Christ’s Standard of Salvation & Discipleship for His Kingdom | Part C

The King James Version (KJV) is mostly used in these lessons. Click here to access the KJV online.

The Gospel of the Kingdom word is planted as seed in your heart when you eagerly and intelligently embrace it. It must then grow in you and produce the necessary fruit of the spirit, the fruit born of the creative Gospel word. The “word of Yahuwah,” we must not tire of repeating, is not just “the Bible.” The word is the Gospel, the Gospel as Yahushua, the founding Gospel preacher (Heb. 2:3), preached it. The saving Gospel. The Gospel which is “energizing” in you,” as Paul said in I Thessalonians 2:13, or as the dynamic power, which transforms the dead sinner into a vital disciple: “I am not ashamed of Yahuwah’s Gospel” (the Gospel of the Kingdom, see Mark 1:14, 15). Why? Because that Gospel “is the power of Yahuwah leading to salvation” (Rom. 1:16). Yahushua was uncompromising when he stressed the importance of knowing his word and words for salvation: “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his like for my sake and the sake of the Gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35). Yahushua followed this up with: “Whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful society, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38).

Paul was well aware of Yahushua’ teaching when he said, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of Yahuwah leading to salvation for everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). What Gospel? Paul had defined it: “the Gospel of Yahuwah” (Rom. 1:1). And what is that about? Yahushua told us. He came “preaching the Gospel of Yahuwah and saying, ‘The Kingdom of Yahuwah is coming. Repent and believe that Gospel’” (Mark 1:14, 15).

There we have the secret. The Gospel of the Kingdom, including of course the essential facts about Yahushua dying and rising, is the driving force of the Christian life. No wonder, then, “the devil is ready to snatch away the word sown in the heart, so that he cannot believe [that Kingdom Gospel] and be saved” (Luke 8:12).

Salvation is inextricably bound up with the saving words of Yahushua summarized as the Gospel of the Kingdom. But do you hear that definition of the Gospel today?