This is part 1 of my Actual Good News series of articles on the topic of biblical soteriology (the study of salvation). The theological facts laid out in this article are required reading in order to truly understand biblical soteriology, so make sure you read it carefully.
Please note that I’m including many of my scriptural references in the links (which are are the underlined words throughout the article), and they also link to studies with extended details that I couldn’t fit into the article, so please be sure to click all the supporting links in order to get the full picture, as well as all the Scripture references.
Before we dive into things here, I should probably quickly discuss the Bible version used throughout this and most of the other articles in this Actual Good News series. You see, as I mentioned on the introduction page to this series of articles, A) there are a number of people out there who won’t consider scriptural references from anything other than this one particular Bible version, B) because I wanted to reach the largest audience possible, C) because it’s still one of the most popular and recognizable Bible versions anyway, not to mention D) because it means I don’t have to worry about copyright issues, all scriptural references in this article are from the KJV (the King James Version of the Bible; although, if you aren’t a fan of the way the KJV renders certain verses, please feel free to look up the supporting references in a translation of your choosing). That said, I should also point out that some of the writers of the supporting books and articles I linked to throughout this series do use other Bible versions themselves, and they don’t necessarily all feel as favourably towards the KJV as I do, but I still highly recommend reading their articles and books even if you are a KJV-Onlyist, in order to learn more details that I didn’t have the time to get into here myself. Speaking of those links, please keep in mind that just because I link to specific articles or books doesn’t mean that I agree with everything their writers and/or publishers believe and/or teach. In some cases, I link to them for the sole reason that they happen to have better supporting material on a specific point than anybody else I’ve found so far.
I should also say, this series of articles is based on parts of the first five chapters of my free eBook, which is also available to read for free in PDF and ePUB formats (this particular article being based specifically on the first chapter of the book), and if you’d prefer to read it in one of those formats instead of reading it on this webpage, you can click one of those links I just provided (the PDF version is particularly recommended if you want to see the scriptural references in footnotes on the same page rather than having to click links to see them all). But with that being said, let’s get into it.
When considering the meaning of passages in the Bible (especially in translations which use older versions of English than most of us commonly read, speak, or understand, such as the KJV), it’s very easy to unintentionally read one’s preconceived theological beliefs into a passage (this is what’s known in theological circles as eisegesis), rather than trying to carefully determine the actual meaning of the text in question without coming at it with any preconceived ideas as to its meaning (studying Scripture this way is referred to as exegesis). This generally occurs because one has heard people they trust tell them that certain doctrines are true, and if they assume their teachers can’t be mistaken, they’ll rarely bother to look into the context of the passages they’re told prove these doctrines. This means that when they see certain words in these passages which seem to support their doctrines at first glance, they’ll just assume the inclusion of these words in the text proves that the doctrines themselves must indeed be correct, and they won’t bother to actually do any study to verify whether this truly is the case or not. Of course, as the old saying goes, a text read out of context is just a pretext for a “proof text,” so this often results in people never learning the truth about what these passages really mean.
Equally unfortunately, most people will rarely bother to compare these passages to the rest of the Bible either, in order to make sure the doctrines they’ve been taught aren’t contradicting other parts of Scripture. But even when they do try to dig a little deeper, they tend to be unfamiliar with the concept of perspectives in the Bible, especially the difference between the absolute and relative perspectives (there are most than just these two perspectives in Scripture, but these are perhaps the two most important perspectives one needs to consider in their exegesis, and yet also the least well known by Christians), which means they aren’t aware that two statements in Scripture which at first appear to disagree with (or even contradict) each other if they’re both taken literally or both interpreted figuratively can actually both be true at the same time. As a very simple example of this important hermeneutical principle, Ecclesiastes 11:3 tells us that the rain comes from clouds, while 1 Kings 17:14 says that God actually sends the rain, and we can understand that both of these statements are equally true when we recognize that God is indeed the origin of rain from an absolute perspective (since all is of God), even while the clouds are the origin of rain from a relative perspective.
And even when the perspective principle regarding the absolute vs the relative doesn’t come into play, words just don’t always mean, or at least refer to, the same thing anyway. For example, certain words (such as the word “fire,” as just one example of many) are used literally in some passages while also being used figuratively in other passages (with this difference technically being another form of perspective found in Scripture). And it isn’t just individual words that are used figuratively in the Bible. Scripture is full of figurative phrases too, including allegories, metaphors, idioms, and other forms of figurative speech that aren’t obvious from just reading the English text. This means that if one isn’t familiar with the existence of a figurative word, expression, or other figure of speech in a specific passage, they can end up completely misunderstanding what that passage actually means.
It’s also important to be aware of the fact that words known as False Friends exist in the KJV and other older Bible translations, which is a term that is sometimes used to refer to English words we still use today, but which can now mean something very different — in ways that the average reader is unlikely to be aware of — from what they could mean when our English Bibles were first translated. As a very simple example, “convenient” generally refers to “something which saves one trouble” when the word is used today, but when you read it in Ephesians 5:3-4 in the KJV it actually means “fitting,” because that’s what the word “convenient” meant back in 1611. Another example that really demonstrates this point is the word “let,” which generally means “allow” or “allowed” when used today (and it often did in the KJV as well). However, when you read Romans 1:13 in the KJV, this word actually means the exact opposite of that. Rather than “allowed,” Paul actually meant “prevented” in that verse. This isn’t a mistranslation, however, but is instead another False Friend, because that was another meaning of the word “let” back in 1611, even if we don’t use that obsolete definition of the word today (and if you aren’t aware of this fact, the verse can be confusing, as many other verses that include False Friends can be as well). I should add, in addition to being a False Friend, “let” is also an example of how the translators of the KJV often used the exact same English word to translate entirely different words from their original languages — with the first example of “let” we looked at being translated from the Greek ἔστω/“es’-to,” and the second example being translated from κωλύω/“ko-loo’-o” — words which could have the complete opposite meaning from one another in their original languages at times, and cases of this happening weren’t always because they’ve become False Friends in the 21st century either; in many cases, the reason for the translations seemed to be more for the sake of being poetic, as you’ll learn farther on in this article.
As another important example of a False Friend in the KJV, we have the word “heresy,” and this really is an important one to be aware of because of the series of articles you’re reading right now (since many of the truths you’re going to learn in this article and the rest of them in this series are considered to be “heretical” by most Christians). Even before getting into this one, however, it’s important to know that there are two different types of “heresies” when the word is used correctly, and that neither of them literally mean “incorrect doctrine” (just as “orthodox” doesn’t mean “correct doctrine” either) the way most people assume they do. The first type of “heresy” is the one that’s mentioned in the Bible, and it’s true that these types of “heresies” aren’t good things (at least when they take place within the body of Christ), but the literal meaning of αἵρεσις/“hah’-ee-res-is” — which is the Greek word that’s transliterated as “heresy” and “heresies” in the KJV — is simply “sect,” as the word is also translated in other verses, meaning “division” or “dissension,” and does not literally mean “incorrect doctrine” at all. In fact, “sect” was a meaning of the English word “heresy” back when the KJV was translated as well, and based on the meaning of the Greek word it was translated from, it becomes obvious that this is the meaning of the word “heresy” in the KJV, and that the word “heresy” is indeed another False Friend. That’s not to say that the specific sects referred to as “heresies” in the Bible aren’t meant to be avoided, of course, any more than it means that said sects aren’t based on incorrect doctrine, because they are on both counts. My point is simply that the word “heresy” just doesn’t mean what most people assume it does when it’s used in the Bible. This is also an example, by the way, of how the translators of the KJV sometimes used different English words to translate the exact same word from its original language (these are known as synonyms), and if one isn’t aware of what the Hebrew or Koine Greek word that an English word in the KJV has been translated from is or means, they can get just as confused as when the translators used the same English word to translate different words from Scripture in its original languages (especially when these words have become a False Friend in modern times). And so, while I know that some KJV-Onlyists will recoil in horror at this suggestion, and it is true that one often technically can determine when one of these two types of situations is happening simply by the context of a passage — as well as by when a literal (or figurative) interpretation of a specific word would contradict the literal (or figurative) usage of the same word in another place in the KJV — I would still posit that it’s wise to look up every single Hebrew or Koine Greek word when doing a careful study into a passage or topic, since, at the very least, you might miss out on some important nuance that isn’t obvious in the English translation if you don’t, but also because you might even find yourself completely misinterpreting a passage if you avoid doing so, assuming it means the exact opposite of what it actually means (and this happens all the time in real life, as the rest of this series of articles will reveal). Don’t mistake this for “correcting the Bible,” as some people think looking at Scripture in its original languages is, though. I know that many Christians assume that God made the Bible so easy to understand that a child could read just the KJV and figure out everything God wants us to know in it. And while one can learn everything necessary for salvation (and then some) by just reading their King James Bible and nothing else, the idea that that one can figure out everything God laid out in Scripture by reading just the KJV alone, with no study aids of any sort, is nothing more than an assumption they’re making — since the Bible just doesn’t say that anywhere on its pages — and it’s an assumption that is indeed contradicted by the Bible itself too, such as in Proverbs 25:2 which says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.”This tells us that God doesn’t necessarily make it easy to learn every scriptural truth without careful study, so it’s important to stop assuming that you know everything there is to know about the Bible just because you’ve read it in English.
And just like it doesn’t literally mean “incorrect doctrine” when it’s used in the Bible, the word “heresy” doesn’t literally mean that outside of the Bible either. Instead, when used extrabiblically, it simply means “that which is commonly accepted to be incorrect.” And just as this type of “heresy” doesn’t literally mean “incorrect doctrine” any more than the biblical type does, the word “orthodox” doesn’t mean “correct doctrine” either, but really just means “that which is commonly accepted to be true,” and there’s always been plenty of commonly accepted error out there, just as there’s always been lots of commonly rejected truth (with much of that truth being labelled as “heresy” by Christians).
For example, Galileo was technically a heretic, according to the Roman Catholic Church, because he taught that the earth wasn’t the centre of the universe, but he was still quite correct that it wasn’t. Meanwhile, Rome considered their view that our planet was the centre of the universe to be the orthodox one, but they were entirely incorrect, and they even eventually admitted that Galileo’s heresy was true after all, many centuries later (thus proving that “orthodox” doctrines taught by the Roman Catholic Church can indeed be wrong and that the things they call “heresy” can be right; and it’s important to keep in mind that, if they can be wrong about even one thing when it comes to what they refer to as orthodoxy and heresy, they could then be wrong about anything they teach is either orthodox truth or heresy).
So remember that just because something is called “heretical” by a Christian doesn’t mean it’s necessarily incorrect, and that something being called “orthodox” by a Christian doesn’t necessarily make it true. Of course, even though they refer to something else altogether from what most Christians today mean when they use the word, the things referred to as “heresies” in the English Bible translations which do use the word (sects, in other words) are things to be avoided (although that doesn’t mean sects are inherently a bad thing in and of themselves; it’s only sectarianism within the church that we need to avoid as members of the body of Christ, while sects/“heresies”outside the church might be good or bad, depending on the reason for the division). But outside of those specific things, many of the things that Christians mistakenly refer to as “heresy” or as “heretical” (or even as “heterodox,” which basically means the same thing) are actually quite true, as you’ll learn throughout this series of articles. And remember also that Jesus and all of His followers were considered to be heretics by the religious orthodoxy of their day, so consider yourself in good company when someone calls you a heretic or refers to the truths you believe as “heresy.”
There are many more False Friends in the KJV that I could get into (and I will cover some very important ones in various parts of this series of articles), but the main thing to keep in mind is that anyone using only the KJV with no study aids definitely holds multiple false doctrines because of this fact, which is why even a KJV-Onlyist should really compare the KJV to multiple different Bible translations when studying, even if only to avoid this common pitfall. That isn’t to say the KJV is a bad translation. The words its translators used were perfectly fine for the time it was translated, for the most part. One just needs to be aware that it’s not a particularly literal translation, but is actually a very figurative — and even poetic — translation in various places (many of which will surprise many of you), and also of the fact that the definitions of words change over time, which all means that if one isn’t aware of a word’s definition in 1611 when it was first translated (as well as the fact that many of these words were translated figuratively), they’re going to unintentionally end up going astray.
This all means that just because you see a word in one passage, you shouldn’t automatically assume it has to be referring to the exact same thing as it does in another passage, or that you even definitely know what the word means to begin with, because it could be that it actually means something entirely different in that passage from what you’re assuming or have been taught it means. So when you’re studying your Bible, be sure to use all the study tools available to you — such as concordances, an English dictionary (I would personally recommend the Oxford English Dictionary over all others for the sake of discovering the meanings of False Friends in the KJV, because it covers definitions going back to the 17th century and even earlier), Bible dictionaries (including Hebrew and Koine Greek Bible dictionaries), different Bible versions, internet search engines, and any other study aids you can get your hands on — in order to determine whether or not the interpretations you’ve always assumed were correct really are.
And with all that in mind, since soteriology (the study of salvation) is probably the most important subject in Scripture, we need to be very careful to make sure we’re interpreting all the passages which talk about being saved correctly. Because while most Christians assume that there’s only one type of salvation referred to in the Bible, this just isn’t true, unless you think that being saved in whatever way it is you believe that Jesus saves us today — which, according to most Christians, is being saved from some form of never-ending punishment, generally consisting of either being perpetually tormented in fire, or at least ceasing to exist permanently after the final judgement — is the exact same sort of salvation that Peter and the rest of Jesus’ disciples experienced when they were saved from drowning, that it’s the same sort of salvation the Israelites experienced when they were saved from Egyptian slavery, or that women are required to give birth in order to experience that sort of salvation from never-ending punishment, it should really be a lot more clear than it is to most Christians that the words “salvation,” “save,” and “saved” are not all referring to the same type of salvation every time they’re used in Scripture (although, if you don’t agree, I’d love to know how those are literally all the exact same sort of salvation).
In fact, that there are different types of salvation referred to in Scripture — as well as the fact that, while nobody will experience every type of salvation, we’ll all experience at least one of the different types of salvation by the end of the ages, as will be proven from Scripture in another article in this series — is important to understand when it comes to interpreting the passages where Jesus spoke about getting to enter the kingdom of heaven vs going to hell (which itself is not what most people assume it is, as you’ll also learn in other articles from this series), as well as the passages where Paul wrote about going to heaven, because when reading those passages about hell (such as Matthew 18:8-9 or Mark 9:43–48, as just two of the various examples), somebody who isn’t aware of what Jesus meant there might ask what He was warning us about, not realizing that He wasn’t warning us about anything, because He wasn’t talking to us to begin with (unless, perhaps, you’re Jewish). You see, His death for our sins, burial, and resurrection on the third day aside, Jesus’ earthly ministry and messages were technically only meant for “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” as He told His disciples in Matthew 15:24, and not to Gentiles (yes, He did help certain Gentiles on rare occasion, but that was the exception rather than the rule). This means that, while it technically is possible for the odd Gentile who fears God and does works of righteousness to end up enjoying the type of salvation that Jesus taught about during His earthly ministry — as evidenced by the salvation of Cornelius and those other Gentiles who heard Peter preach when he visited Cornelius at his home in Caesarea — this sort of salvation is still primarily for Jews and other Israelites, and really, basically all of the rewards and judgements Jesus spoke about (including His warnings about hell, not to mention the majority of the other teachings He shared) were essentially only for and about Israelites, with the judgement of the sheep and the goats being one of the only significant exceptions (since He specifically said that one is a judgement of the nations). That’s not to say there won’t be any Gentiles in hell, but the particular warnings Jesus gave regarding hell technically weren’t for them, nor should the contents of these passages ever be taught to Gentiles as reasons they might end up in hell, because, with very few exceptions, the statements of Jesus recorded in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John weren’t directed to, or even relevant to, Gentiles at all (and if you find yourself skeptical about this claim, I will prove this fact throughout the rest of this article).
