THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL
‘The glorious gospel of Christ.’
Why is it so hard to convince the world of this truth, that the Gospel of Christ is a ‘glorious’ Gospel?
I. The world must see its own depravity.—It might surprise us that the world is so slow to believe in its own depravity, and individuals so slow to believe in their need of a saving Gospel, were it not that St. Paul tells us in this same passage of Scripture how to account for these facts. He lays down very clearly that such knowledge is only kept from those whose minds are blinded by the god of this world. There is nowhere that Satan finds so much to occupy him, there is no work in which he is so successful as that of ‘blinding the minds of men’ so that they shall be unable to realise their own interests, to see their own necessity. If the world at large really was conscious of its condition, would it not at once rouse itself and try to shake off the chains which are binding it? would it not begin seriously to seek for some means by which it might escape from its present thraldom, and from the ruin and condemnation which are most surely coming upon it? And if individual men and women were fully conscious of their own inherent weakness, which makes them so powerless to fight against the evils which surround them; if they were really alive to their inability to find their way through the dark maze of temptation without a light to guide them, would not they too at once rouse themselves and do what they could to find that light, that so they might be able to break loose from the fetters and chains of sin and infirmity, and rejoice in the glorious liberty of the children of God? Yes! assuredly this would be done; but is it done? Look around you and see! If the world is thus blinded, if such an impenetrable veil hangs over the eyes of men and women so that they cannot see the straitened needs of their own souls, is it any wonder that the Gospel of Christ is so little regarded as the ‘glorious’ Gospel which in very truth it is?
II. The world must rightly understand the Gospel.—If the Gospel is what a large proportion of the Christian world popularly believes it to be, it is simply and solely the Atonement or death of Christ. Hundreds and thousands of ‘converted’ sinners will tell you with a depth of feeling which proves their earnestness, that all they know, and all they wish to know, of the Gospel is enshrined in those words, ‘Jesus died for me!’ Thus the doctrine of the Incarnation, which is of the very essence of the Gospel, is untaught, and therefore not believed by millions of so-called Christians who do profess belief in the ‘Gospel’ of Christ. And it is this distortion of the true character of the Gospel which blinds the ‘believing ‘world to its ‘glorious’ nature. ‘When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman.’ There, in those words, you have the key-note of the Gospel as it really is. Follow it up from that point, viz., from the first moment of the Incarnation; see how on that corner-stone is built the whole marvellous fabric of the great Redemptive Scheme, and then you will no longer doubt the fact that the Gospel of Christ when fully and truthfully proclaimed is a ‘glorious’ Gospel.
Rev. J. H. Buchanan.
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‘So long as the Gospel of Christ is regarded as unworthy of our acceptance, we must remain without the comfort which it contains; we must continue to be strangers to the glad tidings which it brings to men; we must continue to grope about in the darkness of worldly wisdom for that light which is to be found nowhere else; whereas, once that Gospel is seen to be a “glorious” Gospel, worthy of our acceptance, well fitted to carry us peacefully through this present world and efficiently prepare us for the world to come, then we need no longer be without its comfort, or be strangers to its glad tidings, or grope in darkness, for when its light once shines it will be both seen and felt.’