Preaching & Believing (part 1)

…this is the way we preach and this is the way you believed. – 1 Corinthians 15:11b  (NET)

In order for a person to be counted amongst the number of the covenant people, and therefore participating in the life of the age to come in the here and now (eternal life) and the new creation to come, belief in the message of the Gospel (Jesus is Lord) is fundamental.  According to the New Testament reflections on the Christ-event and that which it has wrought in the world, belief in the Gospel is what brings change.  Belief in the Gospel is what brings transformation. 

Belief in the Gospel, and a trust that the Gospel contains power for change and transformation, which will be reflected in word and deed, is what conforms a man or woman into the glory-reflecting image of Himself that the Creator God desires for those that were created as His image.  This is something that is partially accomplished by preaching, as the hearing of the Gospel message is fundamentally associated with the coming of faith, which manifests itself as belief, which unleashes the transformative power of the Resurrection and the life of the age to come in the believer.

So this begs the question as to what it is that should be preached.  What message---whether one is a writer, or a teacher, or a preacher, or simply a person seeking to daily be a light and vessel for the Creator God’s use---should we preach?  This, of course, is a question with which the preacher should wrestle regularly.  A pastor, most especially, should desire to see changed lives amongst those to whom he has been called to serve and to teach.  Because of this desire, a pastor should always want to preach a message that ultimately produces belief in his hearers.  This makes a great deal of sense, since belief, rooted in the operative faith that the Apostle Paul insists somehow comes through hearing, is the vehicle for transformation.  It is wonderful to know that there is a message that has never failed, and which will never fail, to do this.  What is it? 

The Apostle Paul provides a useful guide in this area, doing so here in the fifteenth chapter of the first letter to the church at Corinth.  In it, he writes “this is the way we preach and this is the way you believed,” so what comes before that must be of some particular importance.  The chapter begins with Paul writing, “Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the Gospel that I preached to you, that you received and on which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message I preached to you---unless you believed in vain” (15:1).  Right away, one learns that Paul is referring to the Gospel. 

Now, some might say that “preaching the Gospel” is an obvious answer to the question as to what message never fails to produce belief and subsequent transformation.  Along with that, it would probably be said that, as long as a pastor is preaching from the Bible, or preaching about God, or preaching about God in Christ, that he is preaching the Gospel.  However, that may not necessarily be the case.  Preaching the “Gospel” is not simply preaching from the Bible, or about God, or even about Jesus. 

“Gospel,” as was well understood in the day in which Jesus lived and Paul wrote, had a specific meaning related to proclamations about the Caesar.  Therefore, the use of “Gospel” by Jesus, Paul, or any of the other New Testament writers or New Testament or era believers, would be construed as having a direct reference to proclamations about a King, that being Jesus the Messiah.  It is with this context, of Jesus as King, with claims on men and the world and power superior to that of Caesar, that Paul goes on to provide a basic definition of what it is that he means when he writes about his preaching of the Gospel.