And just as the punishment referred to as hell in those passages will be “experienced,” so to speak, by certain dead people right here on earth (as I’ll also demonstrate from Scripture in another article in this series, neither living nor conscious humans can suffer in any of the biblical “hells” spoken of in the KJV, outside of, perhaps, stubbing their toe on a rock or something similar while in one specific version of “hell”), the salvation Jesus spoke about is also to be experienced right here on earth, in the kingdom of heaven (even if it might not be experienced until after one has been resurrected from the dead).
Unfortunately, because most people don’t pay particularly close attention to the specific wording in Scripture, the fact that Jesus said the salvation He taught about during His earthly ministry is to be experienced in the kingdom of heaven has confused generations of people, leading most to assume it’s a reference to an afterlife location called heaven, and others to believe it’s instead referring to a spiritual state within themselves, based on the way the KJV renders one of Jesus’ statements about the kingdom as: “the kingdom of God is within you” (which they often interpret literally, largely because they misunderstand a handful of other statements by Jesus — not seeming to realize that He generally spoke in ways which kept the masses from fully understanding what He was getting at when they were around, purposely doing so to keep them from converting and experiencing the sort of salvation He spoke about because it wasn’t meant for them, which also confirms that He wasn’t talking about the same sort of salvation Paul generally wrote about, since that sort of salvation is meant for everyone — ultimately forcing them to descend into contradiction and even outright absurdity in their interpretations of large portions of Scripture, as you’ll soon discover). This passage really shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning the kingdom is literally inside our bodies, though, because Jesus said that specifically to the Pharisees, and it doesn’t appear that they were saved when He said that to them, which means it makes far more sense to interpret this as Jesus simply telling His audience that the kingdom had been present within the midst of the people He was speaking to the whole time — in the Person of its Messiah and future King (and various Bible versions even translate it more along these lines) — and that this would be the case for as long as He remained among them in Israel (because the word “you” in the KJV is a plural word, translated from the Second Person Plural Greek word ὑμῶν/“hoo-mone’” in this verse, this should also be obvious to anyone who is aware of how the KJV renders words such as this one, because to take it literally, it would have to mean that Jesus was saying, “the kingdom of God is within all of you,” meaning every single person, including the unbelieving Pharisees, listening to Him speak). In fact, that the term “the kingdom of heaven” was really just a reference to the kingdom of God being ready to come fully into effect on the earth is made quite clear in many places throughout the Bible.
First of all, we know that Jesus’ primary message of salvation was about the coming of the kingdom of heaven and how to get to live in it when it comes fully into effect, and we also know that Jesus’ messages while He walked the earth were given in order to confirm that “the promises made unto the fathers” would indeed come true, as Paul explained in Romans 15:8 (and these were promises made primarily for the circumcision, as Paul also wrote there, meaning promises for the descendants of the “fathers” known as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: ethnic Israelites, in other words). Since the Israelites were promised a future kingdom — one ruled by Jesus, as we also learned in prophecies about Him ruling over the kingdom from the throne of David, which is a figurative term that just refers to rulership over “the house of Jacob,” meaning the descendants of Jacob who live in the actual land of Israel — and were also promised that they’d get to dwell in the very land which God gave to their fathers (meaning the land of Canaan, now known as the land of Israel), this all tells us that the kingdom in question will indeed have to be specifically located in that land of Canaan/Israel where God said it would, in fact, be located (a land that was already referred to as “the kingdom of the Lord” at one time anyway, before the nation of Israel fell and its peoples were scattered among the Gentiles and the promises of their future restoration to the land were then prophesied, such as what God promised them in the book of Jeremiah, for example), or at least that it will have to be centred within the land of Israel. (For those who don’t know, the term “the Lord” used in the phrase “the kingdom of the Lord” in 1 Chronicles 28:5 is translated in the KJV from the Hebrew יְהֹוָה/“yeh-ho-vaw’,” or more likely “yah’-way,” which is God’s actual, proper name in Hebrew, and so anybody who heard Jesus say “the kingdom of God” during His earthly ministry would have recognized it as a reference to Israel based on that verse.)
Now, some Christians try to claim that these promises were all fulfilled back in Joshua’s time, based on what Joshua 21:43-45 says about all having come to pass at that time, but there were many prophecies about the same promises connected with dwelling in the land God gave to the fathers (the land of Israel) which were written after the events in Joshua took place as well, such as the one in Jeremiah we just looked at, as well as in the book of Ezekiel (to name just two of many such examples). Besides, the promise about the land that God made is referred to as an “everlasting” covenant in various places, and even though “everlasting” rarely, if ever, actually means “never-ending” when it’s used in the less literal Bible versions which include the word (as we’ll discuss in another article, although anyone who has paid close attention while reading the Bible should really know that fact already), it does still mean that the covenant God made with Abraham regarding the actual land will last a lot longer than some Christians think (especially based on when 1 Chronicles was written, not to mention the time period it was written about, as well as the promise in the book of Jeremiah we just looked at — which also used the term in regards to the same sort of promise — all of which were after Joshua’s time), so there’s no reason to believe that the promises related to the very plot of land which God promised to Abraham and his descendants aren’t still in effect, especially since many of the details connected with these various prophecies about said land still haven’t been fulfilled yet. And remember, Ezekiel says that the land will have some pretty clear geographical boundaries on the earth, not in heaven, or even “in our hearts” (or in whichever bodily organs some people think the kingdom exists inside) when the promises God made to Israel are finally completely fulfilled, as demonstrated by the fact that the prophecy said the land would have borders from the Mediterranean Sea on the west to the Jordan on the east, with the northern boundary at Hamath, and the southern boundary at Kadesh (and if that’s supposed to refer to a supposed kingdom “within us” in some figurative manner, I’d like to know which organs in the bodies of Gentile believers that each of those locations is supposed to be referring to are, as well as what happens if someone is missing that specific body part; and if it’s not about body parts, I’d like to know what those specific geographical locations do refer to if it isn’t actual land), as well as by the fact that the land is said to contain a new temple with some pretty specific dimensions at that time as well, according to the prophecies (with a part of those dimensions carved out for priests from the tribe of the Levites — who are Israelites, not Gentiles — and I trust that nobody believes we have tiny Levites living inside of us either, which would have to be the case if the kingdom and its temple were literally within our bodies). This all confirms that the kingdom is going to be on earth, specifically within those borders that will make up the nation of Israel in the future, rather than somewhere else. And since the temple is said to be located within the borders of the land rather than the land being said to be located within the temple, if the kingdom of God actually is within us the way some Christians like to claim it is, the bodies of Gentile believers can’t be the same temple Ezekiel referred to — as some Christians also like to claim it is, based on their bad misunderstanding of Paul’s statement about those of us in the body of Christ currently being “the temple of God,” as though there can’t be more than one temple — because that would place the figurative “land” (presuming “the land” is a figurative reference to that kingdom “within us,” at least, as I’ve heard some of these Christians claim) within the figurative “temple” made up of our bodies, which is the opposite of what the prophecies in Ezekiel say. And since Ezekiel’s prophecies to Israel about the land were given after the events in the book of Joshua took place, even if the promises given beforehand were fulfilled in Joshua’s time, this means that what was recorded in the book of Joshua can’t have been the final time they’re fulfilled, but rather it means that these prophecies about the land still have to have a second, future fulfillment as well, with what happened in the book of Joshua just being the first fulfillment. (And for those who aren’t familiar with the concept, many prophecies in Scripture had more than one fulfillment, with the most famous example probably being Isaiah 7:14, which said, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”; this prophecy had its first fulfillment when a woman who was presumably a virgin at the time the prophecy was given — although obviously no longer a virgin by the time she was pregnant — gave birth to her prophesied son, while the second fulfillment would have obviously been Mary giving birth to Jesus.)
Besides, we also know that Israel has to be where the kingdom will be located in the future because Jesus taught His disciples about the things pertaining to the kingdom of God during the 40-day period between His resurrection and His ascension up to heaven, and yet, just before He ascended to heaven, when His disciples asked Him if He’d be bringing the kingdom back to Israel at that time, Jesus didn’t correct them by asking, “Did I not just spend 40 days explaining that the kingdom will be in heaven rather than on earth?”, or, “Did I not just spend 40 days explaining that you’re already living in the kingdom?”, or even, “Did I not just spend 40 days explaining that the kingdom already exists within your bodies, which means the kingdom exists within you rather than you getting to exist within the kingdom?” (whichever of those three that somebody might happen to believe is the truth about the kingdom), but rather just said, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power,” which means He not only didn’t tell them that the kingdom was already fully in effect for Israel, He also didn’t correct their understanding that the kingdom was going to be located on earth — specifically in Israel, where it already once existed in the past (even if in a far less grand manner at that time than it will when it’s restored to Israel in the future) — which are things they should have really already understood if He’d actually just spent more than a month explaining what the kingdom was about, and that it wasn’t going to simply be located in Israel, anyway.
And Peter himself confirmed this only a short time later, in his sermon in Acts 3 when he said, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began,” telling us that the kingdom was going to be sent from heaven to take place on the earth (the various prophecies he was referring to in that sermon also make it pretty clear that “the times of refreshing” and “the restitution of all things” — a reference to the coming kingdom — is going to take place on earth too, when Jesus returns, rather than is going to take place in heaven; and this obviously hasn’t occurred yet either, as anyone who is familiar with history, or who just watches the news, can tell you, although I don’t have the space to get into all of those prophecies here, but you can look them up to see for yourself).
That’s not all, though. Jesus explained that angels “shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” in his explanation of the parable of the wheat and the tares (after which, “the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father”). Now think about this carefully. If the kingdom of heaven is an afterlife location which people go to when they die, as most Christians assume (including many Christians who also believe that the kingdom is somehow “within us” at the same time, however that’s supposed to work), and only those who are saved can go to heaven, as most Christians also assume, this passage would make no sense, because the angels can’t “gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity” if these people are not already in the kingdom at the time of the judgement. And this doesn’t happen as each individual sinner dies, as some might try to claim in order to fit these facts into their assumptions about what the kingdom is, since the parable makes it clear that everyone involved “grew up” together in the same place, meaning on earth, and also that the judgement would involve everyone being judged together at this time as well, at “the end of the world,” meaning “the end of the age” or “end of the eon” (the KJV tends to translate the Greek word αἰών/“ahee-ohn’” — which literally means “age” or “eon” — as “world”), so this can’t refer to each sinner being judged in heaven immediately after each of their individual deaths. If “the kingdom” was a reference to the heavenly afterlife most Christians believe the saved end up in after they die, they’d have to already be saved, not to mention dead, which means this parable would be telling us that some people will become sinners in heaven some time after they die, and then be cast out of heaven into hell, presuming the “furnace of fire” actually was a reference to hell (although, contrary to what most Christians assume, the mention of a “furnace” in this context is actually quite figurative and has a very specific meaning that isn’t connected with hell or the lake of fire at all, but that’s a topic for a later article in this series, so check them all out to learn what it’s actually referring to, if you aren’t already familiar with the meaning). Or, if the kingdom was literally inside our bodies instead, it would mean that angels would have to pull tiny human sinners residing in the “kingdom” out of our bodies and cast them into some sort of literal furnace, leaving us behind. Since neither of those interpretations make any kind of sense whatsoever (not to mention since Jesus outright said in His explanation of the parable that the “field” refers to the world — this time actually referring to the planet itself, being translated from the Greek κόσμος/“kos’-mos” rather than αἰών in this verse — not to heaven, or even to our bodies), it should be pretty clear by now that the type of salvation Jesus and His disciples taught about during His earthly ministry (and that even the type of salvation His disciples taught about after His ascension into heaven, both in person and in their writings) primarily involved certain descendants of Isaac dwelling in the land of Israel and reigning over the earth and its people as “kings and priests” (presuming they’re included in Israel’s first resurrection, or are among those “that overcometh” and survive the Tribulation) during the thousand-year period of time that the kingdom of heaven exists in that part of the world (thus fulfilling a prophecy from the Hebrew Scriptures, meaning the books of the Bible that are generally referred to today as “the Old Testament”), as well as finally being able to keep the Mosaic law perfectly because the New Covenant will finally have come fully into effect for the house of Israel and the house of Judah (and since Gentiles don’t have an old covenant of any sort to be replaced with by something new, because they weren’t given any covenants to begin with, it should be pretty clear that the New Covenant is only for the members of the house of Israel and the house of Judah, as Jeremiah stated, rather than for Gentiles who aren’t descendants of either of those houses), after the believing Israelites who aren’t living there at the time have been returned from their exile back to the land of Israel. Bringing His people into the New Covenant (which was inaugurated by Jesus’ death, but which has largely been put on hold until His Second Coming because most of Israel rejected Him as their Messiah during His first time on earth, as demonstrated by the fact that Jeremiah said “they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them” when the New Covenant comes fully in effect, and that sure isn’t happening anywhere in the world yet, especially not in Israel) is how Jesus will “save his people from their sins,” as the angel put it in Matthew 1:21 — letting us know that Jesus will fulfill the prophecy in Psalm 130:8 which said, “And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities,” involving both forgiveness for their sins, as well as finally being redeemed out from among the nations and Gentiles they’ll have been living among back to God in Israel — because it’s important to remember that pretty much any reference to “His people” in Scripture is specifically a reference to faithful Israelites. And since the promises God gave concerning the house of Israel and the house of Judah are without repentance, we know that these prophecies will indeed be fulfilled for exactly the very people that they were made to (i.e., ethnic Israelites), in the exact location He said they’d take place in (i.e., the land of Israel).
And just as a quick but related aside, those Christians who claim that Gentile believers within the body of Christ are, in fact, the temple written about in Ezekiel also believe that we’re the “kings and priests” written about in Revelation and Exodus (thus making us both the temple and its priests, apparently), despite the fact that these are obviously prophecies about Israelites. But even if that were the case, since it seems unlikely that there would be any priests on the New Earth, because there presumably won’t be a need for any priests anymore at that time, what with there being no physical temple in the New Jerusalem on the New Earth, but rather God Himself, along with “the Lamb” (meaning Jesus), being the temple on the New Earth, the temple written about in Ezekiel can’t be the same “temple” written about in Revelation 21 (and we can’t currently be living on the New Earth either, as some of these Christians somehow also believe to be the case, because regardless of whether Ezekiel was referring to a literal temple made out of physical stone or to a metaphorical “temple” made up of Gentile believers, neither of those “temples” would be God and the Lamb, which means the thousand-year kingdom of heaven and the New Earth can’t actually coexist at the same time).
That said, until John wrote the book of Revelation, nobody would have known how long the type of salvation Jesus was preaching about during His earthly ministry would last, or even necessarily would have known that the kingdom of heaven might be different from the New Earth (which was prophesied about in the Hebrew Scriptures). And while it’s true that anyone who experiences this type of salvation in the kingdom of heaven will also get to go on to live in the New Jerusalem on the New Earth, at that point the specific type of salvation Jesus was teaching about would technically have come to an end, since the thousand years will have run their course. (And before moving on, I should say, yes, it’s true that the kingdom of God does also have a spiritual nature, and is not solely physical, but there is still a physical aspect to it — especially for the part of it that Israelites will be living in — as everything we’ve covered still demonstrates.)
