Paul’s Gospel
by William R. Newell
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William
R. Newell (1868-1956), pastor, long-time associate of the Moody Bible
Institute, evangelist, author of Bible commentaries, Bible teacher,
conference speaker, and composer of the text of the beloved Gospel song
(1895)— At Calvary.
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THERE are two great revelators,
or unfolders of Divine Truth in the Bible—Moses in the Old Testament and Paul
in the New.
Someone may say, "Is not Christ the Great
Teacher?" In a sense this is true; but in a real sense Christ is the
Person taught about, rather than teaching in the Gospels. The Law and
the Prophets pointed forward to Christ; the Epistles point back
to Him; and the Book of Revelation points to His Second Coming, and
those things connected with it. The Four Gospels tell the story how He was
revealed to men and rejected by them.* Christ, Himself,
therefore is the theme of the Bible. Moses in the Law reveals God’s
holiness, and thus by means of the Law reveals human sin and the utter
hopelessness and helplessness of man. Paul in his great Epistles reveals Christ
as our Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption, and All-in-All.
The twelve Apostles (Matthias by Divine
appointment taking the place of Judas) were to be the "witnesses"
(Acts 1:22) of Christ’s resurrection—that is, of the fact of it. They
were not to unfold fully the doctrine of it as Paul was. The twelve were with
Jesus personally and knew Him as a man, and when He died they saw it.
When He was buried, they knew it personally as eye-witnesses. And when He was
raised, they found it out experimentally, visiting His actual tomb and seeing
that it was empty. They were also to see and handle the physical, risen body of
our Lord. And it was with them that our Lord abode on earth forty days after
His resurrection, "shewing Himself alive [physically, in a body] by many
infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3).
This great fact—that is, that the Person whom
the Jews themselves well knew they had crucified and buried, was risen from the
dead and ascended to Heaven—this tremendous fact the twelve Apostles witnessed
to Israel at Jerusalem and everywhere else. Thus we find the opening chapters
of the Book of Acts filled with the single testimony that Jesus of Nazareth had
risen from the dead and that remission of sins was through Him.
But unto none of these twelve Apostles did God
reveal the great body of doctrine for this Age. Just as God chose Moses
to be the revelator to Israel for the Ten Commandments and all connected with
the Law dispensation, so God chose Saul of Tarsus to be the revelator and
unfolder of those mighty truths connected with our Lord’s death, burial,
and resurrection and His ascended Person. And all the "mysteries" or
"secrets" revealed to God’s people in this Dispensation by the Holy
Spirit are revealed by Paul. Finally, Paul is the unfolder of the great company
of God’s elect, called the Church, the Body of Christ, the individuals
of which Body are called members of the Body of Christ—members of Christ
Himself.
No other Apostle speaks of these things. Peter himself
had to learn them from Paul (2 Peter 3:15-16). When Paul finishes his thirteen
great Epistles (Romans to Philemon) those which belong to the Church, God
indeed permits him to give a message then to the Hebrews. This is not
part of the Church’s doctrine, but is simply explaining to Hebrew Christians
the character, the real application, the typical meaning, of their Levitical
system—that is, how it pointed forward to Christ.
James addresses his Epistle to "the twelve
tribes"—that is, his Epistle has special reference to the Jewish
Christians in the early days and to such throughout the Dispensation, for that
matter. Peter writes to "the strangers who are sojourners of the
Dispersion," that is, to the dispersed Jews who acknowledge Jesus as the
Messiah.
In the second chapter of Galatians we are
distinctly told by Paul that James, Cephas, and John were to go to the
circumcision, while Paul tells us that his message was to the Gentiles. Since
then the testimony by the Jewish Apostles to the Jews was duly given, there is
now no distinction between Jews and Gentiles; and Paul’s message holds good for
the world, both Jews and Gentiles. So that we find Paul finally sets the Jewish
nation aside in the last chapter of the Book of Acts and opens his great Epistle
to the Gentile’s center of the world with the statement that "there is no
difference" between men; for "all have sinned," and there is
again "no difference," for "whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved," since the same Lord is "Lord of all"
(Romans 3:22-23; 10:12).
God does as He pleases, and it pleased Him to
choose —first to save people in this Dispensation through "the foolishness
of preaching" [the "preached thing"]—that is, through the
message about the Cross and what was done there (See 1 Corinthians 1:21). And
second, it pleased Him to choose Paul to be the great proclaimer and
revealer of just what the Gospel is for this Dispensation.
You can judge any man’s preaching or teaching by
this rule—Is he Pauline? Does his doctrine start and finish according to
those statements of Christian doctrine uttered by the Apostle Paul?
No matter how wonderful a man may seem in his
gifts and apparent consecration—if his Gospel is not Pauline, it is not the Gospel;
and we might as well get our minds settled at once as to that. Paul calls down
the anathema—that is the curse of God Himself—upon anyone who preaches
any other Gospel than that which he declared (Galatians 1:8-9).
Not for one moment are we to believe that James,
Peter, and John were at variance with Paul—not in the least. They were
given certain things by the Spirit to say to certain classes of people. They do
not conflict with Paul. And their words are included in the statement that
"All Scripture is profitable" (2 Timothy 3:16).
