40 New Testament Gospel

Life Change Dynamics

Experience total life transformation!

 

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1^ST Christian Gospel Dynamic:

 

Good Seed, and Good Roots

 

Result In Good Fruit

 

The seed of the gospel produces life change.

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People want to know how to change your life. The Christian gospel is the process of God that leads to total life transformation. It is the Bible in life that empowers us, and Paul says that gospel is what fulfills the word of God in us (Col 1:23-25). As The Gospel Coach, I am a life coach who uses the New Testament Bible in coaching. The Bible is like a series of life coach classes that can totally turn your life around for the better.

And it doesn’t even take our DOING to get the job done. The gospel is the process, power and presence of God in us that causes us to live life better by accident than we ever could on purpose. The Christian gospel produces transformation of life. It is what enables us to transform life for the better. It contains the answers to many of our perplexing times in life, such as mid life crisis. A gospel life coach uses the New Testament to produce these life changes because Paul says we should only minister the New Testament Bible (II Cor 3:6). When the gospel is lived, it greatly reduces our life problems, and the experience of the so-called midlife crisis. Overcoming problems is one of the fruits of the gospel – how to change your life for the better is part of its power.

 

THE CHRISTIAN GOSPEL PRODUCES RESPONSE TO GOD

“The Christian life is not my responsibility, but my response to his ability.” This is a cliché most of us have heard many times. But it has become so familiar to us it is almost meaningless.  As a Bible counselor, I have come to see that the ‘seed’ of what we allow into our minds and hearts produces the results in our lives, either good or bad. What we allow into us controls what we think, do and say. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”

In essence, this is the truth of ‘The Vine and the Branch’ (John 15:1-5). The branch must receive from the Vine, who is God, or it is worthless and dead. This is the basis of this first truth in gospel life transformation: WHAT YOU RECEIVE IS WHO YOU ARE!

Jesus says no good root produces bad fruit, — and also, no bad root produces good fruit (Matt 7:18, 12:35). Our concern is often the ‘fruit’ we produce in life — which many call good deeds. We should be more concerned with the SEED that comes into us. This is because the fruit grows automatically — depending on the seed sown.

This is the oldest truth in the entire Bible. Genesis 1 talks several times about ‘things growing after their own kind.’ This tells us, right up front, that if you plant apple seeds you won’t raise pumpkins. Thus Paul says, “What you sow is what you will reap.”

Can you see how the focus of Jesus, of Paul, and of Genesis 1, is all on the seed — not on the fruit? Paul talks about 10,000 instructors in Christ (I Cor 4:15). Their focus is mainly on the fruit — on what we DO. They are jokingly called ‘fruit inspectors.’ They hardly ever mention the seed. All they care about is the fruit of our lives — how good we live by their instruction, — their preaching of ‘RELIGIOUS DO-DO,’ and what results we obtain. Jesus would say their focus is the outside of the cup, not the inside. Paul would classify this as ‘dead works.’

 

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What is important is the seed, not the fruit.

The fruit grows automatically from the seed.

Thus this 40 day gospel fast begins here: the gospel process is totally natural.

If you receive only gospel seed, it transforms your entire life!

The gospel is so easy to understand we need help to MIS-understand it!

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THE NEW TESTAMENT – THE CHRISTIAN GOSPEL WAY IS EASY

This is why Jesus says his way is easy (Matt 11:28). This is why Paul speaks of the simplicity of Christ (II Cor 11:3). The seed we receive into us is ‘the word of the kingdom,’ which is the gospel (Mat 13:9). Our Lord talks about ‘the gospel of the kingdom’ many times — so the ‘seed’ is the gospel. The gospel is like the ‘Constitution of the Kingdom of God.’ It declares how God’s Kingdom works. It begins with GOSPEL SEED.

Jesus says we must become as children to enter the Kingdom of God. This has nothing to do with AGE, but with ATTITUDE. A child simply trusts his parents enough that he receives from them. God freely gives us all things of his Kingdom (Lk 12:32). 

Good gospel seed connects you to the person of God. But you must choose to RECEIVE good gospel seed, or by DEFAULT you receive something else. Paul says minister the New Testament, not the Old (II Cor 3:6). The New is the GOSPEL. The problem is that most Christians don’t live by the New Covenant gospel only. Most mix it with the Old Covenant law. This is like mixing the blood of animals with the blood of Jesus!