This all means that the method of getting to enjoy this kind of salvation in Israel isn’t what most Christians have assumed either. You see, this isn’t the type of salvation which Paul taught isn’t based on works (although that is an equally valid type of salvation for those people it applies to), but rather, in addition to having to believe that Jesus is Israel’s Christ (or Messiah, with these synonyms literally just meaning “anointed”), as well as the Son of God, this sort of salvation also requires a number of other things from those who are able to do so as well. For example, it requires repentance of one’s sins (as opposed to the type of repentance Paul wrote about, which simply referred to changing one’s mind about who could actually save his readers), as well as making sure to do various sorts of good works, including baptism in water in the name of Jesus Christ (and there are multiple other types of baptisms when it comes to this type of salvation too, baptisms which don’t even include getting wet in some cases, such as a baptism with — or in — the Holy Spirit, for example, as well as a baptism with “fire,” among others), following the commandments Jesus taught His disciples during His earthly ministry, which includes the commandments within the Mosaic law, doing whatever it takes to be extremely righteous and to avoid sinning (which is presumably what Jesus meant when He told His audience to amputate body parts in order to avoid hell and enter the kingdom), and then confessing one’s sins if they slip up and do end up sinning (not to mention also forgiving others who sinned against them). In addition, they’re not only required to turn from pride and be extremely humble (since, while avoiding sin and following the Mosaic law is required of Israelites in order to get to enjoy life in the kingdom, following the law on its own doesn’t save anyone, and, in addition to faith, humility and repentance are even more required for Israelites than almost anything else), as well as having to make sure they’re both meek and poor in spirit, they also can’t be greedy or selfish (these sorts of warnings directed towards the rich are given all throughout the Bible, and since rich people can believe that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God just as easily as poor people can, it appears that being willing to give up one’s wealth in order to follow Jesus around Israel could be required of an Israelite in order for them to enter the kingdom, at least back then and as far as this type of salvation goes, since otherwise Jesus could have simply told the young man to accept Him as his personal saviour — or perhaps told him to do something that actually is a biblical concept — rather than telling him to sell all he had and give it to the poor so he could follow Jesus around the nation while He preached), and they do also have to endure to the end (of one’s life or of the period commonly known as the Tribulation, whichever comes first) as well. And that’s not all. There are many other requirements mentioned elsewhere in Scripture too, but I think you get the idea, which is that this is not the same type of salvation Paul primarily taught about.
I know that most Christians reading this will want to insist that these required works are all meant to be interpreted as being the fruit of one’s faith — or, as some claim, that Jesus actually commanded His audience members do all these things so that His more humble listeners would realize they couldn’t do what He told them to do and would have faith in His death for our sins, and His subsequent burial and resurrection, instead (which is what Paul said people who experience at least one of the types of salvation he wrote about have to believe in order to be said to be saved, yet which isn’t something anyone prior to him is ever recorded as teaching needed to be believed in order to be saved, especially not during Jesus’ earthly ministry) — but there’s absolutely zero indication in any of those passages that they aren’t meant to be interpreted literally (and that would also require us to have to make ourselves humble enough to be able to do this, which is a very difficult work in and of itself for anyone to do), particularly in light of what He said to the lawyer when He told the parable of the Good Samaritan, never once implying anywhere in Luke 10:25-37 that He didn’t mean for the lawyer to keep the law (in fact, all He said about following the Mosaic law after sharing the parable was, “Go, and do thou likewise,” in regards to the method of following the law that lawyer agreed it was referring to).
Besides, Jesus Himself said in Matthew 5:17-19, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” All has not been fulfilled yet (heaven and earth haven’t passed yet — unless you’re reading this article on a whole new planet called the New Earth, long after it was first published — and there are still many prophecies yet to be fulfilled, at least as of the time I wrote this article), so those for whom the Mosaic law is relevant to, namely Israelites, still have to follow it (or, at the very least, certainly still had to until Christ’s death, if Jesus’ statement that “it is finished” was referring to all being fulfilled, although since the current heaven and earth are still here — and there are still many unfulfilled prophecies — as of the time I’m writing this, I don’t believe it was). Nobody listening to Jesus could have possibly interpreted any of His statements as meaning that works weren’t actually still required of them anyway, since not only had a form of salvation by grace through faith apart from works not ever been taught prior to Paul doing so, at the time they were preaching to the inhabitants of Israel, not even Jesus’ disciples understood that He was going to die, which means that A) this isn’t something that Jesus’ audience members could have possibly believed is true in order to avoid the type of hell He was warning about, and B) Jesus and His disciples would have then spent three years preaching basically useless messages if the common understanding that there’s only one type and method of salvation were true, considering this would mean they didn’t once explain how to actually be saved from said “hell” fire if salvation were based solely on faith in Christ’s death for our sins, burial, and resurrection at that time the way it was for those Gentiles Paul later preached to (and people like Zacchaeus couldn’t have actually been saved, despite what Jesus said in Luke 19:8–9, which was actually in response to Zacchaeus promising to do good works in the form of making up for his previously harmful actions, not for claiming to believe in Christ’s death for our sins, which is something that wasn’t even discussed in the passage). In fact, even Jesus’ disciples couldn’t have been considered to be saved until after His death and resurrection — contrary to what Luke 10:20 seems to imply — if it were a belief which was required in order to avoid this particular hell (yes, as I alluded to before, for those who aren’t aware of this fact already, there’s more than one “hell” referred to in the KJV, and what each one is will be discussed in other articles in this series; remember, the same English word doesn’t always mean the same thing every time it’s used in the Bible, and the word “hell” in the KJV is, in fact, translated from four different words in the original Hebrew and Koine Greek Scriptures, most of which refer to different locations or concepts from one another, with the particular “hell” we’re talking about right now being translated from the Greek word γέεννα/“gheh’-en-nah,” which is why it’s often referred to today as Gehenna, and is also why it’s sometimes transliterated that way, depending on your Bible version), since not even they believed He was going to die or be resurrected until after they saw it all finally happen. This also means that Jesus’ death wasn’t something people prior to His crucifixion were looking forward to for their salvation, because despite His death being foretold in the prophecies of both Jesus and certain other prophets, there’s no scriptural basis for assuming that anybody actually was looking forward in time in faith for His death to take place to save any of them, so this common assertion has absolutely no scriptural merit either (and if people could be saved prior to Christ’s death by simply believing that He’s Israel’s Messiah and the Son of God, along with performing the requisite works of faith, of course, without having to trust in His death “for our sins” the way Paul’s Gentile converts were required to in order to be considered saved, or even having to know that His death was “for our sins” at all, there’s no good reason that I can think of to assume it couldn’t still be possible to experience the sort of salvation Jesus and His disciples taught about that way either, especially since many of His teachings about this sort of salvation and how one experiences it are connected with the future Tribulation), which means there’s no good reason to assume these commands weren’t being mentioned as actual requirements for salvation (or, at the very least, for maintaining salvation) rather than just as evidence of one’s salvation (or rather than to convince them of their inability to do what was necessary, in order to drive them to faith in a sacrifice they didn’t even know He was going to make), at least not without reading one’s preconceived doctrinal bias that there’s only one type of salvation into Scripture (which anyone with a concordance can tell you isn’t the case anyway, as we’ve already discussed). And so, anyone who is being honest with the text will admit that works are required for this type of salvation (it’s interesting how many Christians insist on interpreting the parts of Scripture which seem to be meant to be interpreted literally in a figurative manner, all the while criticizing those of us in the body of Christ for not interpreting the parts that make more sense to be interpreted figuratively in a literal manner, but they have no choice if they want to continue believing that their doctrinal assumptions are correct). This all means, while we’re aware that not everybody will experience the sort of salvation He and His disciples taught about during His earthly ministry and beyond since, based on what Jesus said, not everyone will get to live in the kingdom of heaven during the time it exists in Israel, one day even Gentiles other than Cornelius and his associates will be saved in this way because of Israelites — as Isaiah prophesied — and their rise to prominence in the future (and yes, before someone brings it up, that prophecy in Isaiah was indeed at least partially fulfilled by Jesus during His lifetime, but prophecies can have more than one fulfillment, as we’ve already learned, and this is one of them, which we know from the fact that Paul and Barnabas also fulfilled it a second time, and also from the fact that it will have an even larger fulfillment in the future, when the kingdom of heaven begins in Israel and when Gentiles can only get saved thanks to the priesthood of Israelites).
And on the topic of the disciples preaching to Gentiles before Paul, no, I don’t believe the Ethiopian eunuch was a Gentile, but rather it seems likely that he was actually an Israelite himself, of the diaspora, because not only was he visiting Jerusalem to worship like those a few chapters earlier in Acts 2 were, but also because it wasn’t pointed out in the chapter how problematic this should have been if he was a Gentile, even though such a big deal is made of Peter’s time spent going to minister to Gentiles in the same book (and he wasn’t referred to as a proselyte the way Nicolas of Antioch was just two chapters before this one either). So it seems very probable that preaching to Gentiles who weren’t already proselytes was only done one time prior to Paul doing so, almost certainly for the purpose of Peter being able to later help defend Paul’s ministry to the nations. That said, even if the eunuch actually was a Gentile proselyte, his statement of faith before his water baptism had nothing to do with trusting in Christ’s death for our sins at all — which makes sense, considering the fact that, while he was told by Philip that Jesus died, just as Cornelius and his household later learned from Peter, neither Philip nor Peter told their respective listeners that Christ’s death was for our sins, or that His death for our sins is what they needed to have faith in for their salvation — but rather he simply confessed his belief that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God, lining up exactly with what John wrote that an Israelite had to believe in order to be saved. (Yes, I’m aware that verse 37 of Acts 8 isn’t included in various modern Bible versions, but while I do personally believe it belongs there, either way, I trust you’ll notice that what I said about belief in Christ’s death being for our sins definitely wasn’t mentioned in the chapter either.)
And while Paul did sometimes teach about the same sort of salvation that Jesus and His disciples were proclaiming (especially when he’s recorded as preaching to Jews in the book of Acts, as well as when he discussed the salvation of Israel in his epistles), most of the time he was either simply referring to being quickened (sometimes also referred to as being vivified, depending on your Bible version, which refers to having our mortal bodies be made immortal as happened to Jesus after His resurrection, being “made alive” beyond the reach of death, which means being incapable of dying, as well as never being subject to the corruption and the humiliation of mortality ever again, which is something that will only happen to certain people who experience the sort of salvation that Jesus taught about during His earthly ministry, at least at the time they’re experiencing their particular type of salvation — specifically those who are raised from the dead at the resurrection of the just — with those who are still living at the time they begin enjoying what the KJV figuratively refers to as “everlasting life” or “eternal life” in the kingdom of heaven not being given true immortality at that point, since those who are resurrected after Jesus returns will be like the angels, in that they’ll no longer marry nor reproduce, and won’t even be able to die ever again, and if everyone who was given “everlasting life” was quickened/made immortal right then, there wouldn’t be anyone left to fulfill the prophecies of righteous Israelites not only growing old but also having children in the city of Jerusalem in the kingdom, both on this planet and also later on the New Earth — speaking of the New Jerusalem at that point, even if nobody realized it was going to be a whole new city called Jerusalem prior to the time that John wrote about it in Revelation — as well), and finally being made truly sinless because of that immortality (which is what salvation will eventually be for those who experience the type of salvation that Paul primarily wrote about), or to experiencing that particular salvation (immortality and sinlessness) before anyone else, while reigning with Christ in the heavens (which is what the special salvation Paul wrote is “specially” for those that believe is, at least in part, and which can only be fully experienced by someone whose mortal body has been quickened, as I’ll explain in another article in this series), since the citizenship of those he wrote to is in heaven rather than in the land of Israel where the citizenship of the people Jesus preached to is located (I realize that the way the KJV renders Philippians 3:20 as saying “our conversation is in heaven” can be confusing to those who aren’t familiar with the language, but it just means “our citizenship is in heaven,” and since the citizen of a particular commonwealth has the right to go there whenever they please, as soon as we have the ability to do so — which will be when we’re quickened — we’ll almost certainly want to spend most of our time there). Those of us who get to enjoy this special sort of salvation (also referred to figuratively as “everlasting life,” or as “eternal life,” in the KJV) are the members of the church that Paul (and only Paul) referred to as the body of Christ, which consists only of those who truly understand what it means — and also truly believe — that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day, as he explained three chapters later in the same book which he called us the body of Christ in. This obviously isn’t something that anyone to whom Jesus and His disciples preached during His earthly ministry could have believed because, as we already discussed, at the time they were preaching to the inhabitants of Israel, not even His disciples knew that He was going to die, so this “method” of salvation was clearly intended for a different audience (which means that neither they, nor anyone who believed the message they proclaimed during Jesus’ earthly ministry, could be members of the body of Christ; although that’s okay, because they had membership in another church Jesus began — one which was just as special as the church that Paul was the first member of — and their church is known as the Israel of God).
Just to add some further details about the special type of salvation Paul taught to the nations, unlike the requirements for experiencing the salvation that Jesus and His disciples taught about, this kind of salvation is entirely without any requirement of works of any kind, on our part at least, as already noted. Paul was quite clear that even if we don’t do any works at all, we can still be justified, which means that faith without works is not dead for those in the body of Christ. In addition, something few are aware of is that baptism for those who enjoy this sort of salvation isn’t in water. Yes, Paul did baptize a few people in water early on, but he would have eventually stopped completely as he progressed in receiving revelations of truth from the Lord, particularly after learning the truth that there’s only one sort of immersion, or baptism, for us, which is immersion by the Holy Spirit, into the body of Christ, including into what He experienced in His body, such as His death (and he was careful to point out that Christ didn’t send him to baptize at all, which would be unusual if water baptism was necessary for the sort of salvation he was teaching the Gentiles about, as some Christians believe, and if he actually was trying to get them saved) — as opposed to the various different types of baptisms for Israel that I already mentioned, some of which involved water and some of which didn’t, telling us that not all baptisms end up getting someone wet — and so this baptism, or immersion (which is all the Greek word βάπτισμα/“baptisma” that we transliterate the English word “baptism” from means), is quite dry for us, and happens to us entirely passively at the moment we believe and are saved. (In order to try to ignore this point, some Christians claim that Paul simply meant we should only be baptized in water once in our lives rather than repeatedly, but he preceded the words “one baptism” with the words “one hope” and “one faith,” and I certainly hope nobody would think we should only have hope or faith once in our lives, as would be the case if Paul meant we should be baptized only once in our lives there, so that interpretation doesn’t really fit with the rest of the passage if we’re interpreting the whole thing consistently, which tells us he’s really just saying that there’s only one type of baptism for us — one which doesn’t involve water at all; and while not every Christian uses that interpretation, because others will instead claim that 1 Corinthians 12:13 should actually be translated as “for in one Spirit are we all baptized into one body,” but since there is now only one baptism for those in that body, and this verse still tells us that baptism into the body of Christ is what this one baptism is, if “in one Spirit” somehow were the best translation, and if it did refer to that baptism with, or of, or in the Holy Spirit, then it can’t also include getting wet, because water baptism would then be a second baptism in addition to our one baptism in or with the Holy Spirit, so this doesn’t help defend the idea of water baptism for the body of Christ at all anyway.) And while forgiving others is still something God would like us to do, it isn’t required for salvation for us the way it is for Israel since we aren’t under the Mosaic law or required to do good works in order to be saved when it comes to our type of salvation (even though, yes, God will still end up having most members of the body of Christ do good works, but we aren’t required to do them in order to be saved, or even to demonstrate that we’ve been saved — since we’ve already learned that “to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” — and since Paul told us that “we are his workmanship” in the verse where he said we’re “created in Christ Jesus unto good works,” we know that those are works God will make sure we do, or that He’ll technically do through us), the way Israelites are when it comes to their type of salvation (or the way other Gentiles are if they also want to experience the sort of salvation Jesus and His disciples spoke about — remember, Gentiles can experience the same salvation Jesus and His disciples preached about, as evidenced by Cornelius and his household, just as Jews can experience the sort of salvation Paul primarily preached about, as evidenced by Paul himself), and, in fact, we can be saved right now despite the fact that Israel is not currently a light to the Gentiles as they one day will need to be for Gentiles to be led to salvation, which will be at the time when the law shall go forth of Zion (which isn’t right now, since the law not only doesn’t go forth from Zion, but doesn’t even apply to Gentiles at present).
