospel. It is called various things in the Bible: the gospel of the kingdom, of Jesus Christ, of the grace of God, of God, of peace and your salvation. All of those things are indeed "good news."
To Catholics the gospel or God story is best presented in the four New Testament books called the Gospels. Those four books teach the "good news" of Christ. Surely we Protestants can have no legitimate disagreement with that.
1:1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Christians agree on the essentials of the Gospel. The "good news" is that God offers us to be called the children of God, to become conformed to the image of His Son. Christians broadly agree on what is sin, that it has caused us to be alienated from God, hostile in mind, and engaged in evil deeds. Christians agree that the "good news" is that Jesus' death on the cross was an act of reconciliation between God and man, that the cross was a supreme act of love and that through a living faith we are justified from our past sins and have peace with God through our Christ.
Christians broadly agree that we must confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, believe in our hearts and call on the name of the Lord, that repent and are baptized. Christians broadly agree that repentance is a life-changing experience that begins in our hearts and produces fruits or actions (Matthew 3:8) and that saving faith is not a dead faith of words without actions (James 2:17-26), but a change of heart that produces real fruits.
Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants alike believe that we are saved by faith. The necessity of repentance and faith are agreed to by all Christians, as are usually water baptism and a life of good works.
Bigotry between churches that each alone spreads the gospel of Christ is crap. What did Jesus say about the gospel? He called it the gospel of the kingdom. A study of the word gospel in the New Testament indicates that the "good news" is about the kingdom, Christ, grace, God, his Son, peace and our salvation. Surely Christians are united in believing that the best presentation of the good news, God story or Gospel is in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. |
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| To add a comment to "Surprise! Christians Agree on the Gospel" |
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| June 03, 2008 |
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"Surely Christians are united in believing that the best presentation of the good news, God story or Gospel is in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." Another amen, Grant! Strangely, some people believe they can present the Gospel even better than the original writers did. And then there are some who speculate on why the "other" gospels (Gospel of Thomas, etc) were left out of the canon. Not only do I believe God's hand (or "breathe") was involved in the penning of the original gospels but also that he played a tremendous part in the selection of what we call the canon today. It has served as the basis for Christian doctrine for close to 2,000 years, why question it?? |
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| June 03, 2008 |
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There is a reason why it is called the Good News and we should celebrate that and rejoice in the unity of it. "It is Christ and Him Crucified."
We must live and act as One Body of believers. A kingdom divided cannot stand. |
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| June 03, 2008 |
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Mike & Gene, you guys are great! |
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| June 04, 2008 |
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There are no original copies of any books we call the gospels. We do have some early translations of many of them. There were said to be about 30 books of the gospel. Just a hand full of men have decided these books were not to be included in our scripture we call the bible. The Bible is a man made attempt at doing the best he knows how to do. Most Christians have only a very small part of a much larger Truth of scripture. They struggle with even the simple writings.
There is a simple way to know it all.
"Love God and Love Everyone with the Divine Love that will never fail any of them."
There is no higher scripture or order than that stated above. There are no verses whether original or translated that have any power to over ride the above quoted way. For it is not a written scripture only, it is God.
Kw. |
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| June 04, 2008 |
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KW, I'm sorry. I don't really want an argument here, and so I hope you don't mind if I disagree. I'll leave it at that. |
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| June 04, 2008 |
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No problem Grant, it is not given to everyone to understand at this time.
Love God and Love everyone else is a revelation from a much higher place. The good news is God is the one doing it and the source and title belong to him alone.
Until that Time, you continue doing what you know is best.......
Kw. |
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| June 06, 2008 |
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| Well, we agree on one thing. It is not give to everyone to understand and I guess each of us believes we have the superior understanding. LOL. Perhaps we should just say that we have "different" understandings and we'll leave the superiority issues for God to judge. :) |
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