Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
Paul
said that the gospel of Jesus is not "in word only". "The kingdom of God",
he wrote to the Corinthians (1Cor. 4:20), "is not in word, but in power."
And again, Paul reminded them, "When I came to you, I came not with
excellency of speech or of wisdom.
. . . And my speech and my preaching
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit
and of power" (1Cor. 2:1-4).
The gospel of Christ is fully preached only when miracle-working power is present. It was the same with John the Baptist's baptism. It was not a mere baptism in water; it came with a message. John was sent by God both to baptize repentant Jews AND to tell them something. Without that message, John's baptism was not John's baptism; it was something else. In the same way, the true gospel of Christ is not really preached where there is no spiritual power.
Jesus suffered both on the cross and at the whipping post. He went to the cross as the Lamb of God slain for the sins of the world, but he also went to the whipping post for our healing.
There is more to the gospel than words. Even the most knowledgeable of men will err if they know the Scriptures but have no experience with the power of God. And when men are ignorant of both the Scriptures and the power of God, Jesus said they "greatly err" (Mark 12:24-27).
The gospel is not the Bible; it is the power of God that the Bible tells about.
Lying on a gurney in 1959 outside the operating room of Veteran's Hospital in Durham, NC, Uncle Joe Murray was quoting to himself Isaiah's verses that foretold of the sufferings of Christ:
"Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, AND with his stripes we are healed."
As he was quoting these Scriptures, Uncle Joe was given a vision in which an angel anointed him for his healing. The doctors who operated on him that day in 1959 found him so full of cancer that they gave him sixty days to live, ninety at the very most. But the saints prayed, and he lived another thirty-seven years, happy in Jesus.
That's the gospel. Not just repeating the verses from Isaiah but experiencing them. Pray that God will have mercy on us and restore to the congregation of the Lord the whole gospel of God, both the knowledge of the truth of the Scriptures and the power that makes those Scriptures real to men.