The differences between those various forms of salvation also tells us how important it is that one doesn’t confuse the people referred to as the body of Christ with the people called the Israel of God, or else they’re likely to misunderstand not only which teachings in the Bible apply specifically to them, but how they receive their type of salvation as well. (Some Christians believe the term “the Israel of God” is being applied to the body of Christ by Paul in that verse in Galatians 6, but as you read the rest of this article you should be able to figure out for yourself why that’s quite impossible, although I will explain why it’s impossible a little later in the article as well, so please keep reading and it will soon become clear why there are indeed two different churches going by those two different names.)
Of course, most Christians interpret the Bible with a major preconceived bias already present, which is the assumption that the whole Bible is to and about everyone. But unless you believe that everyone needs to build a literal ark out of literal gopher wood, needs to get naked when they preach, or needs to own a sword, it should be pretty obvious that there are things in Scripture which simply don’t apply to you, and based on what we just covered about the different types of salvation, it should also be obvious that there are two entirely different sets of messages for two entirely different groups of people in the Bible. And if a declaration regarding one of those particular types of salvation could be referred to as a proclamation of “glad tidings,” or a pronouncement of news which is good, aka “good news” (all of which is what the English word “Gospel” means), if there are multiple different types of salvation mentioned in Scripture, which we know there are (unless, again, you think that Jesus’ disciples being temporarily saved from dying by being saved from drowning in water is somehow the exact same sort of salvation He provided through His death for our sins), then each of those proclamations of good news would technically not be the same proclamation of good news as one another, which would mean it could be said that there’s more than one Gospel referred to in Scripture, based on the definition of the word “Gospel.” But if that’s the case, shouldn’t the Bible also say that there are multiple types of proclamations of good news, perhaps even giving each of these proclamations of good news different titles? Well, it actually does just that — and even tells us the names of these respective proclamations — in Galatians 2:7, where we’re told that they’re called the Gospel of the Uncircumcision and the Gospel of the Circumcision.
Unfortunately, since most Christians mistakenly assume that there’s really only one kind of salvation and one type of proclamation of good news anywhere in the Bible, they’ll also insist that because the next two verses in Galatians explain how both God and the pillars of the circumcision church (the Israel of God) sent Paul to the heathen (the Gentiles) while Peter and the rest focused on the circumcision (the Jews), then verse 7 must have simply been saying the exact same thing as well. But these verses were really Paul expanding on his previous statement in verse 7, by telling his readers who the primary audiences of each of the two separate proclamations of good news regarding the different types of salvation are, providing new information about what he’d just told them rather than simply being unnecessarily repetitive the way most Christians assume he was being in these verses, causing them to then read this assumption of redundancy into verses 7 through 9, ultimately leading them to believe it just meant that Paul preached the Gospel to the uncircumcision and that Peter preached the exact same Gospel to the circumcision. However, for those who insist on interpreting it this way, if Paul was trying to get across to his readers that the different types of salvation are shared through different proclamations of good news with the titles of “the Gospel of the Circumcision” and “the Gospel of the Uncircumcision,” or even perhaps different proclamations of good news with the titles of “the Gospel to the Circumcision” and “the Gospel to the Uncircumcision,” if that’s how one prefers to translate verse 7, I need to ask you to explain what he would have needed to have written differently there in order to convince you that there are indeed two separate proclamations of good news being referred to by two separate titles there, especially in light of the fact that there are obviously multiple different types of salvation referred to in different parts of the Bible, with different methods of being saved when it comes to each of them as well.
As far as what the Gospel of the Uncircumcision is, it’s simply the good news that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day, although I should quickly say that Paul also referred to this good news by various other names as well, such as “the Gospel of Christ,” as “the Gospel of the Grace of God,” and even sometimes simply as “the Gospel of God,” And, of course, those of us in the body of Christ sometimes also refer to it as Paul’s Gospel, because Paul himself called it “my Gospel,” and because one generally doesn’t call something theirs unless they’re trying to differentiate it from something that belongs to someone else, or at least trying to point out that it doesn’t belong to, or perhaps originate from, someone else; and if there was only one Gospel then Paul would have said “the Gospel” rather than “my Gospel” in those particular passages (although some have tried to use Paul’s use of the phrase “my grace” in Philippians 1:7 to try to argue that Paul using the word “my” doesn’t prove this, but this verse is actually even more proof of what I’ve been saying, because Paul was the first human to be shown the sort of grace connected with the Gospel of the Uncircumcision, as already mentioned, so this grace began with him just as this Gospel did — relatively speaking, of course; from an absolute perspective, both the grace and the Gospel we’re talking about obviously began with God and Christ, but I’m speaking from the relative perspective here, just as Paul was when he referred to “my grace” and to “my Gospel”).
As for the Gospel of the Circumcision, it was originally referred to as “the Gospel of the Kingdom,” because it was the proclamation of good news that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” which John the Baptist first proclaimed, and which Jesus and His disciples also preached while He walked the earth. From a literal perspective, this proclamation of good news meant that “the kingdom of heaven is near” (and, in fact, while Jesus was still in their midst in Israel, so was the kingdom itself, from a certain perspective, which is why “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” is what this Gospel meant from a figurative perspective, and which is also what the proclamation of this Gospel message had to transition into after Acts 13, when the kingdom was no longer literally “at hand” for Israel any longer, at least for the time being), since it was ready to come fully into effect in the near future, and would have shortly thereafter if the right qualifications were met by Israel — although that didn’t happen, as we know, so the “nearness” of the kingdom to Israel went into abeyance in Acts 13 (if not earlier). To be saved in connection with this Gospel, one has to repent and believe the proclamation of good news that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God (which is the most important part of how one believes this Gospel, although prior to Acts 13, they also would have been required to believe that the kingdom truly was “at hand” at the time), and follow this belief up with the required good works such as water baptism and following the law as well, of course. However, after Paul turned to the Gentiles in Acts 13, because the “nearness” of the kingdom to Israel was temporarily put on hold by God at that time — since the majority of Israel was blinded by God to the truth about Jesus from then on, as prophesied both in word and in type — he needed a label to distinguish between his Gospel and Israel’s Gospel, which would be why he began calling it the Gospel of the Circumcision (although most believing Israelites saved in connection with this Gospel would have just called it “the Gospel” from that time on, since they weren’t concerned with differentiating between the two Gospels themselves when preaching to their intended audience of other Israelites).
In addition, this Gospel of the Circumcision has also been referred to as “the Gospel of God” by Peter, and this has caused some confusion among certain Christians, because of the fact that Paul also referred to his Gospel by that label, but this comes down to the fact that “the Gospel of God” is a more generic term that can be used for any good news connected with God, and this is, in fact, why Paul said that the Gospel has to be rightly divided in the first place (yes, the term “the word of truth,” or “the word of the truth,” is basically always a reference to a Gospel in the Bible). Now, this is where some Christians will also (rightly) point out that the Greek word ὀρθοτομέω/“or-thot-om-eh’-o” — a variation of which “rightly dividing” is translated from in the KJV — can also be translated as “making straight” or “correctly handling” or some other similar term, in order to distract from the idea that the good news about God needs to be divided. But as you read the rest of this article, it should become pretty obvious to you why “rightly dividing” is indeed a better translation than those other options are when it comes to this verse, so I’m not even going to bother responding to that point here, because you’ll be able to see for yourself by the time you finish this article.
I should also quickly discuss the fact that their assertion about “the Gospel of God” is similar to how some will also point out that Paul referred to the Gospel he preached to the nations as “the Gospel of Christ,” as I already mentioned, but that Mark 1:1 refers to “the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” and that Paul also refers to “the Gospel of Jesus Christ” in 2 Thessalonians 1:8, in order to claim that these must all be the same Gospel. Well, as far as Paul’s reference to “the Gospel of Jesus Christ” in 2 Thessalonians 1:8 goes, he actually was referring to the Gospel of the Circumcision there, as I’ll cover in a later article in this series, which is the Gospel that the reference in Mark 1:1 would have also been connected with, so this isn’t a problem at all. And as far as his reference to “the Gospel of Christ” in Romans 15:29 goes, this label doesn’t have the word “Jesus” in it, telling us that it isn’t the same Gospel as the one in those other two passages at all, although the fact that there is more than one Gospel in the Bible should make this clear enough anyway, even if you have to finish reading this article before you’re convinced that this is indeed the case.
That there isn’t only one Gospel in the Bible really should be more obvious to more people than it currently is, though. I mean, first of all, we know that Paul didn’t learn the Gospel he preached to the nations from any mortal humans, but rather he said that he learned this Gospel directly from the glorified Jesus Christ. However, it wouldn’t make sense for him to have been persecuting the Israel of God if he wasn’t aware of their most important teaching already (the Gospel they were preaching), so the Gospel he learned directly from Christ couldn’t have been the same Gospel he was persecuting the Jewish church for preaching, because he would have had to have already known that Gospel before he ever even met Christ on the road to Damascus in order to persecute them for preaching it. Although, if you disagree, I’d like you to explain what Paul was persecuting the Israel of God for, exactly, if his Gospel was the same one they were already preaching, as well as what the Gospel he said he received not of man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ, was. In addition, it doesn’t appear that Paul was told this Gospel by Jesus on the road to Damascus either, at least not based on what Scripture says about this encounter, yet he immediately proclaimed the same message about Jesus that Peter and the rest of the apostles were preaching after being healed by Ananias, so the obvious conclusion seems to be that the good news he later preached to the Gentiles wasn’t the same good news which Peter preached to Israel and the proselytes, and which Paul himself preached at the beginning of his ministry, as well as three years later in Jerusalem, where the apostles and Jesus’ brother James became acquainted with him for a couple weeks, and the most important part of the “him” they became acquainted with would certainly include what the Gospel he believed and preached at that time was — he wouldn’t have just been sitting around discussing sports with them for two weeks, especially since he preached with them at the time he visited with them in Jerusalem as well. (And for those who aren’t acquainted with 17th-century English, the phrase “other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother” in Galatians 1:19 in the KJV simply means “other than the apostles, I got to know nobody except for the Lord’s brother James,” which makes sense considering the fact that this James wasn’t one of the 12 apostles, and that Acts 9:26-29 says he did meet the rest of the apostles and even preached with them, as I just mentioned.) If the Gospel that Paul referred to as “my Gospel” really was the same Gospel he’d already preached with them in Jerusalem, why would he have then had to return more than a decade later to explain what the Gospel he was now preaching among the Gentiles was? Peter and the rest of the apostles (as well as James) would already be well aware of what the Gospel he preached was from his previous visit if it was the same Gospel, so for those who believe it was the same Gospel, I have to ask what the Gospel was that he preached among the Gentiles which he had to explain to them, exactly, if they already knew the Gospel he preached, and why did he have to explain it to them?
But all that aside, the definition of the word “Gospel” (or “Evangel,” as some Bible versions translate the word) really makes it clear that there’s more than one of them in the Bible anyway. Remember, the word “Gospel” refers to a pronouncement of glad tidings, or news which is good, and the word “news” quite literally refers to “a series of specific words which, when laid out in a specific order, conveys specific information about a specific subject.” This means that if you have another set of specific words which, when laid out in their own specific order, convey some other sort of specific information about that subject, you can’t say that you have the same news, regardless of whether both sets of news are good in nature, or even about the same person (for example, the news that “Joshua went to the graveyard and then returned” can’t be said to be the exact same news as “that thing you’ve been anticipating is ready to happen,” because the two messages mean something entirely different from one another since they convey entirely different pieces of information from each other: one piece of news being about an action a person took, with the other piece of news being about something the hearer or reader had been anticipating being ready to occur). Because they’re providing us with different sorts of information from one another, it means that they are, by definition, different sets of news (and that there are at least two different sets of news in existence). And since the news which is good that Jesus and His disciples preached prior to Paul’s conversion (which was the news that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”) didn’t contain the same specific words as the news which is good that Paul later preached to the nations did (which is the news that “Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day”), nor did it convey the same specific information (since their news which is good didn’t contain anything about Christ’s death for our sins in it, which it couldn’t have because most of the people proclaiming it weren’t even aware of the fact that He was going to die at the time they preached their news), it should be very evident that the news which is good that Jesus’ disciples preached during Jesus’ earthly ministry simply can’t be said to be the same news which is good (meaning the same Gospel) that Paul taught, and so anyone who still insists there’s only one set of glad tidings/news which is good/Gospel in the Bible is simply lying to themselves at this point. Although, if anyone disagrees, I’d be very curious to hear them explain how the news which is good about Christ’s death for our sins, burial, and resurrection that Paul preached is indeed what Jesus’ disciples were preaching when they preached the Gospel of the Kingdom during Jesus’ earthly ministry, all while being unaware that He was even going to die.
And to quickly get the most common objections to the idea of there being two Gospels out of the way, first of all, some people mistakenly believe Paul was saying in Galatians 1:8–9 that anyone who preaches another Gospel will be accursed. Unfortunately, the people who use this argument not only read more into this passage than it’s actually saying, they also don’t pay close attention to the specific wording of the passage either, leading them to believe a whole doctrine that wasn’t what Paul was getting at there at all. You see, Paul wasn’t saying there is only one true Gospel there, or that nobody could ever preach a Gospel to someone other than the one he taught the body of Christ (if that were the case, nobody could ever share good news of any sort with anyone if it wasn’t about Christ’s death for our sins, His burial, and His resurrection, including good news/gospels/glad tidings about births or job promotions or any other sort of positive information). Most people who base their assumptions about there being only one Gospel on this passage have likely only read translations of Scripture which render verses 6 and 7 in the way the KJV does when it says “another gospel: which is not another” in the verses before his warning. The problem is, if one doesn’t understand that this is a very poetic sort of translation, they can easily end up very confused. Is it another Gospel or is it not another Gospel? It can’t literally be both another Gospel and not another Gospel at the same time, which tells us that this particular translation isn’t meant to be read literally.