But nevertheless, Paul is the declarer and
revealer of the Gospel to us. Take Romans to Philemon out of the Bible and you
are bereft of Christian doctrine. For instance, if you were to take Paul’s
Epistles out of the Bible, you cannot find anything about the Church, the Body
of Christ, for no other Apostle mentions the Body of Christ. You cannot find
one of the great mysteries, such as the Rapture of the Church (1 Thessalonians
4; 1 Corinthians 15) or the mystery of the present hardening of Israel (Romans
11). No other Apostle speaks of any of those mysteries. Paul alone reveals them—the
great doctrines such as Justification, Redemption, Sanctification. And what is
perhaps the most tremendous fact of every real Christian life, that of his personal
union to the Lord in glory. Paul is the great Divinely-chosen opener to us
of truth for this Age.
The great doctrines that Paul reveals may be
outlined as follows—
1. The unrighteousness
before God of all men.
2. The impossibility
of justification by works before God— that is, of any man’s
attaining a standing of righteousness before God by anything done by him. Do
what a man may, he is a condemned sinner still.
3. The fact and the Scripturalness of righteousness on the free gift principle—that
is, of Divine righteousness, separate from all man’s doings, conferred upon man
as a free gift from God.
4. Propitiation—that
satisfaction of God’s Holy Nature and law for man’s sins rendered by Christ’s
blood.
5. Reconciliation—the
removal by Christ’s death for man of that obstacle to righteousness which man’s
sin had set up between God and man.
6. The plan of the
actual conferring of the gift of righteousness upon all who believe,
without any distinction. This change of a sinner’s standing before God, from one
of condemnation to one of righteousness, is called Justification. Negatively,
it is deliverance from guilt on account of Christ’s shed blood and deliverance
out of the old creation by identification in death with Christ on the
Cross. Positively, it is a new standing in the risen Christ before God.
7. Redemption—the
buying back of the soul through the blood of Christ from sin; from the curse of
the law—even death, involving exclusion from God under penalty; from the
"power of death," which involves the hand of the enemy; and from all
iniquity.
8. Forgiveness—the
going forth of Divine tenderness in remitting the penalty for sin in view of
the blood of Christ trusted in, and in complacency and fellowship to creatures
who before were necessarily under Divine judgment.
9. Remission of
sins—that is, the actual removing of transgressions or
trespasses from the sinner, so that for all time and eternity his sins shall
not again be upon him.
10. Identification—(see
above, Justification). The great fact that those who are in Christ were united
with Him at the Cross by God’s sovereign inscrutable act and were crucified
with Christ and buried with Him, so that their history is now ended before God.
And when Christ was raised up as the Firstborn of the new creation, they also
were raised up with Him and their history began as new creatures in God’s sight
in Christ, the Last Adam.
Of course, in the experience of the Christian
there comes a time when he is actually made partaker of this new life—that
point of time when he is, as we say, saved, or converted, or born again, etc.
Nevertheless, the life that is in every Christian came up out of the Tomb, and
it is in Christ Jesus that a man is created anew.
11. Incorporation—This
tremendous doctrine Paul alone mentions, and he makes it practically the
foundation of all his exhortations to the saints with regard to their conduct
and life. By "incorporation" we mean the fact that all those who are
really saved and are new creatures in Christ Jesus become members of one
organism (called "the Body of Christ"), which is more real than the
very earth we tread upon—Christ Himself in Heaven being the Head of this Body
and every real Christian a member of it. So that believers are thus members of
Christ in Heaven and also members one of another here on earth. No wonder Paul
is able to exhort the saints to love one another when they are members one of
another! (Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 12; Eph. 4).
12. Inhabitation—The
wonderful fact that the Body of Christ and each member of it individually
is inhabited, indwelt, by the Holy Spirit Himself, and not only so, but that
the Church is being "built together" as a great temple of God so that
in the future God’s actual eternal dwelling place will be this
wonderful, mysterious company built into a building called "a holy
habitation of God in the Spirit."
This mystery is a great and marvelous one—the
fact that we are saved, are partakers now of the life of the Lord in glory,
that the Holy Spirit indwells us.
13. Divine
Exhibition—That is, that through the Church in the ages to come
is to be made known that which God counts His "riches," even His
Grace (Eph. 2:7; 3:10).
The failure or refusal to discern the Pauline
Gospel as a separate and new revelation and not a "development from Judaism,"
accounts for two-thirds of the confusion in many people’s minds today as
regards just what the Gospel is. Paul’s Gospel will allow no admixture with
works on the one hand or religious pretensions and performances on the other.
It is as simple and clear as the sunlight from heaven. The end of man is
where God begins in Romans 3, at what might be called the opening of the
Pauline revelation. Most unsaved people today believe in their hearts that the
reason they are not saved is because of something they have not yet done, some
step that remains for them to take before God will accept them. But this is absolutely
untrue. When Christ said, "It is finished" (John 19:30), He meant
that He had, then and there, paid the debt for the whole human race.
"He gave Himself a ransom for all" (1 Timothy 2:6).
Now Paul in his wonderful revelation declares
that God hath reconciled the world to Himself; that God was in Christ
(at the Cross) reconciling the world unto Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).
Men do not know this, but they conceive that something stands between them and
God before God will accept or forgive them. If you tell a man that God is
demanding no good works of him whatsoever, no religious observances or church
ordinances, that God is not asking him to undertake any duties at all,
but that God invites him to believe a glad message that his sins have already
been dealt with at the Cross, and that God expects him to believe this good
news and be exceedingly happy about it. If you tell an unsaved man such a story
at this, he is astonished and overwhelmed—yet this is the Gospel!
PLAN FOR HEAVEN
KING JAMES VERSION
KING JAMES VERSION
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