First of all, Jesus preached the Gospel.
The “gospel” is directly connected to the sacrificial death, burial and bodily resurrection of Christ. The Apostles could not be sent out to herald it until AFTER it occurred. Gospel means "
good news, or, “
glad tidings.”
Are you saying that He taught salvation by the law prior to the Cross?
Christ didn’t preach the salvation message He committed and commissioned to His Apostles after His death and bodily resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Jesus, in the historical accounts of His life, did point to Himself as the
object of faith and the source of eternal life. But the gospel message of salvation through faith in Him could not be preached to the whole world until He had, once for all, “
put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”
You see, Mike, the issue, this side of the cross, is not sin but
belief vs.
unbelief. Salvation through Christ is not a sin issue, but a belief issue. Men won’t go to Hell because they sinned (else ALL of us would end up there), but because they refused to believe what Christ has DONE! For this reason Paul responded with this to the Philippian jailer who asked what he must do to be saved: “
Believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved…”
there is an uninterrupted flow starting with Matthew 5:1 and continuing into Matthew 6. The fact that He has the justified in view in Matthew 6 is confirmed in Matthew 5:13-16, several verses after the one you cited to support your “He’s talking to Israelites” argument:
There are many things in Matt 5-7 than can be
spiritually applied to the believer today, but only as a
secondary application.
Jesus was not addressing those whom God “
justifies,” this side of the cross, through faith in Christ alone. Because the gospel (
good news) is that the believer, this side of the cross, is:"…justified as a gift by His grace (
how?)
through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3:24).This redemption was not accomplished until His death on the cross. And with the bodily resurrection of Christ a new age had arrived and men now enter it
through faith in Him.
Paul teaches this concerning the believer’s
reconciliation to God through the death of Christ:Col 1:19-23 "For it was the {Father’s} good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself,
having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, {I say,} whether things on earth or things in heaven. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, {engaged} in evil deeds, yet
He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach-- if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.You see, Mike, the major doctrines of salvation hinge on the sacrificial death of Christ (the cross) and His subsequent bodily resurrection. It’s the essence of the gospel message and the believer’s faith unto salvation. What we get in the Epistles is the doctrinal revelation concerning the believer’s full redemption and reconciliation through His sacrificial death and which is appropriated,
in full, at the time of belief.
But before you even go there, no, the last part of that passage (Col. 1:23) is not a
condition of a believer’s Divine reconciliation but a
manifestation of it.
Regarding your explanation of James, whether or not he is talking about the relationship between sins and illness is really besides the point.
No it’s not, Mike. James is not talking Divine,
judicial forgiveness based on the redemptive work of Christ on the cross. Otherwise any and all sickness would be considered sinful; and no one sick could be saved; and anyone dying of a sickness would not, could not, enter heaven, having died in a sinful state (I am now addressing Catholic logic).
Regarding those passages that you keep citing, those passages state that forgiveness of sins was accomplished by the Cross of Christ and that only those who believe can experience this. However, it does not say that God has eternally forgiven past, present and future sins or that this forgiveness.
I think, “
having forgiven us ALL our transgressions…having cancelled out the certificate of debt” and “
having put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” testifies against you, Mike.
This notion is contradicted by passages like Matthew 6, Mark 11, and James 5 and has never been the historic Christian understanding of justification.
Of course, when you replace the gospel with those passages. I could quote hundreds of verses (like Pax) that would seem contradictory based on your method of interpretation (hermeneutic). In fact, by your method of interpretation the whole Bible presents itself as one great big contradiction. As for not being “the historic Christian understanding,” one only need appeal to the Epistles written to the churches (especially Pauline). That’s about as early in Christian history as you can get. But one must first
believe what Christ has DONE in order to see what God has gifted by grace alone.
Don’t the East and the West claim tradition and history to support their mutually exclusive claims? It’s much easier to embrace the Holy Scriptures as final authority as compared to selecting a church denomination who claims final authority over the Scriptures. It’s a matter of the sufficiency of the Scriptures and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.