What most people aren’t aware of is that Paul actually used two distinct Greek words rather than one in the original text (and that Paul literally just meant: “a different gospel which is not another”) in order to differentiate between any legitimate Gospels that weren’t his but were still perfectly okay to be taught to certain people to follow for salvation (as long as it wasn’t members of the body of Christ being taught that) and any illegitimate “gospels” that shouldn’t be taught by anyone at all, speaking of both a different (ἕτερος/“het’-er-os”) so-called “gospel” which isn’t actually a real Gospel at all, and another (ἄλλος/“al’-los”) actual Gospel. The word ἕτερος basically means “other of a differing sort,” while ἄλλος means “other of the same sort,” so the wording of this passage allows for the existence of another/ἄλλος true Gospel (or even true Gospels, plural) in addition to Paul’s Gospel. For those who haven’t figured it out yet, this is another example of the translators of the KJV translating two different words (which meant something quite different from one another in their original language) using the same English word in the KJV, and if one isn’t being careful in their Bible study, they can end up completely misinterpreting the passage as saying the exact opposite of what it actually means because they aren’t aware of this fact.
Simply put, Paul wasn’t saying that people who taught there are other Gospels are under a curse, since he did so himself in the very next chapter of this epistle. All he was telling his readers is that anyone who tried to get those in the body of Christ to follow the requirements of any Gospels for their salvation other than the one they had already received from him would be accursed. But Peter and the rest of the circumcision believers could preach the requirements of their particular Gospel as something to be followed to anyone that they wanted to without fear, as long as it wasn’t to existing members of the body of Christ, based on the words “unto you” in verses 8 and 9, since Paul was writing to those who had already believed his Gospel (meaning those who had already become members of the body of Christ), not to those who hadn’t. In fact, the different/ἕτερος “gospel” that Paul was warning about there was actually an adulterated mix of both Gospels, which means it was an attempt to blend the two Gospels into one (those whom Paul was condemning were trying to mix the law elements associated with the Gospel that Peter preached in with the pure grace of Paul’s Gospel, resulting in a bastardized false “gospel” that can’t help anyone). Unfortunately, this means that the evangelists and teachers of the Christian religion today who are also trying to force the contents of each of these two actual Gospels into one (by insisting that there is only one Gospel) are guilty of preaching that very same different/ἕτερος “gospel” that isn’t even another/ἄλλος (completely legitimate) Gospel at all like the Gospel that Peter preached was, bringing the curse that Paul warned about upon themselves.
And on the off chance that anyone ever tries to claim that “different” and “another” (or ἕτερος and ἄλλος) literally mean the same thing, here are some sentences to consider: 1) “the word ‘different’ is different from the word ‘another,’” 2) “the word ‘another’ is another from the word ‘different,’” 3) “the word ‘another’ is different from the word ‘another,’” 4) “the word ‘different’ is another from the word ‘different,’” 5) “the word ‘another’ is another from the word ‘another,’” and 6) “the word ‘different’ is different from the word ‘different.’” Read those, then ask yourself if those sentences all mean the same thing, or if the last five even make any sense at all. And to really drive the point home, if the two words truly did mean the same thing, the verse could also be translated as “a different Gospel which is not different,” similar to sentence number 6 above, but that would be an extremely nonsensical translation. And if the words “different” and “another” don’t mean the same thing, as those examples I just gave prove, there’s literally no way to interpret the passage as meaning Paul is saying there’s only one legitimate Gospel, because he’s clearly allowing for at least three separate messages called gospels in this passage, 1) his own Gospel, 2) another Gospel, and 3) a different “gospel,” which means the only way he could have been talking about only two messages called gospels — 1) his own Gospel, and 2) a different “gospel” — with only one being legitimate, is if “another” and “different” actually did mean the same thing. (This isn’t to say that ἕτερος and ἄλλος can’t ever be used as synonyms of one another in a more figurative manner in other places, since we already know that the same word can be used in different ways in different passages, but it should be clear by this point that Paul wasn’t using ἕτερος as another word with literally the same meaning as ἄλλος in this passage — since then he’d have been contradicting himself by saying it both was and wasn’t another Gospel at the same time — but that he was instead using the two words with different definitions intended, contrasting them with one another, in this case; and yes, I used the words “different” and “another” repeatedly in this sentence on purpose, to really drive my point home.) And even if we only look at the way the KJV renders the verse, ignoring the original Greek words, that translation is obviously still saying the same thing, just very poetically (since a literal interpretation on its own would be contradictory, as I just mentioned), so it has to be interpreted as meaning: “another” [so-called] gospel which is not [actually] another [legitimate Gospel] (with the first “another” there being in quotation marks in order to demonstrate that it still just means “different” [from any actual Gospels], when it comes to this particular translation).
Besides, anyone who has studied the Bible already believes that there were other glad tidings (again, meaning Gospels) preached in Scripture, such as the angel Gabriel’s proclamation of glad tidings regarding the impending birth of John the Baptist to Zacharias, with “glad tidings” being translated from a verb form of the same Greek word εὐαγγέλιον/“yoo-ang-ghel’-ee-on” that “Gospel” is translated from in the KJV (and that the English word “evangelism” is transliterated from), literally meaning to “preach this good news” in that passage. This means that there’s no way Paul could have been saying there’s only one message allowed to be labelled as words of good news/a Gospel/glad tidings/εὐαγγέλιον in existence or else we’d have to remove those verses discussing the other “glad tidings” from the Bible altogether, and Gabriel would have been accursed for telling Zacharias about his wife’s pregnancy, unless those various other words of good news/glad tidings are all a part of a larger, all-encompassing, progressively-revealed “Gospel” we have to believe in so we can be saved. But then John the Baptist’s birth would also have to be a part of what the body of Christ has to have faith in for their salvation (and someone who hadn’t heard of John the Baptist yet couldn’t get saved until they do if this were the case), so this obviously makes no sense, especially in light of what Paul said the Gospel he preached actually was, which means that right off the bat we already have multiple proclamations of good news/Gospels/glad tidings/εὐαγγέλιον in the Bible even before we get to any of the Gospels that one can believe when they get saved. All that being said, even if somebody somehow still hasn’t recognized that there’s more than one Gospel in the Bible after everything I’ve already covered, they should at least now recognize that the passage in Galatians we just looked at about a different gospel which is not another can’t be used to refute the idea, since its wording does at least allow for another/ἄλλος legitimate Gospel to exist, even if they somehow still don’t believe there definitely is another.
And yet, even though the idea of including all proclamations called good news/Gospels/glad tidings/εὐαγγέλιον in the Bible into one progressively-revealed Gospel makes no sense and contradicts other parts of Scripture (unless, again, people have to have faith in John the Baptist’s birth in order to be saved), anyone who does still believe there’s only one Gospel in the Bible after reading all that is pretty much forced to believe in a progressively-revealed Gospel (whether they’re consistent and include the good news about John the Baptist’s birth in what’s required to be trusted in for salvation or whether they choose to ignore consistency and leave it out). Of course, many Christians who believe there’s only one proclamation of good news/glad tidings/Gospel in Scripture actually do admit that they believe this one proclamation of good news as a whole was progressively revealed throughout Scripture, and that it now contains both the proclamation of good news made during Jesus’ earthly ministry (that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, along with the details of how one gets to enter it) as well as the proclamation of good news which Paul preached to the nations (that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day), and that these two different proclamations of good news are simply two parts of one all-encompassing proclamation of good news which has only been gradually revealed through progressive revelation (although not too all-encompassing, or else, again, we’d have to have faith in the birth of John the Baptist for our salvation, not to mention have to do the good works that were required in order to be saved — which included following the Mosaic law and being baptized in water — back when Jesus and His disciples preached the part of this supposedly progressively-revealed “Gospel” that they preached during Jesus’ earthly ministry, since a progressively-revealed “Gospel” would include everything connected with it in all the time periods it was supposedly being revealed throughout, because otherwise it wouldn’t be one complete set of news with one complete set of requirements that had been progressively revealed as time went on but would rather be two distinct sets of news with two entirely different sets of requirements). And while this idea isn’t actually stated anywhere in Scripture, which means they’re ultimately just making this idea up in order to support their assumption that there can’t be more than one Gospel in Scripture, at least they recognize that this would have to be the case if there really was only one Gospel recorded there, which it indeed has to be, considering the fact that what Paul referred to as the Gospel he preached among the nations included Christ’s death for our sins, burial, and resurrection, which is something that Jesus’ disciples couldn’t have included in the Gospel they preached during His earthly ministry, since they weren’t even aware He was going to die at the time, much less be resurrected, as I keep pointing out. Some of these Christians also like to say things such as, “Jesus is the Gospel,” however, and while this makes for a catchy statement that many people would automatically want to nod their heads in assent to because of how spiritual it sounds, since the Bible tells us what the two different proclamations of news which is good related to salvation made by Jesus’ disciples and later by Paul really are, and because it tells us that these proclamations of news which is good are about Jesus, not that He Himself is the proclamation of news which is good (with the first proclamation being about the identity of Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God, and the second one being about the work of Jesus through His death for our sins), unless you’re aware of a verse in Scripture which actually outright says, “Jesus is the Gospel” (which is something I’ve never seen in the Bible), we know that this is also nothing more than an assertion made in order to defend their assumption that there really is only one Gospel.
However, let’s pretend for a moment that the Bible actually did say there’s only one progressively-revealed Gospel in Scripture. If that were the case, considering the fact, again, that none of Jesus’ followers prior to Paul preached that Christ’s death was for our sins (or even that Christ was going to die in the first place, when they were proclaiming the news which is good that they preached prior to His death), or that one had to have faith in His death for our sins in order to be saved back then (which they couldn’t have since — just as a reminder for those who have somehow already forgotten since the last time I mentioned it — none of them even understood that He was going to die prior to Him doing so), this would mean the Gospel being preached before Paul’s ministry to the nations (or, at the very least, before Jesus actually died) would have been pretty useless unless those who heard the Gospel being preached back then could be saved without believing that Christ’s death was for our sins, which means anyone who believes this idea is ultimately telling us that we have to divide this one, supposedly progressively-revealed, proclamation of news which is good into two separate sets of news which is good, proclaimed at two different periods of time, about two different things needing to be believed (and perhaps performed) in order to be said one is saved: one preached prior to Paul (or prior to Christ’s death, at least; but since we have no scriptural record of Christ’s death being for our sins as something that was taught as something that had to be believed in order to be able to be said one is saved by anyone before Paul did, especially based on Peter’s sermons in Acts and what John wrote in John 20:31, we have no good basis for assuming it was) and one that Paul first taught, taking us full circle to what I’ve been getting at all along here. Which means the bottom line here is, if there are two different proclamations of news which is good that were preached by two different sets of people at two different periods of times (as would have to be the case even if they were both a part of one progressively-revealed Gospel, and which we’ve already determined is the case anyway, one being about Jesus’ identity and the other being about His work on the cross), since the phrase “news which is good” is literally the definition of the word “gospel,” then the existence of one progressively-revealed Gospel would still ultimately result in the existence of two Gospels after we divide that one progressively-revealed Gospel into its two respective proclamations of news which is good preached in their two respective time periods. So at the end of the day, even if we decided to say there is only one Gospel, progressively revealed over time, it still technically results in two Gospels anyway, once all the facts about how it has to be divided into two separate messages preached in two separate time frames are taken into consideration. And with all that being said, there’s almost no point in even going over the other objections to the idea of two Gospels, because we’ve now proven that it’s impossible for there to be anything less than two Gospels in Scripture once we’ve properly divided the hypothetical progressively-revealed one Gospel into its two respective parts, but for the sake of clarity, I’m still going to go over them regardless.
And so, in answer to the next most common objection, yes, it’s true, as many Christians also like to point out when trying to deny the existence of multiple Gospels in Scripture, that there is neither Jew nor Gentile for those people Paul wrote this epistle to. However, that’s only the case within the body of Christ (members of the body of Christ being those people that this epistle was specifically written to, along with all his others as well), because one’s nationality is irrelevant for those in Christ’s body, whereas, for the Israel of God, and even for Gentiles during the thousand-year kingdom, the nationality of Jews and other Israelites will remain very important. This means that, based on everything we’ve covered, it should also now be clear that Paul was reducing the scope of membership within the Israel of God in Romans 2:28–29 to include only certain Jews, not expanding it to include the Gentiles in the body of Christ as well, since “neither Jew nor Gentile” doesn’t mean “you’re all Israelites now,” considering there would then still be Jews, even if only Jews, in the body of Christ.
And yes, it’s also true — as some will point out — that while Peter didn’t teach Christ’s death as being for our sins in the book of Acts, and even taught that Jesus’ death was bad news for the Jewish people he was speaking to in the same book (rather than being the good news that it was for Paul’s Gentile audiences and that it is for us), Paul technically isn’t recorded as teaching Christ’s death as being for our sins, or as being good news, in the book of Acts either. However, the fact of the matter is that no sermon of Paul recorded in the book of Acts contains a full “Gospel message” explaining how one gets saved, which means his full Gospel message of how one is saved must have been preached “off screen,” so to speak (meaning that specific part of his messages wasn’t recorded in Acts, unless you think “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” in and of itself is enough of an explanation of how to get saved for someone who wouldn’t have known what that even meant, since he and Silas didn’t say what to believe about the Lord Jesus Christ in that verse; so while they did later explain all the details about what they meant by that statement, those specific details weren’t actually included in the book), whereas the sermons of Peter recorded in Acts are a lot more comprehensive (and while these sermons telling his audience members how they could be saved in the manner of salvation he was referring to in these sermons often did include the fact that Jesus Christ died, exactly zero of these sermons contained the information that His death was specifically for our sins — meaning why the sins of humanity have now been entirely dealt with and why nobody will be judged for their sins at their final judgement, as I’ll discuss in a later article in this series, although it’s also important to know that people will still be judged for other reasons, and that people’s sins aren’t automatically forgiven simply because of Christ’s death, as I’ll also discuss, but we’ll get to all that later — or that it was necessary to believe specifically that “this is why Christ died” in order to be saved in the way Peter meant his audience could experience salvation, meaning getting to enjoy life in the kingdom of heaven on earth in the future). So this just means that the writer of Acts didn’t include the contents of Paul’s Gospel in the book, likely because it’s primarily a Circumcision writing (meaning a book of the Bible not signed by Paul, which he did all of his epistles directed specifically to members of the body of Christ) to Israelites concerned with why the kingdom of heaven didn’t come fully into effect in the nation of Israel at that time, and not simply a general history lesson about the “early church” and nothing more, the way many assume it is.
