Scripture Reading: Galatians, Chapter one.
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in righteousness." Romans 1:16 to 18.
The word gospel is used one hundred and one times in the New Testament. It is called the "Gospel of Christ", "The glorious Gospel of the Blessed God." It is spoken of and referred to in many ways, but this is the only passage that describes and defines it. This, therefore, is of importance for us to understand. We are told that the gospel of Christ "is the power of God unto salvation".
Ninety-nine percent of the so-called “gospel preaching” that one hears, sometimes [causes one] to wonder if this definition of the gospel has ever been read or understood. On the contrary, we should gather from the preaching that the gospel was some sort of an arrangement made by Christ with the Father, by means of which those who believe on Christ as to be “let off” from the result or penalty of their sins; and were to have ascribed to them the virtues and the righteousness of Christ. The whole result of this teaching is to make things external and arbitrary instead of internal and spiritual.
The Law of God is conceived of as arbitrary; that is as a law that can be made or unmade, fulfilled, done away with and abolished with the changing of dispensations Almost all the great churches teach this. How different from Christ's words: "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." Luke 16: 17. The two concepts of law are absolutely different. One is arbitrary, the law resting on the fiat of God. Even if this were true, the law could not change until God changed His mind. This only shows that all false religious theory comes back to a false and changeable God.
It comes back farther even than law; it comes back to God, Himself. A God of infinite wisdom and unchanging love; one who inhabiteth eternity; the same, without variableness or shadow of turning, through the ages and the centuries. The Kingdom of such a God would be the Kingdom of Love unchanging. And the Law of such a God would not be arbitrary. On the contrary His infinite wisdom would foreknow all the sources of happiness and life and also all the sources of misery and death. And foreknowing them, His infinite love would foretell them, and forewarn us. Hence His Law would be a statement of the inevitable, and unchangeable principles of happiness and life and a warning against the opposite of those principles, which would inevitably lead to misery and death. It would not be so because God said so, but He would say so because it was so.
The salvation of the Bible is "His name shall be called Jesus for He shall save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21). It is sin that has damned. It is sin that has made all the misery, misunderstanding of God and man, and all the hell there is and so all salvation is from sin into righteousness, happiness and life eternal. The philosophy which has given us a false god and an arbitrary law, with an external salvation, has given us an arbitrary and external hell and heaven. When some read the text quoted above theology creates a hell at one end of the universe and an equally mythological heaven at the other. But damnation and salvation are internal, not external, and hell and heaven are primarily results and conditions, and only secondarily the places where these conditions obtain and these results are manifested. Sweeping all arbitrary concepts from the mind and heart, God is our Father and has exalted Christ to be a prince and a Saviour, to give repentance that He may forgive. Then through Christ He manifests His omnipresent power to save us from the results of our sins by saving us from the sins themselves. God's power in its eternal, abiding manifestations is ever towards harmony, beauty and salvation.
Look at the wonderful beauty and harmony of the material universe, God upholding all things by the word of His power, and the universe resting unresistingly in His hands. Study the law of crystalization, the most beautiful harmonious condition in which matter can exist. Crystal formation is unresisting solution.
Take the laws of life and growth in the vegetable world. "Thou sendest forth thy Spirit and they are created." We see the beauty of the transformation from winter to summer. Paul says "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." The gospel power is the spiritual omnipresent power of God, knocking at the door of every heart, seeking to bring that soul to repentance and forgiveness; pressing on that soul constantly, like a law of spiritual gravitation, toward righteousness, and the beauty of true holiness, that "the beauty of the Lord our God may be upon us."
It is necessary here to define faith which is the faculty of heart and soul by which we appreciate God, and recognize His presence and so yield ourselves to Him as matter in solution, yields itself to the omnipresent crystalizing power. What takes place when thus we yield ourselves to God? The "righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; the just shall live by faith." A gradual growth and development in us of the righteousness of God as we walk with Him under the guidance of His spirit interpreting His word. "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet." Light is sown for the righteous, "the path of the just is as a shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."
Jesus said in John 7:15-16 "My doctrine is not mine but his that sent me. If any man will do his will he shall know the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself." So that we can know how the Law of God works, and is working in us all the time, in one of two ways. Either for happiness and eternal life or misery and death. The completed products of the working of this Law in the two ways are a perfected Christian or a completed heathen; a true Israelite of God or a hopeless Gentile.
Now we all know we do not come to perfection here, but God sees the completed work in us from the beginning, so that he knows the way we are in and we may know also if our choice is for righteousness.
"My blest Redeemer and my Lord,
I read my duty in thy Word;
But in thy Life the law appears
Drawn out in living characters.
What truth and love thy bosom fill,
What zeal to do thy Father's will
Such zeal, and truth and love divine, lo me
I would transcribe and make them mine."
Watts.
George E. Fifield
We can conceive of a Father punishing his child to discipline and correct him, in order to prevent him from doing something that would cause him greater pain or loss or destruction, but the instant that man punishes his child when none of these desirable results can hope to be gained thereby the punishment becomes revenge and the man ceases to be a father and becomes a fiend. Even in our jurisprudence we are coming to see that all punishment that is not corrective of the punished, or protective of others, is utterly wrong, inhuman and evil. And yet men still teach this and profess to believe in the Bible and that God punishes through all eternity for the sins of time, and that He punishes after all just reason for punishment other than revenge is entirely past. - From the Sermon Eternal Punishment
There is the worship of God through the motive of love; and the worship of the devil, through motives of fear."
— George E. Fifield in the Sermon Love Versus Fear