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If we cannot define, accurately, what the Gospel of Jesus is, we believe an anti-Gospel message. Let’s identify the gospel before we go any farther. Paul articulates it in 1 Corinthians 15:1–4:
Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:1–4).
Notice verses three and four: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…”
This is the gospel in a nutshell. Jesus’ finished work of atonement was accomplished by His dying for our sins once for all, by His being buried and then raised on the third day—all according to Scripture. In other words, the Old Testament prophecies foretold His work of atonement, and when we place our faith in this completed work, we pass from death to life (Jn. 5:24). God seals us with His Spirit (Eph. 1:13,14), and we are eternally secure.
Notice that this gospel statement does not include the law, but many of us learned that the law is the essence of the gospel—that “accepting Jesus” will help us keep the law more and more perfectly. Yet the gospel in the New Testament never asks us to keep the law.
Let’s investigate with some questions:
Why would we want to be under a law that God intended for a specific nation that does not include us? Look at what Exodus 34:28 says and then at what 2 Kings 23:3 tells us:
So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments (Ex. 34:27).
And the king of Israel stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people joined in the covenant (2 Kings 23:3).
Why would God want us, who are in the new covenant, to keep the words of a covenant—a law system—that He gave only to one nation of people? Galatians and Hebrews explain that God intended for Israel to have the law, but Christ has fulfilled all the requirements and curses of the law by dying a sinless death for us—thus breaking the curse of death when He rose on the third day.
The law system that God gave Israel is defined as the “ministry of death written on tables of stone which blind us to the greater glory of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 3).
Furthermore, David confirms that fact that the law was a system given only to Israel. In Psalms 147:19, 20 he writes,
He has revealed His word to Jacob, His laws and decrees to Israel. He has done this for no other nation; they do not know his laws.
For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children…
Notice that David, Israel’s great king who lived under the law and is the ancestor of the Lord Jesus, states that God gave the law only to Israel and not to any other nation!
When Jesus formed the church, He did not make a nation; He drew people to believe in Him who were from all the nations. The church is not Israel; the church is composed of individuals scattered throughout the nations. Whereas Israel was a nation where God put His presence and kept a two-way covenant with the nation, the church is international, individual believers who are ushered into the new covenant—not the law—on the basis of their faith in Jesus.
We are not Israel; we are the body of Christ!
Why would we want and desire to call ourselves a nation of people who, in very large numbers, even to this day, reject Jesus and His New Covenant with His new commandments and thus blind ourselves to the Gospel of Jesus?
God will keep His promises to Israel, just as Paul explains in Romans 9 through 11, but the church is not Israel, and we are not under the Old Testament laws God gave them to foreshadow the Lord Jesus.
In addition to being bound to laws which are obsolete (Heb. 8:13), if we identify as Israel and take up the law, we will also covet just one of the holy Sabbaths God gave this single nation. We will seek our rest in a day while ignoring our true REST. Jesus said,
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28).
We are not Israel. We are living in the new covenant, and we can enter directly into God’s presence on the basis of Jesus’ shed blood (Heb. 10:20). The veil ripped when Jesus died, and His blood reconciles us to God. The law is obsolete, fulfilled by our spotless Lamb of God. He has taken away the sins of the world, and He invites us to let go of the law’s shadows and come to Him. His blood opens the way to the Father, and we will walk into our true rest when we come to Him and allow His death, burial, and resurrection to atone for our sin and give us eternal life.
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