Now, some like to also point out that Peter does mention the death and blood of Christ in one of his own epistles (in 1 Peter 1:18-19 and in 1 Peter 2:24) in a manner that was far more positive for his readers than the way he explained it in his sermons in Acts was (where it was discussed only as a negative as far as his listeners at the time were concerned). And while what Peter wrote in his first epistle technically can be considered news which happened to be good, at least as far as his written audience was concerned (which consisted only of Israelites, since it was addressed to “the strangers,” and the Greek word rendered as “stranger” in that verse — translated from παρεπίδημος/“par-ep-id’-ay-mos” — literally means “someone who comes from a foreign country into a new location to reside there by the side of the natives,” telling us that Peter was writing specifically to Israelites of the dispersion, or diaspora), it’s important to note that it wasn’t called “the good news” (or “the Gospel”) in Peter’s epistles the way the message which Paul proclaimed in 1 Corinthians 15 was, and also to note that we already know what the actual message called “the good news” which Peter taught was, at least the message called “the good news” which he preached during Jesus’ earthly ministry, and that the message which he would have called “the good news” at that time had nothing to do with Christ’s death for our sins, or even His subsequent burial and resurrection, at all, because at that time he didn’t even realize Jesus was going to die, as I trust you still remember. So yes, Peter did eventually realize the connection between Christ’s death and Isaiah 53, but not until after Jesus died and rose again, and there’s also no indication that he ever actually understood the full effect that Christ’s death for our (meaning all humanity’s) sins had the way Paul did either, with it seeming likely that he only knew the Circumcision connection to His death according to prophecy rather than the Uncircumcision connection according to the revelation of the mystery (or secret, depending on your Bible translation), which was kept secret from the time the world began until it was revealed to and through Paul. Because yes, Jesus did have to die in order for Israel’s New Covenant to come into effect, and also in order to be a propitiation for their sins (and yes, the sins of Gentiles who get saved in connection with their Gospel too), but His death accomplished so much more than that as well (and Peter and John and the other disciples certainly weren’t aware of any of what the cross accomplished until after Christ died and was resurrected, which means the Gospel they preached prior to that point couldn’t possibly have contained anything about it the way the Gospel which Paul preached did anyway). You see, the cross of Christ reached so much deeper into humanity’s need than merely bringing one small nation closer to their second birth (although that is an important result of His death and resurrection as well), getting right down to the root of humanity’s biggest problem itself. Remember, Israel’s Passover lambs were not tortured during the temple sacrifices under the Mosaic law. Rather, their throats were slit, with that being the extent of their suffering. However, the same can’t be said about Jesus Christ on the cross. His six hours of torment on the cross touched an aspect of humanity’s condition that the swift death of the Passover lambs could never reach. In fact, the depth of suffering during His time on the cross goes deeper than anything Peter or John ever understood, telling us that the whole human race is finished (the Passover lambs left Israel intact while the cross wiped out everything and everyone in its path, even if this might only apply in practice to believers in Paul’s Gospel at first, with it only applying to everyone else from a proleptic perspective until later — prolepsis being a common figure of speech used throughout the Bible which means “the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished,” calling what is not yet as though it already were, in other words, as God Himself often does). The other apostles looked back to the patriarchs, but when Paul taught about what happened on the cross, he went all the way back to Adam in his explanations. No other writers discussed Adam when it came to dealing with sin and salvation; they wrote about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David, among others, but only Paul traced our entire spiritual history back to the first man, and only in Paul’s Gospel is the entire race made new. The Circumcision writings promise a new birth for the nation of Israel (no, being “born again” doesn’t mean what most Christians have assumed it does, as I’ll prove in a later article in this series), but the new creation Paul taught about is to the new birth what a lake is to a teacup. You see, when Jesus rose from the grave, there was a whole new creation (referred to as a new “creature” in the KJV) which came into existence, one which comes into the lives of everyone who believes Paul’s Gospel today, and which will eventually come into the lives of every human who will ever have lived (as I’ll also prove in a later article in this series). This new creation eliminates fleshly distinctions such as Gentile and Israelite, but Peter wasn’t able to teach this because he has to remain an Israelite in the kingdom, seeing as Jesus promised him that he would sit on one of twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (which also means he was not, and is not, a member of the church called the body of Christ, but is instead a member of the church called the Israel of God, and the same goes for all of the rest of the twelve apostles for the same reason). So if you want to really understand the complete result of what happened on the cross, you look to Paul’s epistles. While the Circumcision writings are indeed useful for their intended purposes, they just don’t teach us everything that the cross accomplished the way Paul’s writings do.
Some Christians also like to claim that because the churches of Judea had heard, “That he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed,” that this means Paul had been preaching the same Gospel Peter and the rest of the disciples preached. And the truth is, they’re absolutely correct, because Paul did preach the Gospel of the Circumcision to Israelites at various times, as we already covered, including at the time when the churches of Judea heard this report. But having done so doesn’t mean he couldn’t have also preached a second Gospel to the Gentiles at other times as well, so this doesn’t actually help prove that there’s only one Gospel the way they might think it does either.
On a somewhat related note, certain Christians also argue that, because Paul wrote to believers in Galatia, and because Peter also wrote to believers in Galatia, these believers must have all been following the exact same Gospel and must have been members of the exact same local church (a similar argument is also sometimes made that because Paul wrote an epistle which is labelled as being to the Ephesians in our Bibles, and because John was also given a prophecy for a local church in Ephesus, that the teachings in both of these writings had to have been for and about people in the same local church — and even that they had to have been for people living in the same time period, which I say because I personally believe that the seven churches listed in Revelation are seven Jewish churches which won’t even come into existence until around the time of the Tribulation in the future, but that’s a much bigger topic than I have the time to get into here). Of course, this assertion demonstrates a serious deficiency of logic, since the idea that, just because two men wrote to people in the same general region, they had to have been writing to the exact same people in the exact same local church (and also had to have been writing about the exact same thing), is nothing more than an assumption one has to make in order to support their presupposition that there’s only one Gospel and one church spoken of in the Bible. In addition, they sometimes also argue that because Paul wrote specifically to the same audience Peter wrote to at least once, he must have taught the exact same things as Peter. And, in fact, Paul sometimes did teach the exact same things as Peter, when he taught members of the Israel of God doctrines related to their own Gospel (as we already covered). But again, that doesn’t mean he didn’t also teach different things to those under his Gospel. Besides, as we’ve also already discussed, we know from 1 Peter 1:1 exactly who Peter’s audience was anyway, and it didn’t include Gentiles since it was specifically addressed to “the strangers,” telling us that Peter was writing to Israelites living among Gentiles in Galatia and other locations, and not to the Gentile members of the body of Christ that Paul was writing to in his epistle to the Galatians at all. And just as Peter was only writing to Israelites among the diaspora in his epistles, I should also point out that James was also only writing to members of “the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad,” just as John was writing specifically to Jewish “brethren” rather than to Gentiles, and Jude, who technically didn’t specify an audience, but seemed to also be writing to people who were intimately familiar with Israel’s history, and considering the intended audience of rest of this batch of epistles, it’s very unlikely that Gentiles were included among his book’s audience either, any more than they were included in the audience of the book of Hebrews, with the name of that book clearly pointing out its intended audience — although I think it’s safe to say that all the Circumcision writings would likely still apply to all believing members of the Israel of God and not just to those among the diaspora. Simply put, while all Scripture is useful for all of us in various ways, any book of the Bible not signed by Paul is primarily to and about the Israel of God, with only Paul’s 13 epistles being specifically to and about members of the body of Christ.
Meanwhile, other people have also argued that Paul wasn’t teaching unbelievers how to get saved in his epistles, since he was writing to people who were already believers, so what he referred to in 1 Corinthians 15 as the Gospel he preached unto them wasn’t meant to teach his readers in Corinth how to get saved. And while it’s true that his written audience was primarily made up of believers, this is irrelevant, and I’m not sure why anyone would even present that as an argument against the existence of two Gospels, because Paul still outright said in that passage that it was the Gospel he preached unto them, and also that it’s the Gospel by which they are saved, so we know exactly what he preached unto them as how they’re saved, which means their argument doesn’t actually help them prove that there’s only one Gospel anyway.
That said, it is also true that chapter 15 of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians wasn’t specifically written to teach about Paul’s Gospel (although, whether he originally intended to or not, he ended up expanding on what his Gospel meant later in the chapter regardless, as will also be discussed in more detail in a later article in this series), but was instead originally written to discuss bodily resurrection (since some of the members of the church in Corinth had stopped believing in their own literal future resurrection in physical bodies), with the specific contents of Paul’s Gospel only being included in two verses in the chapter in order to make his point that resurrection has to be literal because otherwise it would mean that Christ Himself hadn’t even risen from the dead and that they would have then believed the Gospel he preached to them when he first met them in vain if Christ hadn’t risen from the dead (since a third of the Gospel he preached to them was specifically about Christ’s resurrection). And this fact about the point of this chapter (or at least the point of the first part of the chapter) is actually important to keep in mind for when a different group of Christians attempts to claim that Peter and others were preaching the same Gospel as Paul based on verse 11, where Paul wrote the words, “Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.” If simply sharing his Gospel with his readers was why he wrote the chapter, as these particular Christians assume, their claim that “so we preach, and so ye believed” in that verse means they were preaching the same Gospel would be valid. But if you consider the context of the rest of the verses surrounding verse 11, it becomes clear that Paul was simply telling his readers (readers who already knew his Gospel, per verse 1, which means he didn’t need to share it with them again here in order to get them saved so much as to make a point) that both he and Peter saw and preached about the risen Christ, which proves that Jesus was indeed resurrected from among the dead in the same physical body, just as the Gospel he’d already told them back when he met them in person says as well, which means his readers could be reassured that they’d be raised from the dead in the future too.
So no, he wasn’t saying that both he and Peter preached the same Gospel. If that’s all his point was, he wouldn’t have needed to include all of what he did in verses 5 through 17 at all, but would have, at most, replaced verse 5 with verse 11 (and included Peter’s name in the verse) and left it there without mentioning the details about Jesus being seen by all those people after His resurrection. Besides, if sharing his Gospel was his only (or even just his main) point there, and ”so we preach, and so ye believed” actually was in reference to his Gospel, it would also mean that everything written in verses 5 through 10 was a part of his Gospel as well, and that the Good News we have to believe in order to be saved would also include the facts that Jesus was seen of Cephas and James and 500 others after His resurrection, as well as that Paul is the least of the apostles, but that he also laboured more abundantly than the rest of them, among various other details he included in those six verses, but I don’t think anyone would believe that’s all a part of the Gospel we have to believe in order to join the body of Christ rather than being a part of the explanation of why he even mentioned his Gospel in this chapter in the first place, so we can lay this misunderstanding of verse 11 to rest once and for all.
Still, it’s easy to see how someone could misunderstand verse 11, since Paul didn’t explain why he wrote the first eleven verses (or why he even mentioned his Gospel there at all) until he got to verses 12 through 17. And so, if a modern reader goes through the chapter without being aware of the controversy about resurrection among the Corinthian church back then, they could be forgiven for assuming that Paul was writing this chapter in order to share his Gospel (at least if they don’t pay close attention to the wording of verses 5 through 11). But Paul’s audience at the time definitely would have understood what he was getting at by the time they heard verses 4 or 5 being read, realizing why Paul was explaining that Jesus really did rise from the dead, and when whoever read the letter to them for the first time got to verses 12 and onwards, they almost certainly would have hung their heads in shame and concluded that, “Yes, if we believed Paul’s Gospel when he first told us in person that Christ rose again the third day after His death for our sins and burial, then physical resurrection is literally true.” Still, we shouldn’t look down on them for this, because without their mistake, Paul wouldn’t have written the most important chapter in the Bible, and we wouldn’t know what his Gospel actually even was.
It’s also sometimes pointed out that Paul had Timotheus (Timothy) circumcised, and that he even performed other actions under the Mosaic law at times as well, in order to try to argue that this means there must be only one Gospel (and sometimes also to try to prove that those of us in the body of Christ are under the law), not realizing that these facts actually help prove the exact opposite of what they assume. The reason Paul had Timothy circumcised was simply because he wanted to bring him along on a particular journey to help preach, and he knew that the Jews in the region would cause trouble for them if someone who was Jewish but hadn’t been circumcised was preaching to them. This doesn’t mean that Paul was supporting following the Mosaic law as something members of the body of Christ should do, however (as is also demonstrated by the fact that he didn’t have Titus circumcised, which he definitely would have done if following the Mosaic law was necessary for the body of Christ). So how could he have done these things, then? Well, simply because he wasn’t doing them for the sake of obeying the Mosaic law in the first place (nor was he doing them for the sake of his or Timothy’s salvation), but rather was doing them because these actions were beneficial for the spreading the Gospel of the Circumcision to other Israelites. As we’ve already discussed, Paul often preached the Circumcision Gospel to Israelites in the hopes that they as a whole would finally accept Jesus as their Messiah, and law keeping was still important for those who followed that particular Gospel (if it wasn’t, James wouldn’t have been bragging to Paul about how zealous for the law the Jewish believers in Jerusalem were, and Paul would have also chided him for not correcting them). But when he was teaching about his own Gospel instead, Paul was very careful to point out that law keeping for its own sake (or for trying to perfect oneself) was not something they should be trying to do, and that following the law simply for the sake of following the law (or even for the sake of trying to please God) leads to falling from grace (that’s not to say it’s wrong to do or avoid certain actions listed in the law for reasons other than keeping the law itself, including being circumcised for medical reasons, or avoiding murdering people because it’s against the secular law, not to mention avoiding specific actions because they’re unloving; it’s just doing so for the sake of following the Mosaic law that causes us to fall from grace — which, I should probably also point out, doesn’t mean losing one’s salvation, but just means missing out on enjoying the freedom Christ gave us, and possibly also losing out on certain rewards at the Judgement Seat of Christ, since Romans 8:30 tells us that anyone God calls for membership in the body of Christ will be justified and glorified, with absolutely zero qualifications beyond being predestined and called by God, making it very clear that it’s impossible for members of the body of Christ to lose their salvation).
I’ve also heard it claimed that, because Peter defended Paul’s specific form of ministry to the nations by saying, “But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they,”referring to Cornelius and those with him getting saved after hearing Peter preach, that every single Jew and Gentile must then all be saved in the exact same manner, and all in connection with the exact same Gospel. This is reading far more into the statement than Peter was really getting at, however. It’s important to remember that Acts is a Circumcision writing, and that Paul’s Gospel was never actually explained in the book (because its original audience wasn’t meant to understand his Gospel, since they had their own Gospel to follow). And since Peter himself didn’t really comprehend the difference between the two Gospels either (in fact, it’s quite possible he wasn’t even aware that there were two Gospels at the time he made this statement), he really couldn’t have meant anything more than: “Jews and Gentiles can both be saved by Jesus Christ if they have faith.” And this is indeed true when it comes to both Gospels, even if the faith we have in connection with Jesus is different under each Gospel, with one being about His identity, and the other being about what He accomplished.
Of course, if someone reads Peter’s statement without being aware of all the details we’ve covered in this article, and, as such, reads Acts 15 while still believing that there is only one Gospel, it’s easy to see how they’d read that assumption into Peter’s statement and think it proves their belief to be true. But anyone who is familiar with all the facts we’ve looked at so far (as well as the facts we’ve yet to look at) can see why this statement doesn’t actually prove that there’s only one Gospel or way to be saved at all, and can understand that Peter was just stating the facts about being saved by Jesus that he was aware of (keeping in mind that he never became fully aware of all the facts, because if he did, he would have ended up in the body of Christ and would eventually end up in heaven, and hence will have missed out on the specific rewards in the kingdom of heaven that he was instead looking forward to).
And finally, no, the body of Christ has not been “grafted into Israel,” nor are we now “fellowcitizens of Israel,” as many misunderstand Romans 11:1-25 and Ephesians 2:11-22 to be saying, even though, yes, Abraham is indeed said to be the “father” of those who follow the law as well as the “father” of those who simply have faith. Because — as many Christians who make the claim that believing Gentiles within the body of Christ become “spiritual Israelites,” and hence members of the Israel of God, seem to forget — Abraham had many physical descendants who weren’t Israelites, which means that being able to refer to Abraham as one’s “father,” be it physically as in the case of his biological descendants, or even just metaphorically as in the case of the members of the body of Christ, just doesn’t mean someone is also an Israelite. To be an Israelite, someone also has to be a biological descendant of Isaac and Jacob as well (presuming they don’t marry or proselytize into the actual nation of Israel instead, of course).
