04.22 - The Facts and Truths of the Gospel Evidenced in the Teachings and Writings of the Apostles
(22) The Facts and Truths of the Gospel evidenced in the Teachings and Writings of the Apostles
Hence the death and resurrection of Christ are not mere dry facts of history, but are in vested with great practical, doctrinal, and saving importance, which things were in them, or connected with them from the first. The great truths, doctrines, and benefits of atonement and salvation by faith that is in Christ Jesus are not of apostolic creation, or some new revelation of truth direct from heaven to the Apostles, but are the legitimate outcome of the facts and truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, inseparable from the facts of the Incarnation, teaching, ministry, mission, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, things which make up the sum and substance of the Gospel. These facts are pregnant with truth and blessing for the race, luminous with the purpose and knowledge of God, alive with the doctrine and benefits coming to light through the knowledge and truth that are in them, and to be realised through faith. The authors of the Gospels, the Evangelists, Apostles, and first witnesses of Jesus Christ, speaking, witnessing, and writing under the teaching of Jesus Christ and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had a consciousness of the meaning and blessing connected with these facts and transactions, and were able to make them known to their hearers and readers. They give us to see they had a consciousness of the wisdom, power, and grace of God then in movement for the world’s salvation, and hastening on to its fulfilment, and that the kingdom of God with all its blessings was at hand. At the same time they give us to see how fresh light was constantly breaking forth from these facts, how their meaning and purpose were being unfolded, and larger and fuller measures of truth came to them as they were prepared to receive them. The progressive unfolding of the truth and meaning and advantages latent in the facts are most apparent, while the minds of men were gradually prepared to lay hold of them and to be possessed and moulded by them as they revealed themselves from time to time.
Hence the facts of the Gospel of Christ, their meaning and significance, form the sum and substance of Apostolic teaching. What the Apostles preach and declare is what they received, how “ that Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification.” The Old Testament revelation of the unity and holiness of God, the mission of Israel, the authority of the moral law, the teaching of the Prophets and the Psalms, the inspiration of these writings, are taken fur granted. They formed the foundation for these new facts, events, and their teachings to which they looked forward, and which were to form the distinctive message of the New Testament Scriptures, “Proclaiming that Jesus is the Christ,” “the Son of God,” “saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses did say should come; how that the Christ must suffer, and how that Me first by the resurrection of the dead should proclaim light both to the people and to the Gentiles.” * The reality, the historicity, the validity, and credibility of the facts of the Gospels are attested by the Apostolic preaching and writings. Jesus Christ was the Son of God, of divine origin and essence, and yet very man, born of woman, and of the seed of David according to the flesh. His death on the Cross was no mere martyrdom, glorious with the barren majesty of unequalled fortitude, but an event necessary for our salvation. His resurrection was no fair dream of ardent friendship, unable to reconcile itself to the extinction of the hopes which had grown around His person, but a fact able to bear the weight of Christian faith and hope. The New Testament Scriptures, as also the whole fabric of Christianity, stand or fall with the facts of Christ’s history. The reality, the uniqueness, the historicity of Christ’s personality are among the indubitable facts of the New Testament writings; these constitute their abiding charm and worth, the secret of their 1 Acts 4:2; Acts 5:42; Acts 26:22-23. power, the foundation and bulwark of the Christian religion: and they are true. Their reality is attested by the Gospel records, by the Apostolic preaching, by the existence and universality of the Christian Church, by the ever-present grace and power of God in Christ Jesus to save all them that believe.
Criticism has directed its force against the historicity and credibility of the Gospel narratives, made much of the discrepancies between the Synoptic Gospels and the fourth gospel; and between these and the teachings and writings of the Apostles, they have made much of what they considered to be the original Jesus, His birth, ministry, and death, and the subsequent development and doctrinal teaching associated with His Name. But when Criticism has done its best or its worst, the facts of that wonderful Personality remain substantially the same as the Scriptures record, and the Church has received and taught. We are also assured that the Christ of the Gospels is the original and the true one; while the accounts of His Person, life, teaching, death, and resurrection, as made known to Paul, the converted Pharisee, and set forth by him in his Epistles to the Corinthians, is the same as that given in the Gospels, and is substantially true. The facts are certified, so far as they can be, by independent authority; and the war of the Critics over, we, at the close of the nineteenth century, find ourselves in substantial agreement with the first. The one changeless element running through the intervening centuries, and which has recently reappeared in clearer light and beauty, is “the Historic Christ.” From Him all grace and blessing come; to H imall problems are brought for solution. This Christ Revelation 17:1-18 reconciles the contradiction of experience, and creates unity of faith out of the chaos of opinions. The Person of Jesus, with its divine and human elements, its indissoluble oneness, meets the perfect nature of God and of man; and amid all the shifting sands of speculation we have here solid Rock. This Rock is the immovable basis of divine revelation “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses.” 1 This is not only the basis of revelation, but its summit and its crown, because in Him, by Him, and through Him we have redemption.