There are only two kinds of seed: (1) gospel seed, and (2) non gospel seed.

These two seeds are traced back to the Garden of Eden. There are two trees in the Garden that were specifically named: (1) The Tree of Life, and (2) The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Gospel seed is the life of God himself. Non-gospel seed is the life of man, born from The Tree of Knowledge: “You shall be as God.” The first is living in GOD, the second is living by LAWS, and by precepts and principles.

 

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Paul says that to live in God we must die to living by laws, principles and rules (Gal 2:19).

Paul defines living in laws, principles, precepts and rules as living by law (Phil 3:9).

It is a work of the FLESH, and the foundation is SELF (Rom 7:5, Heb 7:16).

I truly believe this is what Jesus meant when he said, “Deny yourself” (Lk 9:23).

We interpret this as saying, “Deny sin.” Denying sin is a good idea, but this is not what Jesus meant.

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Only good things grow from gospel seed. Good seed grows good roots in us, and Jesus says no good root produces bad fruit. Paul says this is Colossians 1:5-6: “For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof you heard before in the word of truth of the GOSPEL… which brings forth FRUIT since the day you heard it and knew the grace of God in truth.” He says what you plant is what you reap. Paul is paraphrasing Genesis 1.

You have to be careful about the preaching you listen to today. Most instructors preach what I call a 1 + 1 = 2 theology. This means you get saved in the New Testament, but then go back to living life by means of God’s law (principles) in the Old Testament. I call this ’tagging the cross of Jesus.’

Instructors mix the New Testament with the Old Testament. Jesus says don’t pour new wine into old bottles. Paul constantly compares the Old with the better New covenant. Don’t combine or integrate them. They must be separated. This is what Jesus came to accomplish. He came to ‘set aside the old, and to establish the new’ (Heb 10:9). Theology is man’s ideas about God, and religion is how we are meant to implement man’s ideas. The gospel is God’s ideas about himself – and about us in him.

 

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Gospel truth can only be received by God’s grace.

Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:17).

“ALL who EVER came before me were thieves and robbers” (John 10:8).

This is why gospel fathers only minister the New Testament gospel (II Cor 3:6).

We must receive gospel truth like daily manna.

It is the Bible in life that produces life change and life transformation.

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Instructors in Christ focus on doing good, not on knowing God. This is what instruction is all about: knowing what to do, and what not to do. Fathers of the gospel focus on knowing God. Instructors in Christ preach behavior much more than on belief. Fathers of the gospel preach belief, much more than on behavior. This was the first command of Jesus: “Repent and believe the gospel.” God knows a truth that he reveals to those of us who live in gospel reality, — but instructors in Christ will never see it:

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Good behavior will never produce correct belief,

but correct belief will eventually produce good behavior.

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Doing good, and not doing bad, is the fruit produced by The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is the tree instructors in Christ get their sermons from — from the FORBIDDEN tree — the tree of good and had. Fathers of the gospel get their sermons from The Tree of Life.

Don’t miss this difference. In what I call modern day ‘Churchianity,’ GOOD has largely replaced GOD. Christians are so focused on doing GOOD, that often they forget about GOD. If we substitute good for God, we live a ‘DO-DO religion,’ and not in true gospel Christianity. We must understand this distinction if we are to ‘rightly divide the word of truth,’ which I see as mostly a distinction between the Old and New Testaments. When we do see this distinction, the gospel truly begins to come alive in everyday life!

 

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Jesus says we must understand this seed, root and fruit concept of THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER,

or we won’t understand much else (Mark 4:13). 

Our attitude should be that of Mary when the angel told her she was pregnant with Jesus:

“Lord, be it done unto me according to your word.”

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Are you living your life by rules, — by principles, formulas, methods and strategies that we think are imposed by GOD? Or are you living in daily, abiding relationship and intimacy with our loving FATHER? Is your focus on WHAT you believe, or on WHOM you believe? (II Tim 1:12). Do you trust and believe Father enough to let him bring forth good fruit from you by means of the good seed of his gospel? It is by the good seed of the gospel that we do good works (Col 1:5-6), as we come to know God as Abba Father.

 

Roger Himes, The Gospel Coach