In fact, we can see quite clearly that the Israel of God is a distinct group from the Gentiles in the body of Christ because Israelites are only said to be the natural olive branches in this chapter of Romans, not the whole tree. Remember, not all of the natural olive branches are pruned out of the tree in that figurative explanation of past, present, and future events pertaining to Israel and the other nations (at least it’s still future as of the time this article was written). Instead, some of the natural olive branches remained attached to the tree (with it being these particular branches that refer to Israelites who believed the Gospel of the Circumcision, and not the trunk itself representing them) while the wild olive branch was grafted into the tree next to the remaining branches rather than replacing them. And as Paul made clear in this passage, Israel is not cast away permanently, but is only “cast away,” so to speak, temporarily, until the full complement of the nations may be entering the body of Christ (I say again, entering the body of Christ, and not entering the tree, since the whole wild olive branch is already grafted into the tree), at which point the nation of Israel will become the focus of God’s purposes once again, at the time when the pruned-out branches are grafted back into the tree. If this seems confusing, the phrase “cast away” in verse 1 was translated from a different Greek word in the KJV — ἀπωθέω/“ap-o-theh’-om-ahee” — than the phrase “casting away” in verse 15 was — which was instead translated from ἀποβολή/“ap-ob-ol-ay’” — and is referring to a more forceful and permanent thrusting away in that verse than the temporary placing aside that the hyperbolic “casting away” of verse 15 in the KJV is referring to, for anyone who might be wondering how Israel can be not cast away while also being “cast away” at the same time. If it isn’t obvious by now, this case of being both “cast away” and not cast away at the same time is yet another example of how the translators of the KJV seemed to enjoy using the same English word or phrase to refer to contrasting concepts for some reason, as we already saw by how they used the English word “another” both figuratively and literally to represent two different Greek words in their translation of Galatians 1:6-7, and the same goes for how they used the English word “fall” to refer to both “falling” and also not falling at the same time in this very chapter of Romans as well. In verse 11, Paul asked, “Have they stumbled that they should fall?”, then answered his own question by saying, “God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy.” So we can see that they didn’t literally fall far away and permanently, but they did “fall,” hyperbolically speaking, with the first “fall” being translated from a variation of the verb πίπτω/“pip’-to” in the Greek, referring to falling from a height, being thrust down violently or purposefully, or even to perishing, and the second “fall” being translated from a variation of the noun παράπτωμα/“par-ap’-to-mah” in the Greek, literally referring to simply stumbling and landing gently (or at least less violently than the first word implies) beside or near something else (this word is also translated as “trespasses” in other verses in the KJV, I should add). While this contrasting usage of the same English word in the same passage in the KJV can be confusing to those who don’t understand what’s going on, it seems that the translators were having fun with words in these examples, and that they expected the readers to be able to figure out when the words are being used literally and when they’re being used figuratively in the same passages, based on an understanding that the Bible can’t contradict itself. And so, we know from what Paul wrote in this chapter that, while the nation of Israel as a whole did indeed stumble (“fall”), and has even been “cast away,” so to speak (really just meaning temporarily placed on the back burner), so that Gentiles can have an opportunity to enjoy salvation without having to go through Israel for the time being (when he wrote, “Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles…”, and, “For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world…”), he also told his readers that the nation of Israel will be restored in the future (when he also wrote, “…how much more their fulness?”, and, “…what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?”).
It also helps to understand that this passage has nothing to do with the salvation of individuals, nor does being pruned from the tree have anything to do with the idea of losing one’s salvation, which is made clear by the fact that the pruned-off natural branches were never saved to begin with and yet had to have been a part of the tree at one time in order to be pruned from it. This is also made clear by the fact that it’s a singular wild branch, as opposed to the plural natural branches. Of course, some who read the KJV might be confused by the fact that it says “a wild olive tree” in verse 17, but Paul explained in the same verse that this whole “wild olive tree” was “graffed in among them,” which means he was either referring to a single wild olive branch being grafted into the natural olive tree among the remaining natural olive branches, or to an entire (presumably much smaller) wild olive tree being grafted into the natural olive tree, trunk and all. Either way, that only one whole object — as opposed to multiple, separate wild-olive branches — was grafted into the natural tree is clarified A) by the fact that the Greek ἀγριέλαιος/“ag-ree-el’-ah-yos,” which “a wild olive tree” was translated from in the KJV, is a Singular noun, as well as B) by the fact the KJV also uses the Second Person Singular “thou” in both this verse and verse 24, rather than the more catch-all “you” that most English Bible translations used to render the Greek word σύ/“soo” in those verses. This all tells us that the single wild branch (or “wild olive tree”) grafted into the natural tree refers collectively to every single Gentile who will have lived during the entire time that the dispensation (meaning the administration, or economy) of the grace of God is in effect — since Gentiles, both saved and unsaved, are being grouped together as a singular whole in these verses — rather than simply referring to only those Gentiles who join the body of Christ (and also confirms that the “grafting into the tree” only happened one time rather than happens multiple times — as each Gentile gets saved — the way most Christians assume Paul meant). And since the whole wild branch (or “wild olive tree”) will eventually be pruned from the natural tree, as it will have to be in order for the temporarily-removed natural branches to be grafted back “into their own olive tree,” every Gentile member of the body of Christ would lose their salvation if being grafted into and pruned from the tree was connected with being saved.
And so, no, being grafted into the tree doesn’t mean that a Gentile has been grafted into Israel, or that they have become a “spiritual Israelite,” which is a completely unscriptural term anyway. Instead, I would suggest that the “wild olive tree” being temporarily grafted into the natural tree simply refers to the fact that Gentiles currently have access to God (via justification by faith) without needing Israelites to help them do so the way Gentiles will need them for in order to get to know God in the future, after the “wild olive tree” is removed from the natural tree. This means that Gentiles don’t replace or become a part of the church called the Israel of God at all, but rather are currently able to join the church called the body of Christ instead, at least until the full complement of the nations has entered the body of Christ (meaning until the last person called for membership in the body of Christ has been saved), at which point the dispensation of the grace of God will come to an end, the “wild olive tree” will be removed from the tree, and the only way for Gentiles to approach God again (at least for 1,000 years) will be to go through citizens of the nation of Israel. (In addition to what I wrote here, I’d also suggest reading Aaron Welch’s article on this topic, to learn even more details about this passage.)
And this also all tells us that the same goes for the idea some Christians have that Paul said Gentiles join the “commonwealth of Israel,” or become “fellowcitizens” of the nation of Israel, when they join the body of Christ. Based on everything we’ve just covered, this obviously can’t be what he meant in Ephesians 2. Besides, the word “commonwealth” (translated from πολιτεία/“pol-ee-ti’-ah” in the original Greek) has to do with actual citizenship in an actual nation, and we don’t legally become citizens of the country called Israel when we join the body of Christ (if you’re a Gentile who disagrees, try moving to Israel and telling the government there that you’re now a legal citizen of their nation because you’ve come to believe in Jesus, and let us know how well that goes). Besides, our citizenship is in the heavens, not down here on earth where Israel is located, as we’ve already established, and I don’t see the term “spiritual Israel” anywhere in the chapter (or in the Bible, for that matter), so anyone who tries to claim we’re “spiritual Israelites” is just reading their assumptions into the chapter. Instead, we’ve become “fellowcitizens” of the kingdom of God, and of the household of God (which members of the Israel of God are certainly also members of), and not of the nation of Israel itself, although the nation of Israel will become a part of the kingdom of God after Jesus returns, at which point the land will be known as the kingdom of heaven, but it certainly isn’t a part of the kingdom yet, which means that we Gentiles can’t be said to become citizens of the nation of Israel, or really even a part of Israel in any way, when we believe Paul’s Gospel, but simply become citizens of the kingdom of God.
As for those who might be wondering why I make a distinction between “the kingdom of God” and “the kingdom of heaven,” yes, I’m well aware of the fact that the term “the kingdom of heaven” seems, at least at first glance, to be used simply as a synonym for “the kingdom of God” at times in the book of Matthew (which is the only book in the Bible to use the phrase “the kingdom of heaven”), and also that the word “heaven” was a common metonym for “God” in general back then as well. However, since we now know that the book of Matthew was basically only talking about the part of the kingdom of God which will exist in Israel in the future, the fact that Paul also used the term “the kingdom of God” tells us that the kingdom as a whole is much larger than just Israel, and that it must encompass the parts of the universe that aren’t just here on earth. And since Jesus almost certainly wasn’t actually saying the words “the kingdom of heaven” when He spoke the words recorded in the book of Matthew (based on the fact that the books of Mark and Luke both used the phrase “the kingdom of God” in the parallel passages to the ones where Matthew recorded Jesus’ statements with “the kingdom of heaven” instead), it seems that God inspired Matthew to do so in order to give us a label that refers strictly to the part of the kingdom of God that would apply only to Israel. Basically, none of the references to entering the kingdom of God in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John were about the part of the kingdom of God that the body of Christ will be in after we’re caught up together in the air to be with Christ when He comes for His body (which will be heaven), but are referring to the kingdom in Israel in the future, as we’ve now learned, and so “the kingdom of heaven” can’t refer to the part of the kingdom of God which is in heaven either, since it’s specifically only used in reference to the part of the kingdom which is in Israel. So while “the kingdom of God” can technically refer to both, since both Jesus and Paul used it, anytime we see the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” used, we know it’s only referring to Israel after Jesus’ Second Coming. To put it simply, it basically just means “the kingdom [sent] from heaven.” So while it’s perfectly fine to refer to Israel during the thousand years as “the kingdom of God,” since those are the words Jesus presumably actually spoke, to make things less confusing, it’s also easier to just refer to it as “the kingdom of heaven” when discussing it ourselves. And for those who aren’t convinced, remember that the book of Matthew used both terms, so I have to assume that God inspired the use of the unique term in specific places in Matthew for a reason (I don’t believe that anything is in Scripture by accident, but rather I believe that everything written there is included a very good reason, which means that whatever reason that the writer of the book of Matthew might have had to use the term from a relative perspective, God made Him do so for His own reason from an absolute perspective, which I believe was to give us a term to use for the specific part of the kingdom of God which will be in Israel in the future).
And with all that being said, it should now be obvious why the title “the Israel of God” in Galatians 6:16 can’t possibly be referring to the body of Christ. Since there’s literally zero scriptural basis for the idea that those of us in the body of Christ are some sort of “spiritual Israel,” I trust you can now see that this can only be a reference to the circumcision church. And while the Greek word translated as “and” — καί/“kahee” — in the “and upon the Israel of God” part of the verse technically can be used to distinguish or identify a group when it’s used in Koine Greek, this particular use of καί is rare, and never actually occurs in this exact construction anywhere in the Greek Scriptures, at least based on what I could find while digging into this topic. And as far as I’ve been able to find, aside from when it refers to Jacob, the word “Israel” is never used to refer to anyone other than ethnic Israelites in Scripture anyway. And while there’s a lot more that can be said about this topic to prove this, based on everything we’ve learned in this article about the kingdom of heaven and the different types of salvation, the words “and upon” simply have to be telling us that there are two separate groups of people being spoken of by Paul in this verse (the first group being “as many as walk according to this rule,” meaning members of the body of Christ, and the second group being those known as “the Israel of God”), especially in light of everything else he’d just finished teaching in this epistle (since the whole context of this epistle contradicts any notion at all that Gentiles are now a part of Israel, because if we are, we’d also be required to keep the Mosaic law the way they’re required to, when the entire reason Paul wrote that epistle in the first place was to make sure we don’t try to follow the Mosaic law).
| The Israel of God/The Gospel of the Circumcision | The body of Christ/The Gospel of the Uncircumcision |
|---|---|
| Will keep the law perfectly when the New Covenant finally comes fully into effect and replaces the Old Covenant completely (Jeremiah 31:31–34, Ezekiel 36:26–27, Micah 4:2, Hebrews 8:8–12). | Not only are we not under the law at all, and in fact should not try to keep any of it (Romans 6:14, Galatians 5:3), Gentiles were never under the Old Covenant — which was about Israelites keeping the Mosaic law — to begin with, so we don’t have an Old Covenant to be replaced with by a New Covenant the way Israel does anyway (Exodus 12:43–49, Exodus 19:3–6, Leviticus 26:46, Deuteronomy 4:8, Deuteronomy 28, Nehemiah 9:13–14, Psalm 147:19–20, Malachi 4:4 Romans 2:14–15, Romans 9:3–5, Ephesians 2:12). |
| Jewish believers within this church were still zealous of the law, even after the Council of Jerusalem, and they were upset that Paul was teaching Jewish members of the body of Christ to avoid practicing the Mosaic law, including circumcising (Acts 21:17–26). | Not only did Paul teach against circumcising — or any law-keeping — for Gentiles in the body of Christ, he taught against it for anyone in the body of Christ, including Jewish members, and if Paul was teaching the same thing that Peter and James and the rest of the Jewish church were, the members of their church in Jerusalem wouldn’t have been so upset at Paul for teaching against circumcising and law-keeping for Jewish members of his church when he visited them later (Acts 15:1–21, Galatians 2:1–3, Acts 21:17–26). |
| Spoken of by the prophets since the world began (Acts 3:21–25). | A secret until Paul (Romans 16:25, Ephesians 3:8–10). |
| Only 12 apostles for this church — a number with much spiritual significance to Israelites — and they were all called inside of Israel (Matthew 4:18–22, Matthew 10:2–4). Even though Judas was replaced by Matthias after being disqualified (Acts 1:12–26), no others out of the 12 were ever replaced because there will only be 12 thrones for them to sit on in the kingdom of heaven, and only 12 foundations of the wall of the New Jerusalem to be named after them on the New Earth (Matthew 19:28, Revelation 21:14). | The first apostle of our church — who is not one of the 12 apostles of the Israel of God — was called outside of Israel (Acts 9:3). This is spiritually significant because Paul was the apostle of the Gentiles (Romans 11:13). |
| Are supposed to eventually teach all the nations to obey everything Jesus commanded, and to baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:16–20), although — outside of Peter’s visit to Cornelius — Scripture tells us this hasn’t happened yet (Acts 11:19, Galatians 2:8–9). | The fact that Paul is called the apostle of the Gentiles, and that a whole new set of apostles were in fact sent to the Gentiles, is significant because it means the 12 apostles of the Israel of God were not the apostles of (or to) the Gentiles (Romans 11:13, Acts 14:14, 1 Corinthians 4:6–9, Ephesians 4:11), nor were the rest of the members of that church preaching to the Gentiles yet either, since the pillars of their church had agreed to leave the preaching to the Gentiles to Paul and to those with him, for the time being, which means Israel hasn’t even really begun her so-called “Great Commission,” as it’s often referred to, yet (Galatians 2:8–9, Acts 13:2). |
| Proclaimed among Israelites (James 1:1, 1 Peter 1:1). | Proclaimed among the Gentiles (Ephesians 3:8). |
| Called the little flock, and as future citizens of the New Jerusalem, which is referred to as the bride of the lamb itself after it descends to the New Earth, the saints of this church who will inhabit this city can figuratively (albeit only proleptically) also be referred to as the bride of the lamb (Luke 12:32, John 3:29, Revelation 21:9), and are also referred to as the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16). | The saints of this church are referred to as the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27, Ephesians 5:30). |
| Racial distinctions important (Matthew 15:26, Matthew 19:28, Revelation 21:12, Zechariah 8:22-23). | Racial distinctions irrelevant (1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:28). |
| Believers known from the foundation of the world (Revelation 17:8). | Believers known before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4). |
| Believers called first, then chosen (Matthew 22:14). | Believers chosen first, then called (Romans 8:30). |
| Water baptism required (Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38). | Water baptism not required (1 Corinthians 1:17, 1 Corinthians 12:13). |
| Many types of baptism/immersion: John’s baptism in water unto repentance, the Lord’s baptism in water — obviously not a baptism unto repentance — water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ/the name of the Lord, baptism in the Holy Spirit, and in fire, baptism into Moses, and baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:11, 13–17, Acts 1:4–5, Acts 2:38, Acts 10:48, 1 Corinthians 10:2, Matthew 28:19). | Only one baptism/immersion: not in the Holy Spirit (or in water either), but rather by the Holy Spirit, into the body of Christ, including into what He experienced in His body, such as His death (Ephesians 4:5, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Romans 6:3–4). |
| Must have circumcision of the heart (Deuteronomy 10:16, Acts 7:51, Romans 2:29). | Circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ (Colossians 2:11). |
| Must have works, if possible between conversion and death, since faith without works is dead for them (James 2:20). | Even if we don’t have works, but only have faith, we are still justified, which means faith without works is not dead for us (Romans 4:5). |
| Must keep His commandments, and live as Jesus did (1 John 2:3–6). | God’s grace motivates us to live well, not the threat of losing our salvation if we don’t, as is the case for Israel (2 Corinthians 5:14–15). |
| Must forgive others or God will not forgive them (Matthew 6:15). | Should forgive one another as God has already forgiven us (Ephesians 4:32) — but even without works, we’re still justified, so we aren’t required to forgive others in order to be saved, even if it’s still good for us to do so (Romans 4:5). |
| Must not eat things sacrificed to idols (Revelation 2:14, 20). | Are permitted to eat things sacrificed to idols as long as conscience permits it (Romans 14:14, 1 Corinthians 8:4). |
| Must be an overcomer to avoid second death (Revelation 2:11). | Saved from second death by grace alone (Ephesians 2:8–9). |
| Hoping for grace, which will be brought to them when Jesus returns to the earth (1 Peter 1:13). | Already standing in grace (Romans 5:2). |
| Must be waking and watching, not sleeping (Matthew 25:1–13, Luke 12:37, Hebrews 9:28). | Whether waking or sleeping (1 Thessalonians 5:10). |
| Must be wise, not foolish, or will not be chosen (Matthew 25:1–13). | Few who are wise are chosen, and most who are chosen are foolish (1 Corinthians 1:26–29). |
| Can be put to shame at His presence if not careful (1 John 2:28). | Will all be changed for the better — meaning given glorified, immortal bodies — at His presence, which is the blessed hope all of us in this church should be looking forward to (1 Thessalonians 4:15–17, 1 Corinthians 15:52, Titus 2:13). |
| Will go through day of wrath (Revelation 6:1–17). | Not appointed to wrath (1 Thessalonians 1:10, 1 Thessalonians 5:9). |
| Will meet Christ on earth (Acts 1:11–12, Zechariah 14:4). | Will meet Christ in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). |
| The resurrection of the just, also known as Israel’s “first resurrection” (Luke 14:14, Revelation 20:1–6), occurs 75 days after Jesus steps foot on the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4–7, Acts 1:9–12, and compare the numbers in Daniel 12:11–13 to the numbers in Revelation 13:5 to understand the 75 day difference between these two events). | The dead in the body of Christ are first resurrected, then those who are still living will rise with them to meet Christ in the air together when He comes for our church, before He ever even gets close to the Mount of Olives (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). |
| Will reign on the earth as a kingdom of priests over the nations (Exodus 19:6, Isaiah 61:6, 1 Peter 2:5–9, Revelation 2:26–27, Revelation 5:10, Revelation 20:6). | Will reign in the heavens (Ephesians 2:6–7, 2 Timothy 2:12). |
| Will fill earth with knowledge of God’s glory by being a light to the Gentiles and salvation to the ends of the earth (Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 49:6). | Will display God’s wisdom among the principalities and powers in the heavens (Ephesians 3:10–11). |
| The meek shall inherit the earth, and will live in the land God gave the patriarchs, which is the land of Israel (Matthew 5:5, Ezekiel 36:28). | Our citizenship is in the heavens (Philippians 3:20). |
| There will still be mortal “flesh and blood” humans living in the part of the kingdom of God that is on the earth, and they will even continue to reproduce, both in the thousand-year kingdom of heaven in Israel, as well as on the New Earth for a time (Zechariah 8:3–4, Isaiah 65:17–25). | Mortal “flesh and blood” is not able to inherit the part of the kingdom of God that is in the heavens (1 Corinthians 15:50–54). |
| The 12 apostles will judge the 12 tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28). | Paul, not one of the 12 apostles of the church known as the Israel of God, but rather the first apostle of the church known as the body of Christ, will, along with the rest of the body, judge the whole world, as well as judge angels (1 Corinthians 6:2–3). |
| The cross was only bad news to those hearing the Gospel of the Circumcision — at least in the sermons recorded in Acts — and a shameful thing which needed to be repented of in order to be saved (Acts 2:22–38, Acts 3:13–15, Acts 7:52). | The cross is only good news for those hearing Paul’s Gospel, and is even something to glory in because it’s how we are saved (1 Corinthians 1:18, 1 Corinthians 15:1–4, Galatians 6:14). |
| As far as their Gospel is concerned, Jesus gave His life as a ransom only for “many” — meaning only for those who obey this Gospel (Matthew 20:28). | As far as our Gospel is concerned, Jesus gave His life as a ransom for all — meaning all humanity (1 Timothy 2:6). |
| Exhorted to remain in Him, and seem to be able to fall away and not be able to be renewed to repentance, so appear to be able to lose their sort of salvation (1 John 2:28, Hebrews 6:4–6, Hebrews 10:26–27), although since this is not the same sort of salvation that Paul primarily taught about, anyone who doesn’t experience this sort of salvation will still experience the general salvation of Paul’s Gospel (even if not the special salvation connected with his Gospel). | If we died with Christ — and if we did, we can’t un-die — we will live with Him, since He cannot disown His own body. Yes, we can “fall from grace,” so to speak — which basically just means placing oneself under the bondage of religion and rules, such as the law, and, because of doing so, missing out on enjoying the freedom Christ gave us — and it might be that we can also lose out on reigning with Him by denying Him in order to avoid suffering, but either way, we still remain His body, and He won’t amputate and disown His own body parts, and body parts can’t amputate themselves either (Galatians 5:1–4, 2 Timothy 2:11–13). Besides, Paul said that if we’re called, we will be justified and glorified, and didn’t include any qualifications in that verse, so any passages in Paul’s epistles which seem to teach otherwise must be talking about something else (Romans 8:30). |
| Abraham being justified by works given as an example (James 2:21–23). | Abraham being justified by faith rather than by works given as an example (Romans 4:2–3). |
| Gentiles will be blessed by Israel’s rise in the future (Isaiah 49:6, Zechariah 8:22-23, Acts 3:25). | Gentiles are currently blessed by Israel’s “fall” (Romans 11:11). |
Now these aren’t just minor variations in terminology; these are obviously completely different messages for two completely different groups of people. Unfortunately, if one isn’t being honest with Scripture, and insists on trying to make these major differences between Paul’s teachings and the teachings in the Circumcision writings say the same thing, because their preconceived doctrines force them to have to believe they mean the same thing, they’re just not ready to interpret the rest of Scripture, and should not be teaching anyone from the Bible. In fact, not only is this concept so extremely important for believers to grasp, it’s also so central to understanding what the Bible is saying and who a particular passage is relevant to that one can’t properly interpret much of Scripture at all without beginning from this perspective. Even something like evangelism will be a confusing task for those who don’t understand that “the Great Commission” (a label that isn’t actually even found in the Bible) wasn’t meant for the body of Christ at all. Instead, rather than teaching all nations to be observing all things that Jesus commanded His disciples, and baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (which, as I already mentioned, is a whole different baptism from the one that Peter did with water, since the baptism he’s recorded as having performed in Scripture was specifically “in the name of Jesus Christ,” and would also be a command Paul would have been disobeying when he stopped baptizing people in water if it was meant for everyone to do) as the Israel of God will be called to do in the future (when the dispensation of the grace of God is complete and Israel has been saved and finally begins their ministry to be a light to the Gentiles and salvation unto the ends of the earth as they were long ago prophesied to one day be, and when Gentiles will in fact only come to know God by following the Jews — which is how they’ll finally get to be that kingdom of priests they were prophesied to one day become), we have a greater “commission” and “one baptism” (into the body of Christ), and are called to be stewards of the mysteries that were kept secret since the world began just as Paul was, and can in fact currently help other Gentiles come to God even if we’re not Jews, which is why it’s imperative to truly understand this important topic.
And that brings up another point we should consider, which is the question of why Paul was even called for apostleship in the first place. There were already 12 apostles who were given the so-called “Great Commission” to go to the nations and teach them to observe everything Jesus had commanded and to baptize them in the manner He’d prescribed (okay, technically only 11 apostles were given that command at that specific time, but it would have applied to Matthias too, after he was appointed the 12th apostle in order to replace Judas — and no, there’s no biblical basis for the idea that Paul was supposed to be the 12th apostle, as some claim, since he didn’t fit the qualifications for Judas’ replacement that Peter listed at the time), and as we learned from that list of differences in the above chart, there can only ever be 12 apostles in connection with the Israel of God, because there will only be 12 thrones for the apostles to sit on in the kingdom of heaven in Israel. This means that Paul didn’t replace anyone from the 12 when he was made the apostle of the Gentiles, but if the existing 12 apostles had already been commissioned to go to the nations, why would God then appoint a 13th apostle (Paul) to go to the nations instead, rather than having the 12 do the job that Jesus assigned to them? The only way this makes sense is if the time of the 12 to go to the nations hadn’t begun yet, and if Paul had a whole other ministry and message for the Gentiles of the nations than the ministry and message that the 12 will bring to the nations when the kingdom of heaven begins, when they’ve been resurrected from the dead after the Tribulation concludes.
Even after learning all of that, however, some Christians will still want to say things along the lines of, “I follow Jesus, not Paul” (or worse, some like to say, “I worship Jesus, not Paul,” even though literally nobody worships Paul), with some of them quoting Paul himself when he wrote, “was Paul crucified for you?”, pointing to Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 1:10-13 where he corrected his readers for saying, “I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas;” — often following their statement up by then saying they’re only of Christ. The problem is, if they only took the time to read the whole passage, they’d notice that Paul condemns saying even, “and I of Christ.” That doesn’t mean we aren’t supposed to follow Christ, as some will then accuse us of teaching when we point this fact out, but following Christ wasn’t the point of the passage, which was simply about Paul condemning sects, meaning divisions, which had begun springing up within the local church in Corinth. Besides, Paul made it quite clear in the very same book that we are to follow him, when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” So yes, we still follow Christ, but those of us in the body of Christ follow Him by following the teachings He gave to us through our apostle: Paul.
I should add, in a last-ditch effort to defend the idea of there being only one Gospel, I’ve heard it pointed out by some Christians that the words “the Gospel” technically aren’t included in the original Greek text prior to the words “of the Circumcision” in Galatians 2:7 (which is true), and then asserted that Paul would have used those words there if he meant for it to be understood that he was referring to two separate Gospels, but based on the clear pattern of things that differ between the teachings Paul preached among the nations (including the exact words in the Gospel message he preached to them, and what those words mean) and the teachings that Peter and Jesus’ other disciples gave to Israel (including the exact words in the Gospel message they preached to them, and what those words mean, especially in the four books commonly referred to as “the Gospels” and in the book of Acts), it should be clear by now that Paul being concise in that verse doesn’t detract at all from the fact that there are at least two Gospels connected with salvation in Scripture.
Still, if somebody wants to somehow insist that there really is only one Gospel taught in Scripture after reading everything they just read in this article, I’d very much like to hear why they want Scripture to contain only one Gospel so badly. And it has to be a matter of wanting it to be true, since, at the very least, they have to not only admit that all of the passages we’ve looked at can be interpreted in such a way that supports the existence of two Gospels, but also that there’s no passage in Scripture which actually outright says there’s only one Gospel. But really, at this point it should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention that even if I missed any other passages somebody might try to use in order to argue that the disciples were proclaiming the exact same news which is good during Jesus’ earthly ministry that Paul later proclaimed to the nations (which was the news which is good about Christ’s death for our sins, burial, and resurrection, and how those who believe this news which is good are saved), those “proof texts” simply can’t actually support their belief at all. And so, my challenge to anyone still trying to hang on to the idea that there’s only one Gospel is to answer the various questions I’ve asked throughout this article, and to provide their refutations of every single one of the scriptural interpretations and arguments I’ve brought up in support of the existence of two Gospels, including an explanation of how they reconcile the extensive list of scriptural contradictions that would seem to exist if there was only one Gospel (based on the comprehensive list of differences I’ve laid out which only seem to make sense if there are indeed at least two Gospels). In addition, I want them to write down and send to me or to whoever sent them this article (or at least write it down for themselves to consider) exactly what they believe this one Gospel is and what someone has to do in order to be saved under it, both someone who lived prior to Christ’s death and someone who lived after His resurrection (leaving no details out, and including their scriptural basis for all of it). And if what someone had to do in order to be saved under this one Gospel was different before Jesus died than it now is after He was resurrected, they also need to explain how that different thing they had to do prior to Christ’s death actually is the exact same thing Paul said the people of the nations that he declared the Gospel unto had to do in order to be considered saved (which includes believing that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day), which it would have to be if both proclamations of news which is good actually are the exact same Gospel message with absolutely no differences. So far nobody has been able to do all of the above after reading this article, as well as after reading any of my articles covering the same details I just went over in this article (a few have sent attempts at refuting a few points, but they all ignored the majority of what I wrote), and unless someone can, the idea of there being only one Gospel simply remains an assumption there’s literally zero excuse for making.
All this does bring up a very important question, however, which is why there are two Gospels in the first place, and why Jesus didn’t preach the same Gospel during His earthly ministry that Paul later preached to the nations. Well, the answer to that question is simply that He couldn’t, because if He had, nobody would be able to get saved (at least not in the manner of salvation that Paul generally referred to). You see, as we’ve already learned, the Gospel Paul preached is Christ’s death for our sins, burial, and resurrection, and this event is the very basis of our salvation (and is, in fact, the only reason anyone can be saved when it comes to the type of salvation Paul primarily taught about). This means that if Jesus had preached the same message (that His death was going to be for our sins, meaning that His death would be the basis of our salvation) as His Gospel around Israel before He died, the spiritual powers of darkness behind His death would have undoubtedly gotten wind of this, learning the truth about how we’re saved, and would not have had Him crucified after all, as Paul explained (and, in fact, would have done everything they could to keep Him from going to the cross, since they don’t want any humans being made immortal and sinless and taking their rulership from them). Yes, humans technically killed Jesus, but it was the evil spiritual beings ruling the world behind the scenes during this age who drove them to it, but only because they thought it would put an end to His eventual usurping of their leadership over humanity. Little did they realize that they were played, since His death was the main reason He was born in the first place, but that fact was well disguised by His ministry to the Circumcision (in fact, while it’s not the whole reason, it likely is still a large part of why God had a chosen people in the first place: basically, God plays the long game, and used Israel, and even the Gospel of the Circumcision, to distract the spiritual “princes of this world” from His bigger, hidden plans). And so, the answer to the question of why there might be two Gospels connected with salvation is itself yet another proof that there have to be two Gospels connected with salvation.
Please click here for Part 2 of this series.